Manali

September 2-3

It was supposed to be a single rest day here, but they've juggled it a bit to give us a second day here, making up for it by skipping a rest day in a couple of days time.

Manali is in the state of Himachal Pradesh and is predominantly Hindu versus Leh in the state of Ladekh which was largely Buddhist. There is a Tibetan influence in both.

With the recent political events, we all found that the cell phone sim cards purchased in Leh do not work at all outside Ladekh. As a result, new sim cards had to be bought, not an enormous expense - less than ten dollars for domestic voice and data for a month by which time we'll be in Nepal - but a bit of a hassle in that you need passports and visas to be submitted and verified before the sim card is activated - it all took around two hours.

No complaint about the accommodation here - the Johnson Lodge - clean rooms, hot showers, good food, good service. 

Across the road is a protected forest area which made for very pleasant travel by foot away from traffic between the hotel and Old Manali, about twenty minutes up the road.

It also houses various birds of the pheasant family

Himalayan Monal

Kalij

We walked up to old Manali through the woods, Monkeys (or something of the primate family) live in the forest.

Ursula got the photo above, also the one below with Rae trying to get a good shot while being supervised by a local dog which stuck with us up to the exit to old Manali where he tagged on to another group of people going the other way. We figure he is an opportunist looking for leftover scraps from people who picnic in the woods.

At old Manali, Rae found a couple of birds to photograph (species not identified) while we had a light lunch at one of the eateries on the river.

Old town itself had the normal colourful street of vendors. We are always amazed at the inventory in these shops. They are all selling similar products and it never looks as if there are enough customers to keep them all in business.

Colourful mural on one of the buildings.

And that brings us to the plan for the next week. Tomorrow will be an early start, hoping to be on the road at 0630 for the transit back over the pass and then to Losar - 145 km but expected driving time of 8 to 10 hours due to the road conditions.

Then six days of riding. Relatively high altitudes for the first couple of days (not as high as last week), then getting lower. The numbers above for the last three days look onerous... knowing that last week we took over four hours to climb 500 metres and traverse 25 km, there is no way that we'll be able to complete some of those stages by sunset when they'll pick us up. We'll probably really need the two rest days in Shimla

You may have to wait for a week to find out as we're given to understand that we're headed back into territory of very limited cellular coverage and spotty internet.

Anyway... all is good here... we remain positively impressed by the people, the friendliness, the food. The people are certainly resilient given the isolation of the area we have just come through. And the TDA crew supporting us is amazing.

And we hope that Jackson and Thomas are enjoying their first day back at school.