North, Up and Over

Hello all!. Its been an unusually long time since we updated the blog. Apologies. In our defence we have been hot tailing it about the place a fair bit since Nepal. But mainly I've been glued to the TV watching Spain win the Euros. Vamos! But we have let you down and for that we apologise from the bottom of our curries.

So anyway. We flew back to Delhi from Kathmandu bracing ourselves for another Indian slap round the face but actually really rather enjoyed our couple of days in the nations capital. Yes it was noisy, yes it was filthy, yes people tried to scam us every 3 steps we took. One favourite scam involves smearing crap on a tourists shoe, then pretending to have spotted it and offering to clean it up for a small fee. Entrepreneurial and charming in equal measure i think you'll agree. Another favourite is intercepting tourists walking into the train station looking to buy a ticket from the booth upstairs. A man appears in a woolly sweater clicking a pen (this makes him look VERY official) he proceeds to tell you that the ticket booth is not upstairs but across the road. The problem with this scam is that across the road there are about 12 'official tourist ticket booking centres' right next to each other. 'Its the second from left' ...of course it is mate. And that's a regulation Indian Railways woolly v neck sweater you're wearing too.

This was taken from the roof of our hostel in Paharganj...orPahargunj as its known as by the wacky travelling brigade.



Dusk is a magic time of day as the whole city seems to appear on the rooftops. Kids fly kites groups of men smoke beedies and fly pigeons. Its very popular and surprisingly beautiful to watch. Delhi's secret rooftop life.

They also make London heads feel very at home in Delhi...


We are flying out of Delhi in a few weeks and so plan to spend some more time there later.

Our plan was to head directly north into the Himalayan foothills and then into and almost over them taking in Shimla, Manali, Vashisht and eventually Leh.

First stop then was the old British hill station of Shimla where the Raj used to decamp en-masse during the hot summer months. The train up into the foothills is one of the most famous train journeys in the world and was really very beautiful. The narrow gauge railway snakes slowly up into the Himalayas and the views from the toy size train were amazing. It wasn't hard to imagine all the colonials making the same journey into the cool mountain air.


Today Shimla has become THE spot for middle class India to go on holiday. They absolutely love it. Its seen as a classy retreat. For the British tourist however the place now exudes a very surreal ambiance. Everything looks vaguely familiar. The shop fronts are from a small Sussex high street. The buildings look Scottish. There is a church, a post office. But there are monkeys everywhere and bustling bazaars. Its very strange. Kids sit on horses and get led round the main square as if it were on a Victorian seaside holiday. In fact the whole place seems to be a warped version of the great British seaside holiday that's been re-imagined by the Indian middle class in a mountain village...if that makes any sense.



It was interesting and faintly amusing but not really for us so we hopped on a bus heading further north to Vashisht, a small mountain village just outside Manali. The 12 hour journey up was fairly uneventful save for the odd vomiting Indian tourist and the increasingly pungent aroma of marijuana wafting around the bus as we climbed further into the Kullu Valley. Weed was absolutely everywhere you looked, growing at the road side, up the hills, out of mounds of rubbish and it came as no surprise to learn that the Kullu Valley is one of the biggest cannabis growing regions on the planet.

Vashisht was lovely. We found a great place to stay and stay we did...for a week almost. Mainly due to Spain doing so well in the Euros but also because we found a great bunch of people and a great place to stay. We befriended a great bloke from Manchester who happened to be Bez from the Happy Mondays manager, a Scandinavian ex gangster who burnt all his possessions and started a new life as a wandering Holy man and an ex in house producer from Polydor records who gave up a 1000 pound a day job to lead the 'simple life' in India. Holly and I felt a bit bland in comparison.

This was the view from our window...


...and this was one of 5 giant spiders we found in our room in the space of 3 days.



Next up was the motherload. We had been planning on doing the Manali-Leh Highway for a long time and so we were a mixture of nervous and excited the morning we were set to depart. The Manali-Leh highway is the second highest road in the world and certainly one of the most dangerous. Its only open for a few months at this time of year when the snow melts and at its highest point it is 5400 mtrs plus. Altitude sickness due to lack of oxygen is common. Landslides are everywhere, you can spot trucks at the bottom of ravines at almost every turn. But the landscape is absolutely incredible. Its like being on the surface of Mars at times. Virtually no vegetation, huge pillars of sandstone, jagged mountains, skies as big as can be. Its probably the most amazing thing I've ever done. We absolutely loved it. Unfortunately there was a mix up with our Jeep at the beginning and we missed it and so had to hop in a taxi and chase it up the Rohtang pass. Luckily the road had collapsed at the top and so there was a huge traffic jam while it was being repaired after running up the queue a while we found our Jeep. Not the most relaxing way to start the 2 day journey.

Here are some pictures...

Our Jeep


huge, weird sandstone pillars


Its impossible to do the scale justice. everything is MASSIVE.



We were invited into the tent of a nomadic tribe. It was amazing. These people live in the middle of nowhere. Moving every month. The kids, needless to say, were very confused by us.


There was even an 'English Wine Shop' in the middle of nowhere. Presumably for the truck drivers?

It was absolutely shattering but worth it. Leh itself was beautiful. There is a huge Tibetan population in Leh. Its considered more Tibetan than Tibet can be at the moment due to the Chinese occupation and as a result it feels nothing like India. Its clean, quiet, sparse and the architecture is very Tibetan.

We're now in Dharamasala. Home to the Tibetan government in exile and the Dalai Lama himself. Haven't spotted him yet mind you...