Keylong - I : Delhi and Manali

The sky was a bit clouded on 24th evening. I went up to take some photographs of the first clouds that appeared above HRI. At the same time I was praying that it should not rain, because we were starting our great journey to Keylong after an early dinner. My prayers were heard, though cloudy, it didn't rain. We started by 8pm bus from here.

Train left Allahabad station at sharp 9:30pm. The journey was quite comfortable, reached Delhi at 7:30am. Took a prepaid auto to Nangalam Anandettan's (my cousin staying in Patparganj Society) house. In my previous trip, they had charged Rs. 60, while this time, they charged Rs. 70, saying that I have more luggage!!! I didn't have a clear cut idea about the route, but thought I'll be able to manage. But towards the end, I had to call up Anandettan and confirm the route. He came down and received us at the gate. We freshened up, had breakfast and then left decided to do some shopping. Anandettan took us to Palika Bazar which is an underground shopping complex at Connaught place in Delhi. Went around there for a while, we purchased some dress items and Anandettan bought some computer games CDs for Abhay (his son). After the shopping we went out and picked up Savithrioppol (another cousin of mine) from her office and went back to Anandettan's house. For lunch, there were many people at Anandettan's house, Savithri ichamma, Jayan, Jayanthi, Mohanettan, Prasannoppol, Lekha and Rajiv (I hope the name is correct). By around 6:30pm, we left Anandettan's house and went directly to the ISBT (Inter State Bus Terminal) to catch bus to Manali.

On the way from Anandettan's house to ISBT, we traveled by the Delhi Metro. It is a nice experience. It is really similar to the Metros in European cities. Fully air-conditioned inside, welcomes you once you enter, announces well advance the next station details and also all these things come in a screen inside the train (probably for the deaf). Anyway, it was a nice experience.

In general, one can get tickets in the morning for the Volvo bus from Delhi to Manali which starts in the evening. But since it's the peak of summer in this part of the country, people were trying to escape the heat and all the seats for the Volvo were booked well in advance. We had called up Anandettan on 23rd itself and asked him to book seats for us in a 'Delux' bus. We were (un)fortunate to get two seats, which happened to be in the LAST row. I wonder in what way the bus is Delux, except probably for a 20degrees push-back for the seat. We had nice dinner (Punjabi thali) and the journey started at 8:30pm. When it stopped for the first tea break, I saw the tyre of the bus and thought how is it going to reach till Manali with this one. The journey didn't last long like that. The tyre got punctured and a part of it came out broken!!! Fortunately they found a workshop nearby and got it repaired in just ONE HOUR! After sometime it started raining and that again put some delay in the journey (since the bus can't go in high speed). After a really humpy-bumpy journey, we reached Manali at 1:30pm. First thing we did was to book our return journey tickets. We got tickets for the Volvo bus which leaves at 4pm from Manali. We also booked the tickets for our journey to Keylong. The autos and taxis were on strike due to some local problem. We randomly picked one guy from a set of guys approched us offering places to stay. This guy took us to a reasonable place. It was a bit more expensive that I would have liked, but this was the peak of the season, we both were tired and hungry and hence decided not to go hunting cheaper rooms. This was Hotel Tibet. We immediately washed ourselves and left the hotel to have lunch and see places in Manali.

The weather was quite pleasant there (obviously). We first went to the Hadimba Temple. It is up a hill, about 1.5kms away from the main market. After a while the path goes inside the pine trees, which was quite refreshing. This is an ancient temple (for more information: http://www.kullumanali.com/hadimbatemple.htm) of Hadimba, a wife of Bhima, sister of Hadimb. It really looks like the temple of a 'Rakshasi', in the sense that the outer region has some horns and skulls as decorations!!! From here, we went back to the Tibetan monastery. It is a small beautiful monastery, located right at the heart of the city. After hanging around there for a while, we went to the 'Van Vihar', a preserved forest area with full of pine trees. There were lot of crowd at the entrance and nearby area. We went further inside and selected a cool place to take some rest. There was the Beas river flowing nearby. We sat there watching the river flow. The temperature was around 20s with a light breeze, a difference of more than 20 degrees from Delhi/Allahabd. We were really enjoying the pleasant weather there. After resting in the forest for a while, we moved to the banks of river Beas.

There were lot of crowd doing lot of activities. Some putting on some typical tribe dresses and taking photographs. You can rent these dresses. They will not only rent you, but will help you in wearing and taking photographs. Of course, their rent will cover all these expenses (and more...) :) There was another 'adventure' activity going on. There is a rope tied across the river. You can tie yourself into the rope and cross the river hanging vertically. I couldn't really see any 'adventure' in it and hence didn't do it. Just watched people doing it. We spent some time there and then returned to the city. We just walked through many busy streets, watching everything around. By around 8:30pm, we had dinner and then returned to the hotel. We were quite tired after 17hrs of 'Delux' bus journey. So, we decided to sleep early. We had to wake up early the next day as our bus to Keylong was at 5am in the morning.

26-07-2005: We got up at 4am, freshened up and checked out. We reached the bus stand at 4:45am. We were stunt by what we saw there. WHAT WAS IT??? In the next part..................... :)