Riding around Manali on Pooja

Some minstrels playing on the streets on Manali.
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We arrived at about 6am to Manali and the bus was swamped with hotel touts as soon as it stopped. We struggled to get our bags out from under the seats as these guys were trying to interest us in their hotels and give us business cards. We agreed with one to view his hotel in the more elevated part of town since he would offer us a free lift there. His hotel was good enough, and we set up to spend a couple nights.

Manali is a comfortable town to enjoy, as it is full of shops, restaurants and budget hotels geared toward travelers. Motorbike rental shops were easy to find and easy to do business with too. On the day we arrived, we walked around the hilly town making a few wrong turns, but saw the Hadimba temple, a museum of the tribal people and customs, and the Himalayan Nyingmapa Gompa. The Hadimba temple was built in 1553, and was quite beautiful and peaceful. Even some Catholic nuns were visiting it and were awestruck.

The Hadimba Devi Temple.
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Erin was really pleased to be able to pet and hold the Angora bunnies we saw on the side of the road. They were having their fur turned into yarn for knitting sweaters and pashminas. I took a photo opportunity to sit on a handsome Yak. It’s probably good we didn’t go anywhere, it wasn’t very comfortable.

On the second day we rented Pooja, a 350cc Royal Enfield motorcycle. It’s unchanged since 1955, and it shows in the weak front brakes, and completely do-it-yourself repairs. We had a lot of difficulty getting her started in the morning, but Lucky our mechanic, assured us she was the best bike under his care. To quote Malcolm Reynolds: “You know what happens if we rely on luck [Mr. Lucky in this case]? We end up broken down and stranded out here floating and at the mercy of the next person who comes along.” We filled up gas before heading out of town, and she wouldn’t start again. I bruised the arch of my right foot trying to kick start her, and at some point my foot slipped off and I cut my shin and even bruised my thigh. Eventually Lucky came and with 2 wrenches opened up the cover for one of the exhaust valves. I properly identified the push rod and rocker valve and the tappet, and could recognize that the rocker arm had fallen out of alignment. But I couldn't do the important step of finding the problem without Lucky.

The Hadimba Devi Temple.
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So we were back on the road and winding through the Himalayas to visit the nearby town of Vashisht and then on to the whispering rocks found on the road North to Rohtang La. We went into the Vashisht temple but didn’t come at the right time for a sulfurous bath in the hot spring in the temple. The Rama temple right across from the Vashisht temple had such a peculiar shape and carvings on it, we were reminded of Aztec temples. We enjoyed lassies and some lunch with a wandering sadhu at a German bakery in Vashisht before pushing off. The sadhu drew some smiles from the table next to us as he so delicately invited us to buy his tea and share our food with him.

Some nuns looking in the Hadimba Devi Temple.
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A brief stop by the Manali river gave our backs a break from the bouncy dusty roads and the non-stop truck traffic. We arrived to the Whispering Rocks area, but could not identify what exactly they were. We turned around and wove through the hairpin turns back to Manali for some last minute shopping. We got a few pashminas, one for Erin, and a couple for family. Then it was time to say goodbye to Pooja. Although our relationship was temperamental in the beginning, she was a faithful companion for the remainder of the day. Lucky told me later: See, I told you she was the best.

Erin with some women and their Angora bunnies.
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That night we caught a 2am mini bus to take the 19 hour ride to Leh, in the area of Ladakh, eastern Kashmir. The bus ride was a monumental experience. We crossed such high passes: Rohtang La (3978 m), Lachlung La (5060 m), and then the world’s second highest motorable pass Taglang La (5328 m) before reaching the arid Tibetan plains. At Lachlung La, I suffered from altitude sickness, which manifested itself at the lunch break with severe dizziness and lots of vomiting. Some coke and noodle soup at the road side lunch tents helped a lot. These nomadic lunch villages are a funny thing: they are run by women and their children and are only set up for the summer months when the road is open. The toilet area is the open stony bank of the river so you must dodge the remains of past visitors as you seek an angle to least expose yourself to the trucks driving by on the road. You try to not think about how you are soiling the river water from which the women are making your noodle soup. The entire trip was a marathon of muscle work and steely nerves for our driver who would not talk to anyone and was constantly dodging the potholes and even drove along a running stream bed for a 100 meter stretch. By the time we reached Leh, it was dark again, and he was speeding to get there all the sooner. One of the passengers, a Frenchman, got irate and would yell at the driver to slow down, not wanting to have come so far and suffered so much to die at the home stretch.