Leh to Delhi

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To save some money I cancelled my plane ticket from Leh to Delhi and decided to take the bus instead. I think in Canada the prospect of travelling 3 days by bus would outweigh the $150 saved.... but India tends to warp your perspective of money. Anyways the first leg is a 2 day trip from Leh to Manali over some of the highest passes in the world. We didn't hit any snow, which is very lucky as the day before I left busses were taking 3.5 days to do the trip. I had my eyes shut most of the time but my friends saw tons of trucks which rolled down the hill, and one which was like half off and attached by cables to a rock. I was stuck between a coughing old man and a little kid who slept on my most of the trip.... could have been worse I suppose. Oh wait my seat was broken and would slide around on every bump. You spend the night in a little crummy town called Keylong, where every single bed in town was booked and in my room there was probably about 18 people sleeping. My bed cost 75 cents CDN, but I was lucky as many of the indians travelling had to sleep on the floor in a big pile.
The next day we make to Manali and were stopped by the worst traffic hazard of all, Indian tourists. They come up from Manali to the nearest pass with snow and have a field day... many are from Punjab and have never seen snow before. It was very strange... yak rides, sleigh rides down the hill with locals acting as human breaks, people skiing down a football sized glacier filled with rocks and tourists, little snow banks decorated with hearts for honeymoon couples, tubing rides. At the bottom of the hill was us, and about 200 other vehicles in the worldest worst traffic jam. We didn't move for over 2 hours. One skier didn't see the hazards involved in pointing straight down the hill and promptly flew off the glacier into the traffic jam. I think he was OK, the local rescued his skiis at least. Eventually large groups of men got their act together and literally picked up the smaller cars and carried them out of the way of our bus, we drove through some tables of a nearby daba and then escaped the hordes behind us.
Manali was very laid back, lots of israeli's and semi-hippies come there in the summer season. I thought it would be a nice place to come with some friends and hang out... I had one guy I knew there from England who rode his bike down from Leh and it pretty much fell apart on the trip.
My sleeper bus I booked from Manali to Delhi apparently went off a cliff and many people died so I ended up on a AC bus overnight. Indian people are funny when they sleep because they just sort of snuggle up with whoever is next to them.
Delhi is horrible as usual but I had a friend here from Australia to hang out with and we saw lots of stuff yesterday. Today it is just too hot to go outside so I am hanging around doing nothing waiting for my plane to leave for Japan tomorrow morning.

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Photos

High pass
you can see the road snaking up the mountain on the right

Skiing
this guy actually managed to stop safely

sledding
with human breaks