A walk in the woods and back to D'sala

For our final full day in Manali we wound up yet again at Dylan's.

We did try the cookies, and they were in fact delicious.

See that guy in the bottom right corner of the second photo? He's a crew dude for Cirque du Soleil. He and his gf/travel partner are from Montreal. We had a fun little conversation with them about the awesomeness of the Cirque and how cool it must be to travel all over the world with it.

The proprietor of the shop is the guy standing behind him making someone's beverage. At one point he asked about my tattoo, so that led to a discussion about knitting and how everyone in the tribe he's from learns to knit. We talked about crops (apparently they grow some of the only peas in India) and knitting and all kinds of things. He said he'd try to find a place in Manali for me to buy good, local yarn; it wasn't very helpful, though, because we didn't have much more time in town. I was surprised at how difficult it had been to find locally-produced yarn in the Himalayan mountains.

We decided to go for a walk to Vashisht, a little town with temples and hot springs. Here are some scenery pix for you...

We eventually reached the hot springs (I found a little shop with some supposedly local yarn along the way; it looks handspun and it's definitely in need of a good washing. What should I make? A shawl, maybe?) and saw some more intricate carvings on the sides of the temples there.

Hot water straight from the springs.

From there we took a tuk-tuk back to Manali and had a nice, relaxing evening.

We walked back from New Manali to Old Manali through the park.

Coke made with real sugar, and a quesadilla that was surprisingly good.

We got foot/leg and shoulder massages!

The next morning it was time to go, so we bade farewell to one last Manali sunrise.

Bye bye, Manali. Perhaps we'll meet again.

And then it was around 7 hours to get back to Dharamsala. There weren't enough people to fill the minibus we were originally scheduled to take, so we got to ride in a taxi for a fraction of the usual taxi price. Along the way we stopped for lunch at a hotel where I saw this guy making fresh naan & roti.

Yum!

With that, I am back in Dharamsala for a while. Brij and I spent the evening watching soccer, eating momos, and trading movies & music. So far today all I've done is slept in, written this blog, and half-assedly helped plan a trip to Rajasthan (the others are doing most of the work). Oh, and looking at potential jobs for when I get back. Does anyone know of a place that will need someone in, say, January? The catering biz gets a little slow after the holidays and I'm going to need some kind of income to pick up the slack, especially since I'm using up my savings while I'm here in India. It's alright, though.........

Observations on India 1

I present to you a random collection of some observations I've made while in India:

* Generally speaking, it smells a bit.

* The roads are wide enough for (usually) two cars and a pedestrian, but only barely, and if you're a little bit creative. Traffic passes much more closely than anywhere else I've ever been, but nobody seems to mind.

* You can drive the wrong way on the road as long as you stick to the outside and put your hazard lights on. Everybody does it; it's just how you get around here.

* There are an awful lot of animals in the roads, mostly dogs and cows. They seem to have an understanding with the drivers that they will move reasonably out of the way as long as the cars make an effort to go around them.

* There are cool birds here I've never seen before.

I'm not sure what these are, but there are a lot of them in New Delhi.

* In New Delhi the streets are filthy, but the subway is pristine.

* There are very few trash cans in public places. Most people throw their garbage on the ground. You can imagine how much I'm loving this.

* Almost all prices are negotiable.

* All the signs are in English but everyone seems to make up their own spellings.

* All the signs are in English, but most people speak Hindi unless you start speaking to them in English (or unless they are trying to get you, an obvious Westerner, to buy something).

* "Fog" is the default weather condition on the mountain in monsoon season. When it really rolls in, you can't see anything in the valley or more than a few dozen feet in front of you.

* Due to the fog, nothing ever really dries here. This means if you leave the windows open your blankets (and your clothing, and your towels...) will be damp.

* There's no air conditioning. Instead there are "coolers," fans with water dripping down. They actually work pretty well to cool the area, but not so much to take out the humidity.

* The menus include "buff," which at first I took to be a misspelling of "beef." You can't kill cows in India, though, and I was later informed that "buff" is in fact buffalo.

* Most menus don't have an explanation of what the items on them are, even when they have vague names like "special dumpling" or whatever #2 is on this one:

Is it made with real goblins?

* Coca-cola is huge in India.

* The vast majority of Indian women wear beautiful traditional clothing, even when doing hard labor like construction.

* Everybody wears flipflops, all the time.

* The power goes out at least once a day.

* Most bathrooms have a shower. It's one room, all tile, with a shower head, a sink, a toilet, a bucket, a squeegee, and a water heater with a switch. No shower curtain. You just take your shower and then squeegee the water on the floor into the drain when you're done.

* If you want toilet paper in a public bathroom, you better bring it yourself. If you want a seat, you might need to shop around.

A traditional/standard Indian toilet.

 
* Many of the floors are made of marble, even in otherwise modest buildings.

We went to a restaurant last night where, in order to get to the bathroom, you had to go outside and walk through some hallways and down a few flights of beautiful marble steps. I seriously felt like I had entered some dungeon or temple in a video game. Obviously this was the highlight of the evening. :)