19th of January

Mark and I decided that the mountains around Shimla were too far away to easily climb. Mainly because to get to them we would have to take a bus or a taxi, and after Mark ended several hundred kilometres from his destination because a taxi driver didn’t realise that that there were three towns within several hundred kilometres of each other we were going via foot. So we decided to go to a town called Manali.

Unfortunately the only way to Manali is taxi or bus thus violating the above paragraph. There are several classes of bus in India, starting from the public bus then semi deluxe, deluxe and finally Volvo (regardless of actuall manufacturer). The last would equate to coach in Australia, the first being some kind of hell spawned ride that is horrifying to be stuck on. We could only get a so called deluxe bus to Manali as the Volvo’s run from Delhi. When our bus arrived it was clear that it was only deluxe in comparison to the public busses. The major advantage was another few inches of leg room (still insufficient for me) and the seats in sets of two rather than 3 and 2 as in a public bus. The ride to Manali was 10 hours long and I assure you it sure felt like 10 hous.

The roads in India as I have previously mentioned are pretty abysmal (that is straight from the abyss) and our bus driver seemed determined for us to be aware of how hard it is to stay on them as he threw the bus around every corner on the road. Learning from my last trip I had bought some ondancetron, which is a very potent anti-nauseant. I took my dose and started to feel at least some relief from the horrendous cornering, unfortunately many of the Indians on the bus were not similarly medicated and demonstrated this by vomiting spectacularly from the window down the side of the bus. I provided several of the bus occupants with said drug to which there was rapid relief thus gaining myself an orange. I guess you could call it my first paid medical work.

Arriving in Manali night we looked at a few hotels and crashed in the first that we found had two beds in the bedroom, since it is low season we never have any problems finding accommodation.