Who'da thunk it?!?!

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So... Where to begin? Well, Manali is beautiful! Lots of mountains, pine trees and wild weed growing everywhere!! Seriously though... EVERYWHERE!!! The most shocking thing of all is the cold, cutting, piercing cold!! Completely unexpected but at some level appreciated!

Started off, we got off the bus after 9 hours of white knuckle mountain side roads and immediately were leapt upon by a hotelier who then proceeded to follow us down the street touting his hotel. After about 10 mins of this and 2 price reductions we decided to go and check it outwhich i'd like to add was a good call. Hotel(name to follow as we cant remember at the moment) was really nice, situated right on The Mall(high street) was a steal at 250Rs per night(a few pence over 3GBP). Unlike Delhi, the people here arent pushy at all...

"Taxi? Rickshaw? Taxi?"
"No thank you"
"OK sir, no problem"

I had to take a step back the first few times as i was waiting for the inevitable badgering. It all seems so laid back up here.

Jilly and i have been laid up for a couple of days with a cold and a bacterial chest infection but the anti-biotics we brought with us are doing thier thing and we feel much better(don't stress mam)! We went to a restaurant called 'Chopsticks' where we had our first official Tibetan meal which was really nice but we were still in the grips of cold/chest nastiness so our appetites were minimal.

All last night i lay listening to a dog whimpering and made it my mission to find out why and which dog... This morning my questions were answered as i looked out my window only to witness 2 grown men kicking a puppy that cant have been more than 7 weeks old into a heap of rubbish and bins. The puppy, quite obviously hungry and cold, went back to try and get some sort of food or affection and again was kicked away. If you were here mam, you'd be sent down for murder at the way they treat these dogs... almost everything i see here confirms my belief that the cockroach population is getting bigger and bigger!! I hope those guys are reincarnated as dogs then kicked to death by other such... Grrr!! Long live the balance!!!

We were just stood outside of a little shop looking at some crystals and a random american hippy guy tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a fossil from the mountains around here... Almost as if he knew me... Karma.

Tomorrow, we move on to Dharamsala and then possibly Rajasthan but by the looks of it, our route may change slightly but we're getting there...

Love to all and unlike most of these people, we're still karmically clean(even if not physically). LOL.

We havent found anywhere that sells postcards yet but when we do we will send them... I started an address book and left it at home so they'll all be going to mams... I are memoryless!!!

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