A Travel Update and What's Next -- Part I
By Hannu Berghall

Location: Delhi, Manali, Pakistan
Date: July 22, 2000

Last time I wrote a mass-email I was in Delhi. Well, I'll take it from there...

I spent a total of 10 days in monsoon-hot Delhi, with temperatures reaching 45 degrees in the afternoons. Luckily it rained a few times and that cooled things down momentarilly, but as soon as the sun came out from behind the clouds again it was all the same oven. I was waiting for a friends arrival from Sri Lanka, and as soon as she had landed we would set of for the mountains. Finally the days had passed, She got herself a Pakistani visa as fast as possible and we could leave. Our last evening in Delhi we sat on the rooftop restaurant of our hotel, comforting a middleaged Swedish woman who came talking to us. She had arrived in Delhi that very day, this time travelling alone for the first time after her divorce, and she wanted to go back home already tomorrow! She just needed to hear that she should give the country a few days before changing her return flight, and after a few hours she thanked us for our support, happy that she was going to Agra and Taj Mahal the next day...

We slept in the first morning due to an alarmclock that never rang, and so we missed out train up to Shimla. Too bad, it would apparently have been a windling trip on narrow-gauge line. Instead, we got tickets for an overnight bus for that same day's evening, going all the way from Delhi to Manali, which would have been our second destination after former british hillstation Shimla. We relaxed during the day, waited in the hotels reception for the last 45 minutes, and wondered how the punkgirl changing money there was received by the Indians she met: she was dressed in a short tanktop reveiling her belly, and post-hippie trousers with a very low waist. To add to that she had a messy dreadlock/punk hairstyle with several colours, and was peirced on several places of her body and head. Why did she look like that when going abroad? I thought about myself and how I used to dismiss people reacting on my own punk-outlook ten years ago, and how I used to demand respect for me as a person - not for how I choosed to look like, and then I started to wonder wether I am getting old, now disliking this girls looks..? Hmm, but surely it is best to dress in an appropriate way when you visit other countries...

Finally it was time for departure. It took the bus 2 hours to actually leave Delhi proper, driving around picking up more and more passengers, and the conductor for some reason refused to put on the minifans on board. Utter confusion and frustration, but eventually we did leave the capital...

It was a long 17 hour trip to Manali, which is on 2200 meters, so the temperature there was just perfect. There is Manali, old Manali and the village Vashisht which is 4 km north of Manali proper, and we choose to stay in the latter - away from the Indian honeymooners who seem to prefer the noisy and rather polluted (well, comparatively - compared to Delhi not, but being a small village in the mountains it is) Manali proper, with its hustle and bustle, and also away from the young backpackers (mainly, it seemed like, israeli) backpackers in Old Manali, where they sit in restaurants listening to technomusic, talking to each other and smoking endless joints. Vashisht on the other hand is more geared towards people who like to enjoy the silence and nature, and we had a lovely view from our room. The river Beas, Kullu valley, and on the other side the houses of old Manali...

Yes, marijuana is everywhere in Manali, the area of Kullu valley being the main Indian drugmafia's farmingland. When you walk into town you pass fields full of it. After having checked into the hotel our hotelmanager was quick to inform us that he also could supply us with charras (a sort of handrolled hashish), and/or cannabis. People (well, mainly tourists) smoke it quite openly in the streets, and we even saw a few older local men sharing a pipe while a policeman walked by them... The culture and habits are quite different from Sweden here...

Manali is full of restaurants catering for the western tourists, and so we ate ourselves fat on good food. Although, I managed to burn some of that fat when doing a 5 days paragliding course. Well, every adventuresport has to be tried out. It's rather cheap to do in Manali, less than 100 a "week", as they call the 5 days. So of I went to Solang valley a short busride to the north, with the aim to learn how to fly like a bird...

But in fact you don't learn more than the basics in 5 days: you learn how to get the paraglider from lying on the ground and up in the air, how to steer it in the air, and then you do fly but only from a 50-60 meter high slope, down to a field about 100-150 meters away. The whole flight takes about 30-45 seconds. If you do a 10 day course, you will on your last day make a "proper" flight from a starting point higher up, lasting for maybe 20-40 minutes, circling around in the air like a bird before you land. But as for me, I had no time for that. In the end I made only 3 days of my initial 5, since I realised that I would not learn or do anything more than I already knew or did. Yes, after 2 hours of groundtraining on the first day I took of from the slope - and I flew! It is wonderful, but... I don't know if something is wrong with me; anything adrenalinepumping I have tried out is not VERY fun after a while (Some things are even too scary for me to repeat - i.e. skydiving, of which 21 jumps is enough in my lifetime). I'm probably not ment to be an adrenalinejunkie, at least not in this life...

And the lack of security and peoples attitudes DID irritate me. O.K., my instructor was good: he knew what he was talking and teaching about - but other people there... Indian tourists walk up and down the slope that the paragliders are jumping from (I was far from alone there), they have picnics and play cricket on the field where you are supposed to land, the other "proffessional" paragliders take people for tandemrides and because of that the whole family has to come up the slope to cheer when the brave familymember takes of; thereby blocking or at least making the area more dangerously clustered for other paragliders waiting and wanting to start their flights... Quite a few times I was close to land on top of people walking on the grass where I was supposed to land, and since a paraglider is not a surgeonically precise tool to fly; especially while still being a student; it was often pure luck no one got hurt. But people just laughed and thought it funny that I was landing so close by... Also, the guys doing the tandemjumps want to make as many jumps as possible in a day (400 rupees a jump is good money in India), and so they too ignore the risks that there are. They spread their paragliders out almost on top of each others on the slope, and ruch to rig up and get ready to go, no one really keeping track of who's in turn to jump.

There was indeed a smaller accident happening one day to a 10-12 year old boy, who's father wanted his son to do a tandemjump. The paraglider collapsed (due to a slightly too strong sidewind; my instructor had told me, standing ready, not to take of yet), and the boy and "his" paraglider fell about 10 meters into a creft where the father could not see what the eventual injuries were. Other tandemparagliders ran there and soon assured the father, anxiously looking in that direction from where he and I stood, that the son was O.K. So what does the father do? He sends of his daughter with the next paraglider... She did come down well, but didn't the son's small accident make the father think twice...?

The Kullu valley, in which Manali is situated, is beautiful, and we also made a few trips from Manali itself to other villages in the valley. Naggar with a few small museums; one on local culture and the other on fascinating russian artist Roericht, who came and settled there in the first half of the last century. And the Beas river cuts very beautifully through the whole length of the valley...

After a week it was times to go on again: A 2 day bustrip up to Ladakhi village Leh, on 3505 meters. This road is said to be one of the most beautiful roadtrips in the world.

The bus leaves Manali at 6 am and arrives, hopefully, next day in the evening - if no accidents or breakdowns happen. On this trip we were about 12 westerners, about half of them israelis. Well, you fellow travellers probably know what a reputation israeli backpackers have, and how they indeed often behave rude. The busticket cost 1000 indian rupees (roughly 23 0, and on top of that a man who secured the luggage on the bus rooftop wanted 5 rupees (about 10 US cent). I tried laughing to avoid that by carrying mine and Kathrin's bags to the rooftop myself, but no - everyone had to pay. This did not please the israelis though, of whom one aggressively refused to pay the older man his breadmoney. Kathrin and another german woman tried to calm the young guy down, but he shouted at them too that he "had lived in Bombay 2 years and so knew that everyone in India want's to cheat you" (good argument for being unpolite towards the locals, eh?). He sought refuge amongst his fellow countrymen, all of them grumpy about the extra 5 rupees. I feel sorry for the "good" and "proper" Israeli travellers; guys like these are in a big majority amongst the travellers from that country. 20-22 years old and straight out of the 3 years army, now roaming the world wreaking havock everywhere they go. That in no way justifies bad behaviour though, and is even a bad excuse for it...

The scenery from the buswindow was magnificent, stunning, with ravines, snowcapped mountains, alproads winding their way through passes in the mountains. But although it was a luxurybus, one's body is not ment to sit down for 2 days. The bus made quite frequent stops en route though, and don't ask me why but during some of these I tried to give some better impressions to the raving israeli guy, although me and Kathrin had gotten our fair share of his morning anger. Maybe I tried to be some sort of messias, maybe I thought I could be nice myself and MAYBE he would realise and learn something - I could saw a seed in his mind... But afterwards I don't know what might have gotten through to him. It turned out after a while that he had actually not lived in Bombay 2 years; he had only a few times visited his father there when his father was working there. A few more ridiculous things was said, and I felt it was of no use talking to this guy...

We spent the night at 4700 meters, and Kathrin now shook violently from the AMS-symptoms; Accute Mountai Sickness; that is. The air is thin up there, and every move makes you gasp for oxygen... An Australian woman was really bad, puking and having headache, but myself I had no problems at all. AMS is a strange sickness: you might have had no problems during 20 visits to high altitude, but the next time it hits you - you being superfit or not. There is nothing one can do but to get down to lower altitude and/or relax... Soon your body will get adjusted though, after a few days. None of the israeli guys suffered from this though, and so in group they attacked the tentcamp owner about the high (?) prices for the tents - 100 rupees, about 2,4 per person. Well, they knocked the price down 50 cent each after having surrounded and argued with the campmanager for 15 minutes.

Me myself I couldn't be bothered to make an effort, or to make myself unpopular...

After having settled in our tents, but before dinner (I would eat, Kathrin stayed in the tent shaking in her sleepingbag), the israeli guy I had talked to during the day came up to me and asked a few questions about various things. When I told him Kathrin was sick he wondered if I was angry, and me thinking he ment about what I had seen of the israeli's behaviour, answered truthfully "yeah, I'm sick and tired of israelis always having to argue about peanuts". But it turned out he had wondered if I was angry because Kathrin was sick, and when that issue was sorted out and I had replied "of course not", we had another discussion about the ways of israeli's. His view was that israelis on average spend more money than the everyday backpacker, "for instance israelis always buy mineral water, but I have seen Canadians purify tap water". That and similiar arguments as to why Israelis may behave badly finally made me realise that the guy was beyond saving...

Anyway, The next day on the bus was just as spectacular as the first, although the landscape now became more barren and rugged. Only following along the rivers in the valleys we passed there were grass and trees, the surroundings were all brown and grey stone. People we saw had changed too, from "typical" Indian to Tibetan, both in features and clothes.

Finally we arrived in Leh and found ourselves a guesthouse with good rooms for a modest price. We were to stay a week in Leh, just relaxing and doing daytrips from Leh itself to surrounding villages and Tibetan monasterys. The short summer makes Leh surprisingly warm, even hot, during the day, and shorts and linen can be worn. Although, tibetan monasteries wount let you in wearing that. The people are extremely friendly and you are everywhere met with a smile and a "Yule", which is Ladakhi for "Hello".

Ladakh is part of muslim Indian state Jammu&Kashmir (Actually, is that the name of two states or the combined name of one state - Does anyone of you guys out there know?), but in Ladakh 90% are Buddhist. J&K has recently been promised more autonomi from the central government in Delhi, but this has lead to demonstrations and strikes in Leh, where people fear that if autonomi is granted, then buddhism and buddhists will suffer more than if decissions are made in Delhi, as they are now. During our week there there was a demonstration and strike. For a full day ALL business went down in town - no shops, no restaurants, no taxi's no nothing! Only airplanes landed and took of, and restaurants in hotels catered for their guests, but if you stayed in one without a kitchen... Luckily, everyone warns each other on the previous evening about the strike the following day, so one should not be caught out...

On this day of striking, people walked through town midday, carrying a doll of J&K leader Farook; a doll with a whiskeybottle at the waistbelt - clearly an insult to the muslim stateleader. Later the doll was burnt at the pologround, people cheered, and then everybody peacefully walked home...

Both me and Kathrin got stomachproblems in Leh, and so we went to a local tibetan doctor who gave us some rabbit-shit-like (and taste!) medicine for 5 days. They almost made me puke when I chewed them, and god knows what they contained, but at least I'm rid of the problem now...

A Travel Update and What's Next -- Part II

Read more of Hannu's adventures.