peace in the mountains... and levitating goats

---

Ten hours in the saddle, the wind in our hair, the flies in our sun cream, the rain on the mountain tops, the dhabbas (cafes) at the side of the road, the tunnel under the mountain, the collapsed roads and our first taste of single track mountain riding….. BLISS…. We arrived in Jari, dirty, tired, hungry and very,
very happy….

The roads were incredible, and the reality of what having a bike in India would mean dawned on us…the open road stretching before us… we could go anywhere (bike allowing)… the roads are sometimes rough and tremendously difficult but they are yielding, true maybe Katie has to get off and push occasionally but we did manage to get where we wanted to go.

Jari is a small farming village in the Parvati Valley. We stayed in a family run farmhouse for 100 rupees a night and managed to just relax… We personalised some cheap vests, played guitar, read some books, made some friends and generally just chilled out. We had an amazing experience in the village on our second night. We went down to get some dal and rice (again!) and found the village in the midst of a black out… the shops were lit with candles and the dhabbas were lit with candles, a procession was winding through the streets and still everything was noisy and alive, yet somehow mellowed by the lack of florescent strip lightening and tinny music blaring from radios and T.V’s - a taste of a bygone age maybe?? Met two little lads that night in the sweet shop, they only had enough money to buy one sweet, so we bought them a second éclair… they were so pleased and the sweet-shop-guy must have been touched 'cos he gave us two free, YES!!

To be perfectly honest we didn’t really do much in Jari, we got to know a stoner Hawaiian dude (never got his name!!) who spent the whole time talking about weed, chillums, growing weed, finding weed, smoking weed, sharing weed, the cost of weed, sitting smoking with his silent Japanese friend, and climbing Mount Everest on his next trip (seems unlikely to us). However, he was really sweet and took great pleasure in having the same conversation with us at least twice a day (maybe only 10 minutes apart) and sharing his munchies (papaya, chocolate, Indian sweets…ummmm). He entertained us for the time we were there…We went for a long bike trip as far as we could get up the Parvatti Valley, the trip and the views were just incredible and we even managed to capture the rare levitating breed of goat on camera!

We left Jari after 5 days and headed to Manali to catch up with Miranda, Simeon and the kids….

---