Learning the Definition of “Grueling”

Hello from the Himalayas! We have safely arrived in Manali, but not without quite an adventure through the mountain highways of Himachal Pradesh!

After another full day of wandering, we boarded our bus to Manali at 6pm Thursday. Our travel agent (you have to use them to buy any type of traveling tickets here, and there is one or two per corner) told us to meet our bus at the gas station across the street. We packed up and walked over to where, sure enough, about a hundred people were waiting to catch a bus. We hung out there waiting for our bus and watching jam-packed buses leave the gas station, hoping that ours would leave room for seated passengers only! When our bus pulled up we boarded with our backpacks in tow (we were told it was a bad idea to put them under the bus so we pushed our way through the people and hoped there would be room for them somewhere near us). Just getting on the bus was crazy. People were pushing and yelling and the conductor was trying to tell people where to go. Someone was sitting in Tim’s seat and when the conductor asked the person to move they got very upset. Unfortunately that person ended up sitting right behind Tim and was quite a pain the whole trip.

We finally got settled in. We put our bags under our seats or in the aisle like all the Indians were doing so they were within reach the whole trip. Some people had brought their tin milk jugs (sort of similar looking to say, the Stanley Cup only they actually drink out of it) and some brought sacks of rice. All of these goods were crammed alongside luggage and people into the coach-sized bus. Luckily there weren’t any standing passengers on our bus, but we soon figured out that the seats were pretty much all broken. They were basically airplane seats in that they had a little button you could push to lean back slightly, but the button didn’t work so almost all the seats leaned back all the time, and to say the ride was bumpy would be an incredibly understatement. Our seats were in the back of the bus, right before the last row of five passengers, so that meant that the bumpiness was even more intensified. We sat next to a really nice Tibetan family- a mom, a grandma, and a baby all sitting in two bus seats and they were so helpful showing us the ropes of the system. As we started going and we all realized the bumpy ride that was ahead of us, we were laughing hysterically together. The little girl would hold onto the handles on the seats in front of her and basically fly around as though they were the reigns of a horse! And there was another little girl sitting with her family behind the Tibetan family and all of us except the grumpy man behind Tim) were laughing so hard and enjoying the ride…until we realized that the bumpiness wouldn’t stop, it would only get worse as we climbed higher and higher into the mountains for 16 hours!

Before we got on the bus we had been reading a lot about the area we are going to in our guide book. It kept saying that people would arrive to this area in the mountains after a “grueling” bus ride from Delhi. It seemed sort of strange because, I mean I’ve had some wonderfully grueling rides back and forth from Texas and other places in 15-passenger vans with 20 stinky rugby girls and I thought, hey, what could be more grueling then that right?! So we figured it was just one of those things put in guide books for sissy travelers or something, but around 11:30 when we had been moving for about 5 hours and were realizing that not only was sleep nearly impossible, but there was no bathroom on this bus either…we began to realize what the definition of grueling!!

Well…of course I was the first passenger that had to pee so my new Tibetan friend kindly swam through the sea of random luggage in the aisle to the front of the bus to ask if they could pull over for me! She even stood guard for me so I could find a bush! Then we were back at it and all through the night we bumped through the Himalayas.

It was dark and Tim was by the window (completely unable to move his legs with the lady’s broken seat bruising his knees all night) so I couldn’t really see the road that much and when we were in the cities I purposely avoided looking. Sometimes I would here our horn blar and one time when we were backing out of a bathroom break, we definitely ran into another car so I figured I just would listen to my ipod and keep my eyes closed hoping sleep would kick in in some impossible way! But of course, as we got out of the cities the mountains showed up and were simply amazing so I wanted to have a look. Every once and a while I would look over just to realize we were climbing hair pin turns on a one-lane road with no side rails and traffic coming in both directions!!! We would stop every time someone came in the other direction and the two of us would slowly slide past each other so closely that we could hold hands with passengers in the next bus!

It was a wild ride to say the very least! Knowing me, no one will be surprised that I slept through a lot of it! But Tim was constantly flailing around in his rollercoaster seat and didn’t sleep for more than two minutes at any give time! Needless to say, when we pulled into our stop in Manali at 10:30am on Friday, we were exhausted and disgusting! I hadn’t really washed my hair in a few days and a little dreadlock was forming beneath a messy side pony (cute I know!) and Tim was basically a zombie by this point so getting off that bus was truly magical! The fresh mountain air and dramatic Himalayan peaks surrounded us…along with about 30 rickshaw drivers asking to take us places- a quick reminder that we may have left the city but we were still in India!!

We took an offer for a ride to a part of town called Old Manali where we stopped for breakfast at a café before beginning the undertaking of finding a guest house. Finding things here isn’t necessarily the problem, actually. It’s more so just that everywhere we go someone is calling to us saying “You need a hotel, my cousin knows this owner, get you a good deal” or “Going somewhere, I’ll take you.” It’s kind of getting old…one time a man pestered us for a ride for so long that he was eventually saying he’d give us the ride for free!! It is really strange and Tim and I have really played with a bunch of fun ways to say no. One day in Delhi a man asked me something and I just blurted out a random little phrase of gibberish, something like: ladi ladi ladi and walked past and the man repeated it back to me in the same tone I had used! It was really goofy, but the point is, sometimes saying no can be sort of entertaining and sometimes it is so annoying!

Anyway, after breakfast we sought out to find a guest house that was in our guide book but off the beaten path. After about a half mile trek through the woods we emerged to a little house towering over the glacier stream. It had a café and the most beautiful gardens next to a kitchen from the late 1700s! And now I’m sitting writing this from the balcony of our $7 a night “cottage” in the middle of Kullu Valley!! It is really amazing that in one night we can go from the craziness that is the city life in India to the quaint little town in the middle of the most amazing mountains! India is quite a place indeed! And needless to say, with a ride like that ahead of us, I think we will be staying here for a little while!