Goodbye McLeod Ganj, Hello Manali

After almost three weeks in McLeod Ganj, it was time to say goodbye. Our last week was fun, we met some friends from Ireland and had some late nights drinking with Yonten. Alex and Blonit had planned to leave McLeod on Monday, November 12th but every day would come and go and they were still here, and every night we were celebrating their next day departure. We didn’t believe they would ever leave until we actually saw them to their car and it pulled away almost a week later.

We went to the TCV on Saturday to bring the kids their winter coats and sneakers. Everything we picked out fit with the exception of one pair of shoes which can be exchanged. They all seemed really happy.

Our last day, we went for breakfast to Oogo’s one last time. We’re going to miss the food there!! It was sad to say goodbye to Yonten and we tried to convince him to come to Manali with us. He may join us in a few days. Yonten gave us two Tibetan shawls and each a white scarf (it is traditional for Tibetan’s to give white scarves for good luck) and saw us to our car. To our surprise we had the same driver as we had on the way to Dharamsala, the one we had the accident with. The drive to Manali was 9 hours with the road winding around mountains. It was a nauseating ride, the road was at times only big enough for one car and winding around shear cliffs, added to it were the fumes from the cars and Vinot, our driver, constantly spitting out the window. At one point, we had to maneuver around over 100 goats and sheep in the road. I’m thankful we decided not to take the bus…
Our guest house is nice, and the views from the balcony are amazing. We are staying in a small town called Vashisht, just outside of Manali, with hot springs and treks nearby. Today we had a relaxing day but tomorrow morning we plan on going to the communal baths and then taking a hike up to a waterfall nearby. The next day we plan on taking a longer, 13 km trek in the mountains. This town is really quaint and since it is off-season, there aren’t many travelers. Manali, (alt. 1,950 m or 6,398 ft) is in the Beas River valley and is an important hill station in the Himalayan mountains of Himachal Pradesh, India. It's in a valley which is surrounded by mountain peaks of 20,000 feet. The population in Manali is less than 30,000.