In the hills of the north

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So we left you with a cockroach in the breakfast, I'm glad to report I didn't get ill after that and we're both feeling very healthy at the moment.
We spent a few more days in McLeod ganj. Most days we did the conversation classes with the Tibetans refugees which involved an hour and a half or so of talking with Tibetans about their lives, culture and where they've come from. Not only was it very interesting for us (neither of us realised how bad the suppression of Tibetan culture is) but it helped them improve their English and gain in confidence.
We left and had the worst night bus experience yet, it had absolutely no suspension, (we were literally being shaken off our seats) and we arrived in Manali at 3.30am. Fortunately, after an hour or so wandering around the deserted streets a chap from a hotel found us sat in a back alley and took us to a nice cheap room.
Manali is a little town in a valley at footsteps of the Himalayas, every direction you look in you can see snow capped mountains, waterfalls on all the hills and forested lower hills (it's a little reminiscent of the swiss alps). We spent over a week there in the end doing lots of day walks over the hills and into the nearby villages. Chris may make a hiker of me yet. We also saw our first yaks (they sell rides on yaks and photos with angora rabbits at the temples, Indian tourists seem to love tacky!), we also had our first yak cheese sandwich, not dissimilar from Edam.
After about 3 weeks of very relaxed travel in town orientated for western backpackers we headed for Chandigarh which is essentially the Milton Keynes of India, designed in the 50's as the future prototype of cities. It works in some ways, a lot greener and with wider streets than other cities and it actually feels quite empty because the population density is so much lower there than anywhere else. That being said it's a lot of concrete. But we saw the 2nd most popular tourist destination in India, a man-made rock garden made of discarded rubble and other flotsam; as well as a man-made lake, and the all the galleries and museums you would expect.
We've just arrived in Shimla, a hill station to the north of Dehli. Its a mecca for Indian tourists but has some wide pedestrianised streets which are better to walk along. The town has loads of monkeys which I've managed to develop a bit of a phobia for but hopefully this will provide aversion therapy for me!
Suddenly our time in India is coming to an end, we'll bore you with our thoughts on the place in the final blog we do before Oz.

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