Camping at 3200 Meters in Scwagzni. Pulga and Malana

camping..... pulga is one of the greatest places I have been in india. pulga reminded me of why i came to this great country and made me love india even more. I am pretty sure that this will be the first of many of my trips back into the himalayas. you cant help feeling the might and power that is unleashed from this place....



I want to explain the characters first:

Phil: so phil is a hard working construction guy born in london (he has a very posh sounding british accent) but now lives in the spiritual south of england (i forgot the name of the town) phil is one of those guys who is very anal and has the best of everything and he doesnt like other people to mess any of his stuff up. He is a real control freak but you wouldnt get that from him becuase he is a very soft spoken nice guy. i am pretty sure he is of indian or pakistani heritage but we never talked about it just the fact that he has been to india 5 times. he also is a part time shaman and spiritual healer. He is 45 years old


green: green is a good guy but if my parents met him i think they would die. If you can imagine a british punk rocker from the 80s that went spiritual. hes got a mohawk with a hare krishna tail in the back. he has done so much hard drugs that he has this great swagger and laugh. Hes the kind of guy that you meet and go what the F.... But when you get to know him hes a really good genuine guy. Put it this way... on our hike up to schweizen he bought opium and shoved it up his ass because he has ulcers from swallowing to much in his day. Mom i am really sorry because I know you are dying reading this but i am a good kid.




so camping with phil and green was plain crazy. So i was not able to get a taxi at 6 am as promised by the taxi guy so i jumped in a dump truck full of stones for the parbati dam project and headed for manikaran where we had a taxi waiting to take us. i had loaded my bag up with goodies and borrowed a sleeping bag from my kashmiri shop owning friend Taj who is the man. i decided i wanted to be a real man and carry my load from bishwani to pulga (about 30-45 minutes uphill walk) and then from pulga to schweizen about 2-3 hours of straight up trekking that was the most grueling i have done so far. i have never seen such straight up slippery paths in my life. without telling me green had already arranged a coolie to take my bag up because he knew it would be to hard for any of us and he said "i dont want you to suffer like that" We had this 80 year old guy leading us with greens 15 kilo bag, and two young kids trying to earn some extra cash carrying my bag and phils. The old man took it in stride. the funniest part was that not only did he walk with no problem, he even wipped out about half a kilo of hashish from his coat to try and sell us. only in this part of the country would this ever happen. we got there adn were all tired but there was work to do. I had the job of collecting wood for the fire. Those of you that know me well know that i never camped in the real term. so green hands me this scythe shaped axe adn i go to it collecting wood most of which was wiped down the mountain by an avalanche this year. Phil and green tended to the fire and fixing up the cave which we never really properly slept in we just used it to store our bags and supplies when it did start to rain a little. We slept outside under the stars with the fire going. It was about as romantic as you can get with 3 guys.....


After a great nights sleep and making breakfast we decided to go up to the mountain that you can see in the pictures for a hike. We were at about 3,200 meters and our goal was to hit the tree line which is about 4,000 here. It took us about 3 hours to start hitting the tree line and then green bailed. All that smoking and drugs got to him but he is trying to quit everything and this is his detox trip so its a good thing for him. He realized that he used to do all this stuff so easily jammed up on drugs but its not so easy when your not in some alternate reality. Phil and i continued on hitting the beutiful rhodendron forest before we had to get up. After the rhodendrons we hit this area where a avalanache or landside had taken out the earth and there were just stones and snow. i realized that it was not safe anymore with my running shoes on and i didnt want to slide down 1,000 feet of rocks and ice. phil was not so sure and he kept going. Later when we met up he told me he got about 50 meters higher and realized the same thing I did. the view might be great up there but its not worth dying or sliding down the mountain for. instead of going back i sat down on this rock and whipped out my cd player and listened to some music and stared out at one of the most amazing picturesque valleys I have ever seen.

After 4 days of trekking togather things started to get a bit rough and I think green and phil realized they may not mesh so well. it got a bit wierd and as we headed down it started to piss down on us. i got soaked and decided i was better of staying the night in pulga and i am glad i did. i got some pizza (could be the best pizza i ever had at the devraj in pulga) and headed for the forest view guest house where i met a great group of people (mostly israelis and a few english) and we argued into the night about religion and politics mostly becaues of me. i managed to piss a lot of israelis off as i always do but its good fun. i also got to explorthe town but the people are on edge because of the delhi drug force presence. They are not to keen on talking to foriengers and a lot of peopel gave me the evil eye. They pretty much assume taht if you are foriegn here you only come for the weed. but i really came to see a wonderfully intact rural indian mountain town that is just starting to change. I am sure in five years it will look just like kasol. The views of the surrounding himalayas are amazing and you can't really beat the feel of the town minus the evil eye. I was a little bummed i did not have time to explore and see tosh and kir ganga which are more lovely little parbati towns but next time I come back. I really want to grab a group of friends and do some himalayan treks. There are some great treks that are easy enough for people without experience but hard enough that you get a great workout and can enjoy the walking. There is a great 30 day (i think) trek from parbati to leh in ladakh.


some of my favorite moments of the camping trip:

When we arrived into the valley where the cave was this massive golden eagle (it looked like a dog with wings) flew over us. Also what green said where griffen vultures or hawks were amazing and freaking massive.

Watching the cows every morning run up the mountain to get the freshest bit of grass

Realizing how crazy I was standing up on a snowfield around 4000 meters with tennis shoes, a walking stick and a cd player in my pocket. oh... i also had an emergency whistle in case i was still alive after sliding down the mountain.

sleeping under the stars in the himalayas

Meeting those two crazy characters....

learning to make a fire, cook my own food and make a legit campsite.

Waking up and seeing mt. tosh and a few other 18,000 ft plus peaks staring at you in the face.

My next adventure was in malana. Malana is a town that is only reachable by a 2 hour trek that could be one of the hardest walks in my life. I got really cheap becuase i was eyeing a few things back in kasol and decided to walk the 14 kilometers from Jari a 30 minute bus ride from kasol all the way to the malana damn where you walk basically straight up stairs for 2 hours to the tiny town of malana. Malana is a place where people think they are holy and they cannot touch you and you are not allowed to touch there temples, houses or holy places unless you want to pay a 1000 ruppee fine. Most of this has been due to tourists and they know they can get loads of money out of you if you do touch them (people pay about 100 USD for ten grams of charras so they know you can cough up 25 bucks if you touch them). Up unitll a few years ago it only used to be a 30 ruppee fine. I think most of the reason people in malana think they are holy is because alexander the greats army came by here and many of the men either stayed or just raped the women and many of the descendents even to this day look like half indian half european people. THere is supposdly a lot of green eyed indians in malana but i did not see this. Most people trek to malana for its world famous "Malana cream" charras, hash oil and weed but i wanted to go to see one of the most beautiful himalayan villages still around. It was that. The people are wierd, i mean they jump away from you like you have the plauge and a lot of them have are really dirty and grimey considering many of them make 80,000 usd a year but thats one thing i love. These people are pretty rich compared to most of india but they still remain very insular and still build and live in traditional houses. They dont own guest houses or anything to do with tourism except when it comes dealing. The town does feel very creepy so i did end up leaving very early in the morning to get back to kasol so i could spend my time shopping and wrapping up lose ends before i had to get back to bhuntar which is another adventure i will write about later. It involves almost a brawl in a bus, sleeping on the floor, a 1 hour search of our bus by the police at 3 am and a 12 hour bus ride turned 19 hours. I bet you cant wait.


Its almost over soon,

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