Manali

---

ha ha ha what an adventure that was! Manali also came and went and sorry for not updating you on my adventures there sooner but to be honest since we left Mcleod Ganj on the 3rd Sept, it has been just one big adventure since. Had a great time as you can probably imagine, meaning that updating travel blogs was the last thing on my mind. So I left Mcleod Ganj the night of the 3rd with some other friends who i had made whilst in Mcleod. We decided to go for the night bus option which was a 10hr bus ride, leaving around 8.30pm and arriving into Manali about 6am. This is where it all went tits up.

Got on the bus and headed out of Dharamsala and along the dark road for about 2 hrs, then got a puncture. Hey ho, these things happen and so it was here where the adventure started. One was ok, but further down the road we had to stop again for a chai tea stop, albeit no chai and then whilst we sat on the side of the road the driver noticed that the back tyre had also flattened. Not that it had any grip in the first place, or any tread should i say! So that meant to flat tyres, not possible to continue. The driver then decided to head upstairs to get some kip and left us there and only managed to say that we would have to wait until atleast 6am to get someone to bring us a spare tyre and continue the journey. This said we continued to play silly games, without any alcohol, just with a good team spirit as i was by this time coordinating a team building event, on the side of the pitch black road heading towards Manali. It was good fun but after an hour or so we decided this was not much fun to continue all night so i startedwaving down any truck that came by and wanted to stop. After several who just ignored us, one did stop and offered to take us all on his open air truck to Kullu (one hour from Manali). After a very quick discussion with the group of passengers, we took the decision to offload our backpacks from the original minibus and load up the new truck as well as ourselves on it! Now to cut a long story short, this was the scariest but most adventurious journey we took until this time. A crazy 6 hours journey crammed in the back of this open air truck, all squashed in to the back like sardines, or more like a bunch of illegal immigrants, as later down the road we got pulled over by the coppers who basically came round the back of the truck and shon in their torch and asked the driver what the hell was going on. Thank god we had two indians with us on the journey so they translated and explained this truck driver was literally saving us from a non existent bus trip we should have been on heading to Manali. Its funny to look back at this now, but believe me that night, we all thought weither our numbers were up or they weren't. We did make the journey to Kullu, screaching round bends and narrow mountain roads in the dark and flying from one side to the other of this truck and with big bumps all the way along too due to the many potholes in the road. It was a good open air star show and later to be a light show, best ever thunder and lightning show. Thank god we managed to stop once the rain started coming down and had a plastic cover to put over the bags and top of the truck, in order to create a roof. Anyway, story is long so won't bore you, but it was crazy and to be honest it was the start of a very fun and mad few days in Manali, where we all hung out at the Dharma guesthouse in Vashist, letting the days pass away, and going for mountain walks up to amazing waterfalls, hangin out in little trancy cafes in the woods with very good vibes and then enjoying the little places that Old Manali has to offer. All very cool little places, that one would not like to leave behind, but one has to, once you know you have done the paragliding, horseriding up the steepest mountain and even zorbing down a big hill. By the way this place where we did all this one day was like an adults action park. We loved it there and did everything there was to do. Unitl we had done so, we did not leave. For several days we had lots of fun between Vashist and Manali and hanging out in Dharma with other cool travellers who by the way made up a little music group with bongos, girls singing and playing mini guitars, which looked like child guitars and ofcourse the guy with the digarydoo. We also had a guy who was on the crazy bus journey who played with fire balls and did some amazing tricks and shows for us on some nights. It all went very well with the music and we all made a good team.

Anyway after several days there we decided we had to start planning the journey up to Ladakh as my days atleast were running out and with only 7 days left in India we booked up another mini bus to take us on the Manali-Leh road through the Famous Rothang pass. This ofcourse was a trip will made about a 100 checks on before booking and leaving on it. Its another amazing road trip which took 2 days, but i haven't time to tell you about that now, so will leave it for next update which i will do over next week or so.

---