Rest day in Manali

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Well yesterday evening we got the bad news. The disaster at Leh was way beyond being put right in a few days by the army no matter how many of them were flown in. Mike, the tour leader, told us that the tour that we had booked would be cancelled and so we'd be within our rights to call on our insurance to fly us home early and pay us some compensation for the tour being ended. Alternatively they'd come up with an alternative that would take us along as much of the original route as possible and take in a couple of extra spots to make up for what we missed out on.

Neil, Tim and I were thinking that we'd like to quit the tour at this point as we felt that we were putting ourselves at risk by continuing into an area that was already suffering the effects of disastrous flooding. We were also a bit uncomfortable about the trip to Srinagar as we were hearing more about the actions of the separatists in Kashmir and wondered about the security. The army had clamped down and there was a curfew in the town.

I'd turned on my phone to use the calculator and hey presto, received a whole bunch of texts. What do you know, you can roam to India with a CDMA phone! Thought Telecom New Zealand were the only ones with that technology but obviously not. This made ringing the insurance company in New Zealand easy so we informed them of a probable claim and asked for info about the process and our rights.

The tour company were telling us the new trip would cost us around an extra US$500 for the additional hotel bookings and that there'd be no refunds for the hotels we'd be unable to use. They felt that these companies would be hurting badly enough with the fact that they were cut off at peak tourist season and that they didn't feel they could expect them to refund the prepaid accommodation costs.

There was a fair bit of dissent at this and two leaders came forward and put the case of the group back to them. Thanks Martin and Anna. Most impressed by how eloquently you put our case and without being too antagonistic. Anyway, the end result was that the tour company would pick up the bill and we'd promise in turn that we would put in a claim with our insurance company and when that was paid, forward the money to the company. This seemed like a good compromise to everyone and was being done on trust so that made the whole atmosphere of the group a lot better than it had been the previous evening.

Unfortunately we lost a few members of our motley crew. A number of people decided that because we would not be going to Leh including the highest public road in the World that they wanted out. There were 7 people in total including one couple sharing a bike hence the 6 bikes segregated from the rest. The tour company would have to find a way of ferrying those out later. The ones leaving would fly out of the nearby regional airport this day. It was sad to see some of them go and a couple of them were upset, too, as they didn't really want to go but partners had insisted.

We had a day off to wander around Manali and get a wee bit acclimatised to the altitude before we went even higher.
We took a wrong turn on our way down to the town. We asked a local if we were heading the right way for the centre of town and he said we were (although we weren't. Very funny, mate). After we'd walked a couple of klicks and were out in the country, we decided to turn back. Luckily just then a tuk-tuk turned up so we paid for a ride back into town. With 3 big guys crammed in the back, it struggled to make it up the hills.

Once back in town I found an internet cafe and paid the equivalent of 60c New Zealand for nearly an hour worth of browsing.

We had lunch at a place in the main square that did marvellous pizzas and watched a group of locals arguing some philosophical point under a statue of Nehru (at least I think they were doing that but of course I don't speak Hindi so couldn't say for sure).

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Photos

Public debate
Quite heated at times.