Manali : Living the Beas

From this part of the trip i became noticeably happy, mainly due to the abatement in heat. we flew from delhi to chandigarh, and from there we hired a taxi to Manali. from this point onwards began our tryst with judas taxiwallahs. beware of them. they'll charge you the moon, you need to haggle with them about the price per km. we finally agreed to rs. 6 per km with this hip young taxi wallah with streaked hair, what he didn't tell us was that all charges are from "garage to garage" i.e., charges are according to round trip and the fair essentially is about 12 per km. we didn't know that, we got ripped off

but the journey itself is a fantastic repast to the eyes. it meanders through the green rice fields of punjab with rivulets from the irrigation canals glistening from amidst them, then snakes through the himachal valley with the Beas river for accompany all along the way. The beas is always with you through out the journey to manali, and as you get closer, the river loses its sedate calm and becomes more torpid and turbulent. i liked the latter better, it fills one with such a euphoric feeling. there's something about juvenile green trees and an icy pure river that makes you feel "Pahadi" all of a sudden, and it doesn't leave you till you leave the landscape.

Manali, is a beautiful town located 40 km from kullu in the kullu valley. although the town is largely unaffected by the tourist population, it does tend to get crowded during the tourist season, esp. the weekend punju crowd in the peak of the season. on our first day in Manali we visited the Hidimba temple, which i loved because its an idyllic pahadi temple. it was nestled on top of a hillock and was surrounded by cornifers all around. we then went to the manu temple which about 3 km from the city . this temple had magnificent views of the entire valley.

there are two kinds of people in manali, non vegetarians and 100% pure vegetarians. what the heck is a 100% pure vegetarian food?, because all the restuarants in manali make that claim. you almost think they'll feed you plants straight off from the fields . however non vegetarians need not despair, my bro and i found a non descript tibetian restuarant on the main street which served the best momos i've ever tasted. however due to the large hippie population we also saw some restaurants serving israeli food and stuff, but seriously due you want to eat israeli food in a place called "hotel parampara"?.

the next day we left early for the Rohtang pass. and this place needs to come with a traffic jam warning. easily the mot hideous, humoungous, cacophonous jam, you've ever seen and that too at an altitude of over 12,000 feet. You have to reach there early because the later you reach the farther your vehicle will be parked and the more you'll have to trek. the best option is to hire ponies and behold the snowy scene peacefully, rather than huffing and puffing and getting all cross and bothered. i really was disappointed with Rohtang, this was my second visit, and the first was with my school mates 8 years back and the place was in pristine condition, now the snow was all dirty and the air consisted solely of diesel fumes. but the snow capped peaks all around almost makes up for the chaos down below. the Beas actually originates in a glacier near the Rohtang pass, so one can see the young toddler river struggling past the rocks. i was fascinated by the reverse life cycle of the Beas that one witnesses as we proceed to the origin.

there are other places to visit in Manali, like Vashist were the hot springs are located, but i wouldn't recommend a dip in that unless you fancy watching flabby naked people. urgh. but vashist is a cool place, and i'll say that only if there are cool places to shop and cool things to buy. got some neat suede bags, wrap skirts and some really hip junk jewellery.

I miss Manali, even as I'm writing this. I miss the pahadi feeling. this is one place, i'll definitely come back to, come back to revisit dear old Beas