Manali, India
Bad buses, mad drivers, mountains and skiing. It's been another crazy few days in India.
There was only one direct link between Dharamasala, the fantastic hill station I'd been staying at and my next destination - Manali, and that was the local bus. I was too late for the daytime one, and for some reason thought the nightime one would just about be OK. Surely being a ten hour journey, the bus would be of a reasonable quality I thought. I was so wrong.
To catch said bus, I took a connecting bus from my hotel in McLeod to a few miles down the road to the main bus station in Daharamsala and waited patiently, with fingers crossed that the bus would be OK. Unfortunately what turned up was the sort of thing that you wouldn't even want to take to the next street, let alone spend nine hours on - an knackered antique of a thing, with barely any suspension, no heating whatsoever, and sliding windows that constantly rattled themselves open all night. Then there was the fact that the seats were more suited to schoolchildren - three seats on one side of the bus and two on the other, with so little legroom that I had to sit bolt upright the whole time to stop my knees smashing against the hard plastic back of the seat in front. And so little shoulder width I was squeezed solid between an old guy in a blanket and the window for the first couple of hours. I thought about giving up and hopping off when I saw a hotel along the way, but knew I'd be in the middle of nowhere, with exactly the same problem the next day.
The road the entire way was narrow and terribly surfaced, following the contours of the lower Himalayan mountains and sometimes even turned to dirt track for short sections. We stopped every so often at ramshackle little villages for passengers to get on and off, all wrapped in old blankets. At about 11pm it started getting quite cold, then by midnight it was absolutely freezing. Normally to escape the cold you have the option of moving about, putting on the heating or putting on more clothes. The latter was all I could do, putting on almost everything I had and was still cold, as the only moving about I could do was walking around the now near empty bus shutting various windows as they shook themselves open. Needless to say I didn't sleep a wink - It was sheer hell - the worst journey I've ever had, or could hope to have.
To top this off, the previous day at the bus station the ticket man told me the bus would arrive in Manali at 6am just when many hotels would just be opening up for breakfast. But the hell wasn't over - the bus actually got into Manali at 4.15am, everything was shut, there was no-one around and being at 2,000m altitude it was still pretty cold. I had a map with some hotels on it in my Rough Guide book and got walking to get warm, in the vain hope something might be open. My only stop was on a quiet lane for a minute, watching an electricity pole fizzing and popping as it short circuited, blowing out flames and sparks in the dark of night.
After half an hour or so, it was looking like my only option was to spend some time sitting in one of the small booths that house ATM's, until finally my luck came in when through the window of a small hotel, I made out in the darkness a guy asleep on a sofa by the hotel reception. I knocked the door, then knocked louder again and to my delight (but not his) he awoke, let me in and had a room available... at £3 a night. Oh the joy I felt!
I slept until around 11am, waking up still cold, tired and generally in a foul mood. I didn't like the town nor want to be there. But after some breakfast and a walk in the warmer afternoon sun, my mood defrosted as I wandered across town, taking in a 15th century Hindu temple, stopping for a 10p cup of tea, walking through a nice patch of woodland by a river and eventually to the upper part of town where they had some natural outdoor hot springs. I passed up on the chance to bathe as they looked pretty grubby, but the locals seemed to be enjoying themselves - taking baths and washing their dishes just outside. Manali wasn't quite so bad after all.
The next day I'd booked up for a tour of some local sights, and got picked up by a minibus from my hotel. I wasn't actually sure where we were going to be honest, the place names meant nothing to me so it was a magical mystery tour. In fact it turned out that we were actually heading up one of the highest roads in the world - Rohtang Pass, stopping at a few spots on the way. Not bad pot luck eh! About half an hour in we stopped at a shack by the road where they were renting ski suits. Typical India - they were about thirty years out of fashion - proper 80's all-in-one brightly colored jobs - I'm fairly sure they bought a job lot of old gear from an American resort. At this point I started chatting with a group of young Indians who were also on the tour, who told me the reason for the clothing was that there was skiing at the top of the mountain and we could all have a go. Definately not something I expected to be doing in India!
Well won't you just look at all those curves - foreground and distance
It turned out the scary bit wasn't to be the skiing, but the getting there. The road climbed from an altitude of about 2000m in Manali up to just under 4000m at the top of Rohtang Pass, and did this via a narrow snaking road that turned back on itself time and time again to climb the face of the mountain. The road was pretty narrow and poorly surfaced, sometimes just turning to dirt track where the surface had washed away or been taken by landslides, and had no barriers despite the regular sheer drops beside. Not necessarily a problem if you take it steady but our driver did no such thing, flying into blind corners too way too fast and a couple of times overtaking other cars and buses. I don't mind admitting I was terrified. I've never in my life told a bus driver what to do, but I couldn't help but tell him twice to slow down, and at one point without even thinking shouted 'please don't' when he started to overtake. Now I've done the odd bit of extreme sport before, and only a skydive compares to the fear I felt going up this road. I was pretty delighted when we got to the top.
I wasn't expecting much from the skiing which was just, as well as it was nothing more than a lashed up bit of fun. There was no hire shop, no selecting the right size equipment, no setting up, nor qualified instructors. Instead, there was a couple of guys in trainers who gave you the only set of boots, skis and poles they had, and then held on to the elbows of people to keep them upright as they attempted to ski for the first time. It was hilarious to watch. Politely denying their help, I had a couple of runs down the only slope, which was rather icey and gentle, and with no ski lifts had to walk back up. Typical India once again, they'd managed to turn even a beautiful snowy mountaintop into a muddy, rubbish strewn mess.
Top of Rohtang Pass, 3978m
Check out the gear!
The drive down was a little less rushed though not exactly relaxing, and we stopped on the way at a frozen waterfall and then for a couple of people to do some paragliding. Needless to say I was pretty pleased when I got back to the hotel in once piece that night!
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