Hey! Its been 3 months since I've landed in India now. I recently arrived back in Tashijong Tibetan colony to return to teaching. Felix and I have been travelling the northern and coolest state of Himachal Pradesh for the last 4 weeks. It was quite a good trip.

We first left on a Sunday and took a 7 hour bus ride to Manali. This was as usual a fairly normal bus journey on the public system, although a few stop overs and I had my first squatting experience in the more traditional type of toilet. It cost me 3 rupees (34 rupees to the AUD) to make a deposit and they even gave me a nice bucket to fill up and wash the remains. I am more flexible than older times, but its a bit of a challege when you have to bend down as far as possible and make a go at it. Especially when you can't really see where you're aiming.

We arrived in Manali and checked in to our reasonably cheap hotel called mount view. We discovered the only view was of a few other hotels next to ours, but certainly no mountain. However, Manali was quite a beautiful place although it was infested with Indian tourists. We walked up to old manali, which is a lot older, with wooden houses and not so many beggars. Many westerners come here for a marajuana retreat. I didn't get a chance to partake in these lazy festivities, but while we walked up we came across some snake handlers. They were just sitting by the side of the road, and before we knew it, Felix and I had cobras being placed on our heads. I was pretty upset when they tried to charge us 1000 rupees each (the equivalent of a 10 T-shirts) for the opportunity of photos. We got them down to 300 each, which I was proud of, but still quite upset. For some reason, I was pissed off for quite a while after this. I couldn't really help it. Maybe it was travelling tension.

Anyway, we stayed in manali for a few days. I also had to get two extra Rabies shots, because of a dog who bit me back in Tashijong. Its a long story, and it didn't really bite very hard, but lets just say I won't be having any moments of dog affection any more. Its quite hard to resist. This dog always sits outside our room, and the one time I tried to be nice, he was so surprised that someone was touching him, that his natural reaction was to bite. Well, I thought I'd better be safer than sorryer and get some shots. I got the local Tibetan nurse in Manali to jab me. She was very soft and tender. Good at the injections too. Just kidding...

I went to some local yoga classes on the way to Vashisht and tried getting into a bit of shape. The teacher was exactly as you'd expect in India. He dressed in orange and had long hair and a beard. He was quite young for a yogi, and had a very interesting accent. Always added 'i' sounds to start of words like, 'please pull in you i-stomach'. Very friendly.

We went to a couple of the other gappers, Stephanie and Celia's school near Naggar. I brought my mandolin along and taught them the only song I know on it, 'Kookaburra sitting in an old gum tree'. The kids loved it. Afterwards, we sat around, as you do here very easily, and then lots of young girls came and played with us. It was good having a bit of attention from the opposite sex after so much time talking and being around boys or men in Tashijong.

We also caught up with couple of other GAP girls who were teaching a little further away but were finished and travelling. Megan and Scarlett. From Albury and England. Very friendly and good for a laugh, we saw them over the next few days and went to a Peace cafe run by a German dude who promoted music and we watched a jam session with a sitar, guitar and nepalese flute, played by an eccentric English man. He actually guessed I was from Melbourne. Not just Australia, but he could tell my accent was from Melboure. I was astounded and dissapointed that my accent is so strong. Most of the time, if I'm talking to an Indian or European, I put on this hybrid accent which probably is a mix of everything. I'm gettng really used to doing it, so I wonder what I'll sound like in a years time if I keep this up.

We took day trip up to a high pass in the mountains. Felix and I were in the front of the taxi, and realised that this is not the best place to sit. We're both the same height so we took turns being next to the gear stick and having the driver ram it into our thigh. It was novel at first, but it got very tiring. On the way up were stopped by a big traffic jam of hundreds of taxis just like ours. When we arrived at the top, there were hundreds of tea stalls and men walking round trying to sell skis and snow suits to the Indian tourists. There were tousands and tousands of tourists. It was unbelievable. They just wanted their first glimpse of snow.

AFter Manali, we caught the bus to Bhuntar and then up to Manikaren. I'd heard something about hot springs, and was interested. We met a few Indian boys from Rajhastan and they helped us get around the place and we got a room next to theirs for the night. The whole town is based around a big Sikh temple that lets up to 3000 people stay at one time, for free. Its also free food. Unfortunately we could't get a room coz it was busy, but we managed to go and have some dhal and rice with everyone, sitting on the marble floor, looking over the river. The place is on some really hot thermal springs, and outside the temple there are bags of rice being cooked in boiling water in the ground. People can also bring their personal bags of rice and cook that too. Following late lunch, the boys took us through the temple to the hot outdoor bath, which is built on the river and overlooks it. the river flows fast and it was loud with the sound of moving water. The water was so hot. It took me about half an hour to get most of my body in the water. Felix gave it a go and nearly got in all the way too. My feet were the hardest to get in. sooooooooooooo sensitive.

next day, Felix and I took the bus to nearby town called Varsheny, which was supposed to be very nice. All we found a few locals and a massive Hydro Electric plant and dam, which was really ugly. Apparently the nice places take about 5 hours from there to walk.

We caught the bus back to Mandi then onto a small lake called Rewalsar, or Tsopema, known by the Tibetans as Lotus lake. This is regarded as a very spiritual place as one Buddha's many monks meditated in the caves here. There are still many caves up the top of the mounain, where about 50 nuns go in retreat. The actual lake was quite small and surrounded by 3 Buddhist monasteries, a Sikh and Hindu temple. We stayed in one of the monasteries and ate Thukpa, Thentook, Timo and banana pancakes for a few days. People were very friendly here, and it was just a nice place to chill out for a while.

Our next destination was Shimla. Shimla was the place of the British Raj, where the government resided in the summer time. So there are many thatched buildings with English architecture so it looks like England, in India. Its the capital of HP so I was expecting it to be a decent size. And it was. Its designed for walking because its built on the top of hill and there are many small roads markets which cars and buses can't get into. So we had to walk from the bottom, up to the top mall where we found the YMCA. It was really old but very nice and clean, and not too expensive, considering we were in the centre of a big tourist town. Loads of Indian tourists come here when the summer down south gets too hot. The middle class is getting really big, really quickly, and businesses are popping up everywhere to make profit from it. There was even a domino's pizza joint there, which we knew about, and I'd been looking forward to a bit of fraanchise pizza. It was bloody expensive (3 dollars each) for the 4 small pizzas we got, but it was puffy and nice. Generally I'm fairly strict on my spendings, but on special occasions I have been known to splash out.

The next day I went to the government building to get my Inner line permit for Kinnaur and Spiti remote areas. It took me about an hour to find the office I was meant to be in, and because the president was arriving the next day, and there'd been a death threat, it was busier than usual. I was told to come back an hour later, which I did, and then waited another 3 hours for someone to sign the document which took about 10 seconds.

I left Shimla and Felix the next day and took the bus to Rampur, on the way to the Kinnaur valley. This was just a stop over place, so just stayed a night. Sat with a few drunk locals in the night and had my 2nd beer in India.

Got up early and hopped into a post taxi who charged bus rates to go to Recong Peo, the capital of Kinnaur. We passed another Hydro electric plant on the way there. Its amazing how impossible it is to go remote in India. We're driving in this valley with hardly any vegetation but there are always people walking along the rode or trucks carrying goods for small towns. When I got to recong peo I decided I'd get another smaller bus up the mountain to Kalpa (3600metres) because people said it was a nice place. Recong was just a relatively busy town. On my way to the tourist office (which I never really went to), I bumped into a fellow Melbournian who was from Fitzroy. Who would have guessed, eh? he was on his hired motorbike from Delhi ( a long way from here) and was planning to drive all around the indian himalayan area on it). He was a nice chap, and the first thing he did when he heard I was from Melbourne was dump a book on me, "Underbelly;p The gangland murders' all about the Melbourne mafia, which is a topic that I absolutely love. Despite the lack of interest, I'm still half-reading it to this day, and its sort of interesting because I know everyone's names.

Found a small hotel for 200 rupees up the top of Kalpa looking over Kinner Kailesh, a really nice mountain range with a fair bit of snow left on it. Unfortunately they didn't do treks until July so I could only look and take snaps. The 2nd day here I got kicked out of my room with a bathroom and tv and got moved up to an unused Attic with just a bed. I only paid 100 rupees which was pretty good I had a stunning view, just outside my room. Stayed here a few days and befriended a few middle class Indian travelling familes from Colcutta. Got invited inside a local's house which was really nice. It was all wooden and the rooms were tiny, but they had a Tv and a dodgy DVD player. They played backstreet boys and made me dance to it.

Felix met me in Kalpa and we travelled from here to a place in the inner line called Nako. This is one of the closest towns to Tibet. It was the most exciting bus trip I've experienced so far. Very arid land, desert, and not much growth, with snow peaks in the background. Steep drops to big river below. Roads were mix of concrete and dirt. Sometimes, we stopped to wait for the tarmac to be laid out until we could pass again. WE got to Nako (about 3900metres) by sunset. It was a very small village looking over the Kinnaur valley. Rice fields in the middle of nowhere. People with sunburnt faces. felix and I were offered a cheap room with two double beds and a dirty communal toilet. felix had a bit of trouble sleeping with the high altitude but I was okay. The next day we took it easy and I walked to a nice smaller village nearby called Meling, and a apple farmer invited me up to his house for chai and some nice fresh almonds.

From here we caught a bus to Tabo, which was at 3000 metres and low in the valley, surrounded by high dry moutains. Not too dissimilar to Australian desert, just more mountainous. Here, we stayed in a monastery guest house. Out the window we looked on the 9th century monastery, which looked nothing like other ones I've seen. It was more middle eastern and looked like it was made out of sand and clay. They took us inside it and although it was dark, small bits of light lit up hundreds of buddhas painted on the old walls. We walked up to some old caves that were used by the monks, but not anymore. I tried to climb up the hill alone, but found I couldn't quite get to the top, as it was really steep and the rocks were not solid and stuck into the ground. I had to ski my way down. Thank god for my grippy shoes. Stuffed my face in a rice pudding in the night too. Didn't really enjoy it.

From Tabo, we had a short bus ride to Kaza which was our last destination in the Spiti valley. We stayed in a guest house run by the local Tibetan doctor. It was really nice here. The town wasn't anything special but we just stayed here for a night and got a shared taxi back to Manali going over Kunzam pass (4500metres) to get there. At the end of the 9 hour trip I was absolutely b*****ed, and glad that we'd organised a place the night before. It was a family run guest house in quieter, old manali surrounded by beautiful apple orchards. Hence it was named 'Apple View'. The family also cooked meals so we were treated to dhal, rice and even tomato soup and macaroni. Here we met a friedly German lady who provoked us and had many philosophical discusions on Buddhism and life. I managed to do some mail as well, and hopefully it makes it back to Melbourne. Then, last Sunday, we caught the bus back to Tashijong, and been here since. Schools going to start again in a few days, and there are some Americans coming here to maybe help, so it should be interesting.

Peace Out! Chris