A Thank You Letter To India

PHOTO ALBUM - Agra, Khajuraho, Varanasi

Built over 17 years the 1600’s as a mausoleum for Shah Jahan’s favorite wife after she died giving birth to their 14^th child, the Taj Majal is a strikingly beautiful building that pretty much everyone in the world knows and has viewed in pictures.  Of course, we knew our India experience would not be complete without a visit, but were very surprised how well worth the visit in person to the Taj Mahal would be.  We arrived for sunrise and wandered the peaceful grounds taking photographs and viewing the spectacular white marble building with intricate detailed carvings and artwork up close.  Another tour during our one day in Agra was to visit the Agra Fort which was built by the Moguls in the 1500’s.  I’d say that it was almost equally impressive.  The pictures speak for themselves.

Embarrassingly we couldn’t resist the temptation to make a stop in Khajuraho in the Indian state of Madya Pradesh to check out a group of Hindu temples with Kama Sutra carvings that date back in the 10^th and 11^th centuries.  These temples are all immaculately carved with figurines, many in very – some of which I really mean “very” – erotic poses.  These temples were immaculately preserved and the detail of carvings was probably the best we have seen yet.  And for the record, I am not just saying that because they were erotic sculptures.  Yes, just like the magazines and videos of today, the women were all very busty and perky with the perfect curves, the men very well-endowed, and there was quite the variety of scenes and orgys with a multitude of interesting positions.  But we look past all that and appreciate the details and fine artistic nature of the temples and their historical significance.  Who am I kidding…it was fun looking at the ancient porn.  One detail we found interesting and humorous was that the most erotic scenes even had carved figurines of others nearby with their hands covering their eyes so as not to see the scandalous action going on right next to them.   In this case the pictures speak for themselves too…but some actually are so erotic that we’re keeping our photo album rated “R” and only publishing a few select poses.  If you are the type who is interested in viewing photographs of more of what the Kama Sutra carvings had to offer, just ask when we return home and we’ll show you the rated “X” stuff…including the one with a man and his horse.

Our final quick stop was to Varanasi, one of the holiest cities in India and located in the state of Uttar Pradesh.   Hindu pilgrims come to the ghats along the Ganges river to wash away their sins and there are ghats along the side of the river where cremation ceremonies for dead bodies take place in public.  Our visit was short.  We arrived late morning off an overnight train from Khajuraho and needed to leave early the next morning to start our two-day train-bus-border crossing-long-bone-jarring bus journey to Kathmandu.  So our main activity was to take a boat ride down the river near sunset to see the ghats, the city, and do some people watching from the water.  The cremation ceremonies were interesting.  There was one fire burning and one body being prepped.  Let’s just say that it didn’t smell like a normal campfire.      

That’s it for India.  We have moved on to Nepal and are looking forward to some incredible trekking and finally an escape from the lowland heat into the cool, dry, high mountain air of the Himalayas for most of our final two months on this trip before we return to the states.

The following is a thank-you letter to the country of India:   

Dear India –

Thank you very much for having us.  You are a unique, challenging, somewhat frustrating, and at times, uncomfortable adventure.  We are both fascinated with your country:  your people -  who are both friendly but who also at times can be evil, your beautiful geography, and colorful history.  It is amazing to me how over one billion people from a huge range of social classes, ethnic backgrounds, and educations can all live together in what on the surface appears to be utter chaos, but somehow works anyway.  We have a few minor recommendations as follows:

-          Foreign tourists are not walking ATM’s full of money, school pens, or chocolate.  Please teach your children that because right now most of them are really annoying.

-          You might want to do something about your litter problem.  Your country looks like a giant landfill.  The state of Texas was fairly successful with their “Don’t Mess With Texas” campaign.  From our observations feeding off your national pride, a “Don’t Mess With Hindustan!” campaign might be a good start cleaning up the place.

-          Your vendors and shop owners might want to adapt a less aggressive sales technique.  They were the worst we experienced in Asia.  We don’t enjoy that heavy pressure to buy and did less shopping and bought fewer souvenirs than we might otherwise have because of it.

-          Please fire whoever is in charge of maintaining the computer systems for train reservations.  They don’t work most of the time.  There was not one train ticket booking that was not a headache where we did not receive a message such as “System Behaving Badly.  Try again later.”  The silliest headache was the online kiosks at the Delhi train station to check booking status.  After painfully entering all the information on a touch screen that barely worked, it wouldn’t let us hit the enter button.  Not just one, but all three kiosks had the same problem with the software.  There were lines of people beating their heads against the wall because of this and no one doing anything about it.  Certainly your IT gurus (who we in western countries had actually been concerned about taking our IT jobs overseas) can do better than that.

-          The Indian head-bobble is endearing and we love it.  Please keep that one as is.

-          Indian men’s infatuation with blond-haired women is understandable.  Blond hair can be beautiful and it is not in the Indian gene pool.  However, you’re going to have to figure out how to stop the weird staring if you’re ever going to get a blond-haired woman to feel comfortable around you.

-          When you choose to install a western-style toilet, please post some signs like we saw in Vietnam and Indonesia instructing people how to use it properly.  The steamy turd on the floor right in front of the toilet is gross.

That’s it and thanks again for the experience.  While, for us, your hassles were not always worth the rewards, we will have some great memories  and enjoyed our visit.

Sincerely,

Brian and Elise

Cow Attacks and Camel Treks

PHOTO ALBUM - Manali, New Delhi, Jaisalmer

As part of our plan for taking a break from the India monsoon heat, we spent a week in Manali, a pleasant tourist town in the Kullu valley in the “foothills” of the Himalayas.  At 2000m elevation, we enjoyed comfortable days and cool nights, which was perfect for hikes during the day, reading on the porch of our guesthouse with fine views, and a good night’s sleep afterwards. We hiked almost every day we were there, but sometimes never got to our destination, the elusive Solang Nullah. Supposedly this ski resort town (yes, you can actually snow-ski in India) is 11 km from Old Manali, an easy 2 hour walk according to the guide book.  However, in three separate attempts to walk there, we either ended up on trails to village houses, cow trails to the meadows for grazing, or in our final and most successful attempt, in some other nice village two hours walk from Manali.  We blame our inability to find our destination to a lack of maps, a complete absence of signs on the tangled network of foot and cattle trails, and because asking someone is only dependable until you hit the next crossroads (or in the case of one group of women, not dependable at all since they all motioned in multiple directions).  Nevertheless, we enjoyed the scenery and exercise. The most interesting thing that happened in our week in Manali was the cow incident on the trail from Vashisht, a village on the other side of the river from Old Manali.  We were walking along and came across a woman herding her goat and cow along the narrow path. To give the livestock some room I moved over to my right, which unfortunately, was the side of a six foot drop off beside the path. The cow, with a maliciousness I never knew a cow was capable of, proceeded to use his head and horns to push me off the side.  It was definitely intentional; he did the same thing to Brian before me, except Brian was smart enough to have moved toward the wall-side of the trail. Luckily, my backpack strap got caught on a tree branch keeping me hanging upright and from falling farther down the hill, and all I suffered was a scraped up elbow. However, I haven’t been able to look at a cow without suspicion since – and there are many in the narrow alleyways, streets, and trails in India.



Our next destination was Jaisalmer in western Rajasthan. This involved a day in Delhi between the bus from Manali and train to Jaisalmer, and unfortunately, Delhi was just as hot and muggy as it was the first time we were there.  We spent part of the morning at the Jama Masjid, a beautiful 17^th century mosque that holds up to 25,000 people and offers some great views of the city from one of the minarets.  We probably stayed for only an hour or so, mostly because I was suffocating in the heat under all the clothes I was wearing  - I had on an ankle length skirt and loose-fitting ¾ length sleeve top, but they also felt it necessary to give me a robe to wear on top of that, which turned out to be not because I was inappropriately dressed for the mosque, but so they could make an easy 50 rupees off me for the ‘cleaning fee’, which I was told about when I turned in the robe. Seeing as only tourists were given the robes, even though there were actually less conservatively dressed Indian women there, as well, I’m convinced it was a scam. However, I would totally feel like a jerk trying call someone out on it in a mosque…which they probably know and are taking advantage of.

After leaving the mosque, we were desperately looking for an air-conditioned place to get into to cool off, and found that these aren’t too prevalent in Old Delhi. We ended up in a Mc…wait for it….Donald’s.  Although the Maharaja Mac (veg, of course) and McSpicy Paneer were tempting, we settled for a couple ice cream cones to cool us off.  We were able to find a couple other air-conditioned restaurants throughout the day, and only managed to feel a little disgusting by the time we got on the train. Our day in Old Delhi reminded me again of how many people there are in this country - walking down the sidewalks of Old Delhi was almost enough to make a person claustrophobic!

Then it was on to Jaisalmer. I’ve been really excited about this part of the trip because Jaisalmer is a popular place to go on a camel safari. We’d ride camels through the desert during the day, cook dinner over the fire at night, and sleep on the sand dunes under the stars. How romantic does that sound??  And believe me, it started out pretty nice – Brian and I were set up with another American, Zach, and headed out on a jeep for an hour into what really felt like the middle of the desert.  They hooked us up with some turbans for sun protection (Brian can pass for an Arab, now, and we probably could have snuck him over the nearby border of Pakistan), and introduced us to our camels – Rocket for Brian, Tiger for me, and Lelu for Zach. Chewbacca might have been a more appropriate name for Zach’s camel because  that is how he sounded…or Pigpen from Charlie Brown because of the swarms of flies and mosquitoes harvesting in his filth.  Really Lelu just looked old and arthritic, like he could keel over and die any time.  So Brian and I were happy with our camel assignments.  I hopped up on the saddle, and got quite a thrill when the camel got up - they lift their back legs, hang out for a few seconds, then lift their front legs. Getting down is the opposite and the camels just seem to fold right up on the ground so you can easily step right off.  It’s that few seconds between when they’re up on back legs and down on the front legs that’s a bit freaky, because you’re off the ground at a funky angle looking down…it took me a few times to get used to it, and I still always had to brace myself before getting up and down each time.

We set out into the desert and after about an hour took a break when we reached a village. At this point, the excitement of camel riding was beginning to wear off,  as my inner thighs were on fire. We got off the camels and hobbled, bow-legged, around the village as kids swarmed us asking for school pens, chocolates, and rupees (this was commonplace at every village we went to…some kids even start asking for us to give them our rings, watches, and hats…eventually we opted out of stopping at villages to avoid this). After the village we rode another half hour or so and stopped for lunch (again, we were all more than ready to take a break from the camel).  We set up some blankets in the shade and our camel drivers, Piru and Mr. Dinglee, unloaded the camels and set them out to graze. They brewed us up some excellent chai tea, and cooked up a delicious lunch of spicy vegetable curry and thick chapattis. We took a long rest so we wouldn’t ride in the heat of the day, and set out around 4 pm for another hour and half of riding (which is about the most camel riding I could take at one time).  We arrived in the dunes of the Thar Desert, the “real desert”, according to our drivers, which is where we were going to camp for the night. Lo and behold, about three minutes after we arrived, a man appears out of nowhere with a bag of ice-cold sodas and beer for sale.  After drinking hot water (“ice-hot” water as our guide Piru says) for most of the day, this was a most welcome site…our camel drivers said that we were quite lucky he came by, but we were pretty sure a cell-phone call was made in advance. Yes, there was unlimited cell phone reception in the desert. We’ve observed everywhere we’ve been in Asia that the cell phone coverage is everywhere, from the poorest villages to up in the mountains, unlike back home where calls are dropped routinely.

Contrary to our expectations, the desert is not immune to the monsoon. We heard from locals that Jaisalmer had more rain this year than it had seen in the last four years, and the amount of green scrub scattered through the desert and humidity in the air certainly reflected that. In fact, we even got to experience a desert rain squall a little our first night. Right after dinner, it started sprinkling, then sprinkling a little harder…it only lasted 15-20 minutes, but it was enough to get us damp, get our sleeping blankets wet, and bring out the dreaded mosquitoes. It ended up being the worst night of sleep that both of us have had on this trip. Imagine laying on wet blankets in humid, breezeless air, with mosquitoes buzzing in your ear all night long. By the time the sun came up, we barely noticed the nice sunrise and were all lamenting that we should have opted for the 2 day, 1 night safari instead of the 3 day, 2 night safari.  It was what it was, though, so we just laughed it off, hoped for better weather for day two, and started our day with a hearty breakfast of chai, porridge, toast, papaya, and eggs that had been sitting in the sun the entire first day (coincidentally, Brian and I have since experienced our first “Delhi-belly” issues since we’ve been in India). Day two was similar to day one; we rode on camels to Piru’s village and had lunch at his house. We met his sisters, who kindly brought us some fresh goat milk for the chai tea (Piru had been using powdered milk).  Although it made for some really delicious chai, we think it may have contributed to the aforementioned stomach issues.  We had one awkward moment where his sister asked to see my wedding band that I bought in Thailand when we first arrived. I took it off to let her see it, not expecting that the next thing she would say was “Me?”, indicating I would give it to her. It’s a very cheap ring, but it is my wedding band, so I was fumbling through trying to explain through Piru why I didn’t want to give it away. She understood and it was fine, but then later there were village kids actually trying to pull the ring off of my finger, making me wonder when it became acceptable in India to ask for (or demand) that tourists give away their possessions?

The second night of sleep was better than the first, although I think it was only because we were more prepared for the mosquitoes and we were so tired from lack of sleep the previous night.  Brian “invented” the technique of tying the turban around his eyes and ears to act as a mosquito net which, according to him, was a brilliant act of ingenuity of using the limited resources we had out in the desert.  After waking to another beautiful sunrise, day three was a short day –after breakfast (which included the eggs that have now been well above room temperature for 2 days now), we had about 2 hours of riding, lunch, then a jeep would take us back to Jaisalmer.  We hadn’t seen any other tourists at our first camp site, but the second night there were quite a few other safaris camping in the same area, although everyone was spread out enough we still felt pretty isolated.  However, all the safaris were headed toward the same lunch area and jeep pick-up point, and Piru and Mr. Dengly, being the great camel drivers they were, were determined to get us there the earliest so we’d have our pick of the few shady spots.  This involved a lot of running on the camels, resulting in further butt-soreness from the constant bounce-bounce-bounce on the saddle.  We did get what looked like the best lunch spot, though, so I can’t complain too much.  The arrival of the jeep after lunch was a welcome site – it meant we were out of the sun, no longer smelling camel farts, and quickly to a much needed shower.

So camel trekking was not quite as great as I had built it up to be in my mind, but without a doubt it’s an experience I will always remember.  I have a feeling that it would’ve been much more comfortable in about a month from now, as India starts entering its fall/winter season with the desert drier and cooler.  I would definitely recommend to anyone if you get an opportunity to ride a camel, try it out – just maybe don’t do it for three days in September in India after the wettest monsoon in four years.

There’s more to Jaisalmer than camel trekking; we also were able to spend time in its impressive and beautiful fort. Originally built in 1156, the sandstone walls now house temples, a palace, and a variety of restaurants, hotels, and shops. People even still live within the fort today.  It has a labyrinth of streets that usually lead to a viewpoint of Jaisalmer from high on the fort walls, but it’s small enough that you can’t really get lost. We enjoyed touring around the fort in the days before and after our trek.

We are now on our final stretch in India, and it’s going to be a busy one. We’re hitting the Taj Mahal, Khajuraho, and Varanasi in our final week before crossing the border to Nepal. We should see some incredible sites in this last week, but I have a feeling that between the heat, the touts, and the children demanding rupees for pictures (all of which we’ve been fairly warned about and are supposedly the worst in India at these sites), we’ll be quite ready to cross that border. 

Hindustan Zindabad!! (Long Live India!)

PHOTO ALBUM - Udaipur, Amritsar, McLoed Ganj

Udaipur is a very nice romantic city with castles and temples and a picturesque lake that was also the setting for the movie James Bond Octopussy.   Unfortunately, our time spent in Udaipur was mostly in bed sick.  It was not the digestive/stomach sickness that we expected we would get in India but rather a bad cold and fever (knock-on-wood…but, our stomachs seem to be finely tuned to the food in this part of the world by now so we haven’t had to put up with the “Delhi-belly”).  Elise fared pretty well and remained functional enough that she still claims she hasn’t truly been sick on this trip, but I was in bed with a fever and developed a brutal cough.  Though we spent way too much time in our hotel room sick, we did get to enjoy some meals from the rooftop restaurants with nice views of the surrounding area, attended a festival celebrating Krishna’s  - the Hindu god’s - birthday, and an Indian cooking class.  We are now armed with some good recipes to try at home, most importantly Masala Tea, various types of chapati and naan, and any type of curry dish we desire.

Our next stop as we made our way north was Amritsar in the state of Punjab.  This time our overnight train from Udaipur was in the much more pleasant 3AC class so we had an ok night of sleep.    After the overnight train we had to spend half a day on a layover in the suffocating heat of New Delhi and then catch an afternoon train to Amritsar.  While there would be some interesting sites there, we don’t have plans to spend much time in Delhi. This time of year, the lowland of India has almost been unbearable.  The heat and humidity is like nothing else I have ever felt even growing up in the heat and humidity of Texas.  Just standing in it results in our clothes clinging to our bodies while we drip in sweat, breathing what feels more like dirty steam than air.  Add trying to get over a cold and the chaos and crowds of India and we’ve had a few moments where we’re wondering what in the world we are even doing here.  I pretty much lost my temper when we had to wait for over an hour in the stagnant humid morning to submit our bags at the bag-check counter at the Delhi train station because the workers with hunt-and-peck typing skills were required to input everyone’s name and address into a computer to print out a computer receipt (it is completely unnecessary to computerize any of this in my opinion, especially by people who can’t type).  They made everyone wait in line while six people stared at a computer and then had the nerve to close the place for their morning half-hour tea break and make the long line wait longer.  That was one of those “what are we doing in this hell-hole” moments…     

Amritsar was not much better in the weather and chaos factor, but it has a very nice Sikh temple –The Golden Temple – which, as the Sikh’s holiest site, attracts tens of thousands of pilgrims a day.  Punjab state is primarily a Sikh state, which is a religion with roots in this part of India.  Our visit to the Golden Temple also included attending the community lunch.  Everyone is invited to eat and a dahl, chapati, and rice pudding lunch is offered for free (donation appreciated).  What was impressive about the lunch is that they apparently feed up to 60,000 people per day.  The idea is that people from all walks of life and religion are welcomed to sit on the floor and share a free meal together.  We found ourselves in a waiting area and then herded like cattle (a common feeling in India) into a large room to sit in neat rows on the floor.  Then volunteers came by and filled our plates.  Seconds and thirds were available until everyone had enough.  When we were finished, we were to take our plates out of the room and hand them to a massive assembly line of dishwashers.  As soon as the eating room cleared, workers would come by and squeegee up the floors and send the next mass of people in the waiting queue into the room to eat.    When we handed our plates to the dishwashers we could also see the massive vats of dahl being cooked, and chapati-making assembly lines.  It was quite a process.  I am amazed by how in India some things are completely inefficient and unnecessarily complicated (visa process, online train reservations, the Delhi bag-check, for example), and others – especially relating to spiritual things like the Golden Temple lunch – can be amazingly organized and efficient.  The Golden Temple was beautiful and it was fascinating to see those bathing in the holy waters, and how excited everyone is about this holy site and the fact that we also are visiting it.            

Visiting Amritsar also gave us a chance to make a personal visit to check in on the current India-Pakistan relations at a border closing ceremony.  India and Pakistan – who have nuclear weapons pointed at each other and have been fighting over the border-disputed areas in Kashmir  – have a land border crossing about 30km from Amritsar.  The draw to this border is a daily border-closing ceremony where Indians and Pakistanis gather on their respective sides of the border and participate in a comical display of national bravado in a gate-closing and flag lowering ceremony. 

The thought had previously crossed my mind that being in India is somewhat like being back in high-school (i.e. unnecessary pushing and shoving, worrying more than normal about things getting stolen from you)  and this border ceremony added to that analogy.  It was exactly like attending high-school pep rally where the students gather in the gym and  are pumped up for the next football game against their arch-rival.  After being humiliatingly herded like cattle through the security checks, we scurried to our seats in the VIP section for foreign tourists just in time for the show.  Thank God for the VIP section because there were so many Indians attending that the grandstands were overflowing.  Thousands of Indians and a handful of tourists turned up for the event to wave flags and cheer, "Hindustan Zindabad!" with a big show of national pride to the Pakistanis doing the same thing on the other side of the border.  Silly costumes are worn by the military border guards and there was even a tall, good-looking guy in a white jumpsuit (embroidered with Indian flag and B.S.F. which stands for Border Security Force) whose job it was to pump up the crowd to loud energizing music.  The only thing missing were the cheerleaders (Indian and Pakistan aren’t quite that liberal with their females yet – though Pakistani cheerleaders in head-scarves, and Indian ones in their saris would have been awesome).  The border guards in silly costumes do a macho show of marching, stomping, and kicking, their kicks so high that they basically kick themselves in the head.  There is a long drawn out flag-lowering ceremony where both the Indian and Pakistani flag are lowered at the same time with border guards from both countries pumping up their chests and having staring contests.  At the end, the captains of both sides shake hands and the gates to the border are slammed shut and the border is closed for the night.  It was hilarious and incredibly entertaining!

So, we successfully travelled the Indian subcontinent almost all the way from south to north by train in under two weeks which is quite a feat.  We were warned beforehand about India being a one-of-a-kind and “in-your-face” travel experience and now know exactly what that means.  Travelling the rest of southeast Asia is simple and super-comfortable compared to India.  Though we have definitely had our moments and struggled to get through an illness, and India is definitely a place that will challenge a foreign traveler, we are still enjoying it.  We just needed to get out of the heat so our next stop was in the Himalayan foothills – Dharamsala and McLoed Ganj:  home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile.

Our timing could not have been more perfect.  The Dalai Lama, was scheduled to give three days worth of teachings at the Tsuglagkhang Temple Complex.  Amazingly, attending the teachings was basically free (10 rupies, or 13 cents, and two passport photos was the cost of a security pass).  Although the Dalai Lama speaks fairly good English, his teachings are in Tibetan.  But with an FM radio, we had direct English translation.  We attended only one 2-hour session and sat on the floor with many monks and pilgrims from all over the world to hear the talk in a very intimate setting.  Though we had only a partial peek-a-boo view from our seat of the Dalai Lama (about 20 meters away), we did get to see him very up close while entering the temple with his entourage only a few meters from where we were sitting.  The atmosphere was very energized and, though we personally are not very educated in the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, we could tell we lucked out and got to experience something special.  This was the equivalent to a Catholic attending a teaching in an intimate setting by the Pope.  The gist of the particular teaching that we attended was that we need to end corruption in the world, focus more to achieve good heart and mind – less on achieving material things, and help and build the wealth of those less fortunate than us.  I will admit that I did find my mind wandering as the teaching went into detail on a particular Buddhist text, much like I find my mind wandering during a Christian church sermon when we start analyzing Bible verses.  Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama is a very friendly guy who displays an air of wisdom and promotes peaceful resolution to tough issues in the world.  He has a great sense of humor and a deep jovial laugh that reminds me of a Tibetan version of James Earl Jones.  He made several jokes during the teaching that got everyone who could understand Tibetan to laugh very hard.  We’d find ourselves anxiously waiting for the English translation to come through the radio only to find the translator guy didn’t translate the punch-line and left us hanging.  Oh well.  But it was very entertaining for us to hear His Holiness, the 14^th Dalai Lama, chuckle at himself as he cracked himself up at his own jokes.

With it being the home of the Dalai Lama, McLoed Ganj attracts an interesting variety of people.  Monks and pilgrims from all over the world come to study Buddhist philosophy and learn from the Dalai Lama. There are many volunteers teaching Tibetan exiles English, as well.  It seems every Western tourist who wasn’t there to teach English has come to study Buddhism or take meditation or yoga classes. To our amusement, most western travelers who were present, in my opinion, seemed to be the hippy/space-cadet type who outwardly revered the Dalai Lama maybe a little too much.  It was nice to spend some time at the Tibetan Museum and watching a documentary that helped us understand a little better the history and tension between Tibet and China.  It is a tough political issue, and while a Tibet independent from China is not likely ever going to happen at this point in time, I think we understand the history a and sensitive issues a little better now.  

After the crazy trans-subcontinent journey, it was nice to spend a while relaxing in McLoed Ganj.  The weather this time of year is very rainy – heavy rain showers once a day – and the air is still heavily damp because of the monsoon.  But the temperature is pleasant and it reminds us of the rainy spring in the Pacific Northwest.  We hiked around the countryside, read a lot, enjoyed good Tibetan and Indian food, and took another cooking course for Tibetan momos.  We are very excited about the chocolate momos we learned to cook.  They are technically not Tibetan as chocolate is not a common delicacy in Asia, but are fantastic. 

We have since moved farther into the mountains to the outdoor and ski resort town of Manali for some more outdoor activities and enjoying the cool mountain air.