Blogs from Manali, Himachal Pradesh, India, Asia - page 6

Feb. 27 -- we went up to the snowline this morning. We didn't know what to expect as we were told to buy blankets and warm clothes. All the way up there are shops renting ski suits, equipment and boots, even fur coats, with salesmen calling out that it is "compulsory" to hire ski clothes or we wouldn't be allowed into the site. We withstood the pressure and arrived at the Solang Valley Ski Resort to blazing sunshine and blue skies. There were many Indian families enjoying themselves. The site offered all the usual entertainments -- mule and yak rides, ski mobiles, ski lessons, paragliding, etc. The ski lift wasn't in operation so the season must be over. We took a long walk on a side road through a winter wonderland -- and not cold at ... read more

(Also March 1st -- in Delhi and other places there were big parties, missed that, saw it on TV) We set out today driving to Naggar for a nice view and maybe on to a Tibetan monastery. Along the way we saw many children with color on their faces, all very excited, running in the streets, spraying color on each other, often just dumping the whole packet of color over the "victim's" head. Of course our driver had explained everything to us ... ha, ha, ha. As we drove along the car was hit by barrages of color fired by small groups of children that would leap out from behind buildings and ambush the car. The kids were having the best time, laughing and giggling, free to spray colors everywhere and on everybody. At first we ... read more

Month of December, thinking of Christmas & snow..we set out for Manali. After a 14 hr bus ride( comfortable but stifling nonetheless) we reached Manali. The cold, the humdrum was nothing as I remembred it. There was almost a small city sitting amidst evergreen trees waiting to explode, Interesting things were that people who were supposedly on a holiday were screaming at their children/cab drivers or just at everything. I guess we chose the wrong timing to visit. Reached the hotel after watching the circus for 20 minutes, thankfully the hotel was cozy.Apple Country resorts is the last hotel above the mall of city, while the hotel fleeced us by offering mountain view online & gave us a room without a view altogether but atleast they were very hospitable & the service was flawless. Since we ... read more

As well as, obviously, the time to write this blog and prune out the photos, I just spent about two-and-a-half hours trying to upload the photos and save the text, but every time Travelblog ate half of the comments and put the photos out of order. Then it ate my whole blog. So the photos are all out of order, you can probably work out where they should go, it should be Delhi - Road to Manali - Manali (and Vashist) - Manali-Leh "Highway" - Leh. About 1/3 of the photos are missing too. I can't spend any mroe time on it - if anyone knows a better blog site which doesn't steal one's copyright, please let me know. I had less than two days - one night - in Delhi I stayed in Paharganj which ... read more

Well, the last time I told you we were planning to go to the desert. We did and we survived. We went from jodhpur to jaisalmer where we had arranged a safari on camels. we spent 2 and a half day in the desert and slept underneath the stars. We really enjoyed, but after the 2 days we really got fed up with only looking at camels and desert. Also our arses hurted like hell. They say people come to the desert for peace, but for us it was a little too much peace (still we found ourselves to be in India due to all the plastic bottles lying around ion the sand dunes!! of course we did not take photographs of that :)) After all it was a wonderful experience and we enjoyed the chai ... read more