An Indian Summer

Hi guys,

I hope your all well! Been awhile but this seems as good a time as any for a little update on what I’m up to. I’ve been in India for 2 weeks now and I’m really enjoying it. I’d heard so much about what to expect - the massive culture shock, the sore stomachs, and the searing mid-summer heat - I’ve been very lucky so far I have to say I’ve managed to avoid all 3! This part of my trip has been much more like a holiday and I’ve been treating myself a bit more splashing out on the odd really nice meal. Since I’ve been travelling, I’ve made some really good friends, whom I’ve known from a few weeks to a few months. Other than Trevor who I bumped into in China who remembered me from the National Park visitor centre I haven’t met anyone who I knew previously before this trip. However I have met up with friends from back home in Scotland,.so it was a very strange experience meeting up with the Macallister’s and some of Donald Johns Uni friends in such unfamiliar circumstances. Yesterday I bumped into an old high school friend (Tom Robinson) at a mechanics in Manali! It really is a small world!

My reason for coming to India in June was to attend Donald John and Kripa’s wedding in Manali (a 16 hour bus journey north of Delhi). The wedding took place on the 20th of June, although the celebrations started on the 18th with food and entertainment at Kripas parent’s house in Manali. We were told to come in Indian dress, so I wore my trousers that I had tailored in Delhi, a shirt I got in Thailand with an Indian scarf-thing. I really enjoyed meeting up with the Macallisters and all of DJ’s friends from back home and uni.. There was lots of dancing and singing, the food was great and as part of the tradition before an Indian wedding all the women had henna tattoos done. I spent the following day getting a shirt tailored and meeting some of the other guys who had made the trip over. We booked out a whole floor of a hotel, 14 of us stayed there - we had a lovely balcony which was great for, reading, relaxing planning the day ahead. Because there was so many of us we would usually split into groups but plan to all meet somewhere for lunch and dinner, it worked well.
The wedding started in the afternoon of the 20th, the service took place in a hotel in nearby Vashist. The room was decorated with loads of flowers and we were given a silk scarf as we came in, the bride’s side was full of colourful clothes and the grooms side had quite a few kilts. I haven’t been to many weddings, so I don’t have much to compare it with, but the atmosphere was really relaxed. After the service we walked outside where drinks and food were being served and the views were just breathtaking,. A perfect clear day - the surrounding Himalayan range was spectacular with peaks of up to 21,000ft visible in the background. The food was delicious, at the moment I’m quite happy to have 2 currys a day! and then every so often to have either Thukpa (Tibetan soup) or Momo (similar to Chinese dumplings). There was plenty of food at the wedding, and I was almost too full to join in with the ceilidh dancing- it was really amazing, all the Scots were so enthusiastic and it was contagious as quite a lot of kripas side of the family who had never seen Scottish dancing were quick to join in. The finale an Orkadian Strip the Willow, spanning the whole length of the hall was fantastic and quite a few people ended up on the floor! The night was capped off with a mix pop songs and hindi music whilst everyone danced around. Quite a few folk came back to our balcony to chillout and talk about the day, the guitars came out and we had a bit of a sing-song over a few beers.
The next morning we were all invited to the church service in the school. It turned out to be an all day celebration. After the service there was loads of traditional Indian dancing which we all joined in with. It was really good fun, but for me the highlight was a traditional Indian meal, we all sat down and enjoyed a massive 7 course meal - and really being in the mood a few of us used our hands! After the meal was over we went back into the hall to enjoy some performances of some traditional local dances performed by some of the school kids, and locals. I don’t think anyone had anything else to eat that day we were just so stuffed from our lunch! We enjoyed a relaxed night, if a bit melancholy now that the wedding was over everyone was a bit sad, and the conversation was largely about what everyone else planned to do,. As most people were heading off pretty sharpish to do some exploring before flying home, others were gonna stick around for a few days before going back to Delhi. I had the luxury of time to plan with no obligations or deadlines to constrain me,.
So I’ve been enjoying Manali and the surroundings, visiting a mgnificent waterfall, going for a days hike, and visiting the thermal pools in Vashist temple. But the highlight of my post-wedding activities has to be the trek which I just got back from.
I bumped into a local mountain guide from Manali. He knows DJ and Kripa - Manali’s not that big a place so most people know each other. Anyway he asked if I wanted to join him on one of his group treks. It would be a climb up Friendship peak which is at 5,200M!!! So I told the rest of the guys about this, and Tom and Rhu were both keen so we met back up with Peter and discussed the plans. It would be a 5-day trek and we would be hiring, snowboots, crampons and ice axes aswell as harnesses and ropes,. We would be leaving the following morning so we didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. I was up for it, it’s not often a chance like this comes along. So we got all of our gear and we got up really early Saturday morning to load up the jeep with all the stuff. There was us 3, Peter and 3 of his Indian friends and a porter, so 8 in total. The amount of food we took was incredible. In NZ when you go trekking you carry lots of dry foods, which are light and take up hardly any room. Here they go trekking with fresh fruit and veg, kilos of mutton, lentils, rice and noodles and all sorts of other stuff. The porter took all the food, I only had to carry my own stuff, clothes, boots, sleeping bag etc, and me, Rhu and Tom took turns with carrying our tent,. So my bag probably weighed around 15kg. The first day we trekked at a very slow pace up a beautiful valley where we made base camp. The meals were fantastic, and it really felt like quite an adventure. The second day was much steeper and pretty hard going in bits but we took it nice and slow and by the end of the day we had reached 4000M. The air is really thin at this altitude, so we cut a few branches off of a bush which Peter said if we hung in our tent would provide us with some more Oxygen.
Here’s the really embarrassing bit, I had picked up the wrong boots by mistake and had 2 left boots!!! I tried them on that night and they were really uncomfortable, the following day we would be making our summit push. I needed the snow boots only for 1 day when we would climb to the summit and back down all in the one day. I decided that I would just go for it, so we had an early night and then set off at 2AM in the morning so the snow would be nice and solid. It was pretty painfull on my right foot. It turned out to be a really long day, as we had quite a few crevasses to dodge so our route changed a few times. In the end it took us a gruelling 9 hours to reach the summit, the views from the top were absolutely incredible! Just unbelievable - all around were snow capped peaks filling the whole horizon! The Himalayas just stretch on for miles and miles. It took a lot of will power to get through the pain in my foot. Getting down to Camp 1 took 3 hours, we were all exhausted and all of us had headaches due to the altitude. When we got down to the tents the porter who had stayed behind had some chai tea and noodles on the go for us!
That night Peter told us that your actually supposed to have a permit to climb beyond 4,500M so there goes my Guinness world record attempt at climbing friendship peak with 2 left boots,. Still I doubt many people have illegally climbed a mountain with the a left boot on the right foot! Thankfully my foot is fine and it shouldn’t affect my football career back in Scotland.
Anyway I’m gonna be moving on from Manali now, the path leads further North, along the second highest road in the world to Leh,. But before that I’ll be exploring the Spiti valley which is right on the Tibetan border, one of the highlights is the worlds highest settlement. The whole region is made up of barren scenery with monasteries dotted around the place,. Supposedly it’s not very touristy at all aswell which I’m looking forward to - it’s always nice to get off the beaten track! Then I need to decide whether or not to make the journey over to Sirnigar which is supposedly one of the worlds best road journeys, however the troubles in Tibet have put many tourists off travelling any further, so I’ll need to assess the situation once I get there. Right well that’s all for now, thanks for reading and please drop me a line with what you’ve been up to!

Take Care,


Andrew.

p.s. here are some photos of the trek - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=43361&id=223002516&l=a5c9539f14

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