Treks 'n' tricks

Kheer ganga

In order to get to Kheer ganga we first had to make our way to Manikaran which was a 5 hour bus journey from Manali. This town was a sight for sore eyes. One night was enough time spent before heading to Barshani to start the trek to aprox. 3000 m. We began with a huge thali breakfast (Indian dish that comes in a variety of combinations) before setting off. We got lost 2 or 3 times in the first hour as locals kept pointing us in the wrong direction. We finally found our way after a great deal of hassle and soon caught up with a Mexican couple, Alma & Sergio who trekked with us.

It took us 6-7 hrs to reach Kheer ganga. During that time we got chased by dogs, saw stunning water falls, passed through a couple of mountain villages and drank several chais (sweet milk tea). When we got up to the top our reward was waiting for us- 40°C hotsprings. A nice welcome considering it was freezing cold up there. We managed to get a shack with a fire place which kept us relatively warm, that and 5 blankets.

McLeod

It's harder than it looks

Ganj

The following day we trekked down the mountain (or slid down for want of a better phrase, because it had been raining all night) and headed to McLeod Ganj, home of the Dalai Lama.
Not much was going on here, it was a very peaceful town filled with Tibetan buddhist monks and chilled out backpackers.

First things first, the need for a Tibetan healing massage was an urgent priority. This was no oily feel good massage, this was pure pain, but afterwards you literally could stand tall and Erik enjoyed it so much he went back the following 2 days. We found Le vrai café and became regulars as the French sandwiches, filter coffee (everywhere else in India was nescafe), crepès and oat porridge was the best breakfast we had since we left home. The delightful French magician also kept us entertained with his endless card tricks.

McLeod Ganj is a small town outside the main city of Dharamsala which is the hub of Tibetan exiles in the world. Whilst we were sipping coffee one day we bumped into some old friends from my TEFL course and met a monk who told us about the years he spent in a Chinese prison labour camp and recently wrote a book about the subject. We also hooked up with a fellow traveler named Chris, a real character who suffered from a chronic headache which made him not able to work and do things like sit in front of a computer and watch TV for too long or drink alcohol etc. This ruled out a lot of things in his life, so he decided to travel and had been to most corners of the world, most recently China. He had a lot to say and was surprised to see more Tibetans in McLeod Ganj than he did in Tibet. He didn’t understand why he got why he got so many serious killer looks from the Tibetan monks but then he soon realized that the bag he bought in Bejing and was carrying around town had Mao-Tse Toung’s (Chinese dictator who invaded Tibet) face on it. That’s like carrying a bag with Adolf Hitler’s face on it in Israel or even George W. Bush’s in Iraq.

There was also “the movie den” where you could see the latest movies on pirate DVD's for about 35p/30rps. The funny thing is that it’s fully legal, or at least nobody cares too much to do anything about it.
This really was the perfect town to kick back and feel good about doing nothing for a while.

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