On the banks of the Ganges

Location: Rishikesh
Country: India

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Without even noticing, I have spent a week and a half in Rishikesh, and it has been very enjoyable. I can't say that I have actually been doing that much. There are two types of days here - the sunny ones and the rainy ones.
On the sunny days, I spent most of the time at the "beach" on the Ganges. I have even been going in the freezing cold water. The days are so hot and humid, that you just have to go in the water to cool off a bit, even though it is not easy convincing myself to voluntarily go in ice cold water.

So I spend the day there, maybe just going off to eat something in the middle. It feels like I'm at the beach in Tel-Aviv with all the Israelis, the only thing missing is the matkot, which I am surprised that some local business man hasn't thought of selling.
On the rainy days I rest (need a lot of rest with my hectic life here), read (reading a translated Indian book at the moment, it's nice as it gives some information about India), and play cards, I have become a master player at shithead.
The rainy days here remind me of the scene in "Forrest Gump" when he talks about the rain in Vietnem.

"We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin' rain... and big ol' fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath. Shoot, it even rained at night. This one day, we was out walking, like always, and then, just like that, somebody turned off the rain and the sun come out."

On my 3rd day here I ran in to Limi and Yuval by chance, it was a nice surprise as I thought they were up north.
That evening, Alon (Shahar's friend) also arrived here. So I have been spending a lot of time hanging out with them. Alon and I took a room together, that way we could get something better for less money. He has gone up north now despite the cold, good luck to him.


I finally ate Indian food for the first time the other day, but I don't think I will bother doing that again, not my cup of tea.
I went to a dhaba, which is a simple restaurant and ate tali and tasted some other things, most of it just tastes the same, and apparently it isn't a taste that I like.

Tomorrow morning I am heading for Pushkar which is in Rajistan, hopefully should have no rain there. All the travellers I meet are sure that the rain is personally following them wherever they go here, but of course they are all wrong, as it is personally following me. It will be my first time trying the train system here, and it is supposed to take me about 20 hours to get there, so we will see how it goes.

I want to thank everyone who has been making comments in the blog, they are really nice to receive, and encourage me to keep on writing.

I'll follow the sun

Location: Rishikesh
Country: India

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The last night in Manali was absolutely freezing. I slept with every item of warm cloths I have on me, and was still frozen. I took it as a sign that my decision to leave the north was right.
Left Manali on a tourist bus (comfortable enough) to Chandigar, which took 10 hours. Arrived in Chandigar at about 04:00 in the morning, pitch black, not quite understanding where I was. Hooked up with another 4 Israelis and got a local bus (yes, the very uncomfortable one) to Haridwar, that took about 5 hours. From there got a rickshaw with the Israelis to Rishikesh.
So left Manali at 18:30 and arrived in Rishikesh at about 10:30 in the morning, which as quite good time.

For those of you who are less acquainted with the wonderful ways of India, here are a couple of stories I heard, that thankfully this time did not happen to me.
* This girl was wanting to go from Manali to Spiti valley, after about 5 hours of driving, they had to turn back to Manali because a truck had over turned and was blocking the whole road, so there was no coming or going.
* Leh is a very north point that people go to that is supposed to be very nice, I didn't go because it was too late in the season already and the roads back could get blocked. This one girl told me that on the way back from there to Manali one of the bridges was collapsed, so the bus brought them to one side of the river, there people had to wait anywhere up to a week and a half, then pass with an omega to the other side to a bus waiting there. This girl had frostbites from having to wait there in the freezing cold.

Rishikesh is quite nice, though the first 2 days, it did not stop raining. There was a big improvement, as it was not cold.

Did have a minor crisis - At some point in my journey the front part of my bag got covered in muck, that smelled like fruit that had gone off, it went through all the front part of the bag, the result being that my sheets and towel stunk. I had to give them and the bag to be washed. It took 3 days till it was ready, it hadn't dried because of the constant rain. So I had to sleep on the shawl with no cover (lucky it is warm) and I bought a crummy small towel to dry with. But I think I handled the crisis well, did not let it break me.

Yesterday after 2 constant days of rain, it finally stopped, so I managed to walk around Rishikesh a bit, quite nice, with the Ganges river flowing in the middle.
In the evening hung out with some Israelis who taught me how to play wist, I think it may take a little while till I manage to play it well, but looks interesting. Definitely a huge improvement to the regular stupid card games here - taki, shithead and yaniv.

Today was really hot, spent a couple of hours on the bank of the Ganges, though I found the water too cold to go in.

The most important thing I have learnt in India so far - the vegetable pepper is called capsicum. They told me that it was the English word for pepper, I had never heard of it, but looking it up in the dictionary I discovered that they were right.

I am craving for some form of meat, and thought that finally being in the same place for a few days I would risk it, as luck would have it, Rishikesh is a vegetarian town. Such a waste seeing all the cows walking along freely and happily here.

Pictures

Location: Rishikesh
Country: India

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I have finally found an Internet connection that is relativly stable, so I gonna try and upload some pictures. Click on the picture to see a larger verion.

View from Manali :

On the way to Spiti Valley :

Spiti Valley :

Scary trip to Manali

Location: Manali
Country: India

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Had a couple more days in Spiti valley, saw Dhankar monastery (great view, monastery unimpressive), Tabo monastery (the most impressive one so far, to which the Dali Lama is supposed to retire to), went to Pin valley and saw Sanag Choling monastery (was nice, but the fun part being that the guys from our group played football with the kids at the local school).
The last night there turned really really cold and the driver was worried that we may get stuck in snow on the way back to Manali.
I have reached the conclusion, that living at 4000 meters high does not agree with me, my skin is dry, my nose permanently blocked, always thirsty and couldn't sleep well (though it did make my hair look nice).
During the drive back it did start snowing, and I was torn between enjoying seeing snow fall for the first time, shaking with cold, and panicking that we may get stuck. At some point the driver said that if it snowed for another half an hour, we would be stuck.
We managed to get through the snowy area ok, though later we saw trucks standing on the side of the road, and they said the road we had just come from is blocked.
About 4 hours away from Manali, the jeep stopped working for no apparent reason. The diver spent an hour standing in the rain trying to fix it, with the guys from the group “helping”. Keep in mind that we were somewhere beyond the middle of no where, it was rather cold and we weren’t dressed too warmly.
By a stoke of luck, after an hour a local bus came along that was going to Manali, so we all got on that. The local bus is that most uncomfortable form of transport one could imagine, and after 4 hours my backside was numb. The drive was really scary, these roads are scary in the best if conditions, so with rain and on a local bus, it is quite terrifying.
Against the odds, made it back to Manali in one piece.
The weather here is cold and rainy, so I want to move on tomorrow, still haven’t decided where to.

A few strange things I have noticed about India so far:

• It is common knowledge that cows roam the streets of India freely, but it is a very strange sight when you actually see a cow walking along Delhi.
• The light switches turn on/off the opposite way to Israel.
• You can be driving along in the middle of no where and suddenly you see a small group of people on the side of the road breaking stones (you see that a lot), usually there is some baby crawling in the mud next to them.
• They have a 2 man shovel. Instead of one man just using a shovel to dig, there is a man standing opposite him with a string tied to the shovel and he pulls it when the other man brings the shovel up.
• The brooms here don’t have sticks; they lean down to the floor with the broom.
• Seems that the goverment encourages honking horns in cars. All the trucks have “Horn please” / “Honk horn” written in the back.
• Very strange seeing remote villagers and monks playing cricket.

To Mum and Dad’s friends – The head torch idea was brilliant. Makes me look like a total idiot, but has already been very useful, electricity in India is apparently (but not surprisingly) not that stable.

At the foothills of the Himalaya

Location: Kaza
Country: India

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After my previous post, I wet to meet Limi (Yul's friend) and her boyfriend. Even though I had only been way for like 3 days, it was so nice seeing someone from home. I spent a few hours with them. They were going off in the morning to another area.
The next day I had made plans with the Israeli group that I came up to Manali with, to go see some waterfalls. After an hour of walking in blazing heat, and other hour promised to go, I bed them farewell and took a rickshaw back to the guest house, there I sat quietly reading my book. Apparently the waterfalls were not that spectacular anyway.
We ordered a jeep for the next morning to take us on a 5 day tour of Spiti valley, which is bout 12 hours north of Manali.
The view on the way was just unbelievable, breath taking. We started off with the Manali view which is green hills covered in apple trees, then slowly the trees began to disappear and there were just green hills, then it turned in to a desert with hills and rivers flowing. Apparently all these hills are part of the Himalaya. Just amazing view, but can't upload any pictures from here.
The ride in the jeep was not easy, when I say jeep, don't go ahead and imagine something comfortable, far from it. But again we are lucky to have a lovely driver.
We stopped on the way at lake Chandratal, which was nice enough. We were supposed to hike down to the lake for about an hour, but we all gave that one a miss.
After about 10 hours we arrived at Losar, where we were supposed to sleep, one look at the place ad the guest house and we knew we were not staying there. We asked the driver to take as on to Kaza which was about 2 hours away. By this point we were all dead hungry and dead tired, but there was just no choice about it.
At Kaza we found a very nice guest house which also had much needed hot showers, and finally got some food in our stomach, after eating nothing since breakfast.
Today we went to Ki Gompa (Gompa being a general name for a Buddhist Tibetan ministry), it is at about 4100 meters height. Having to walk up a small hill to the ministry almost killed me off. I'm sure most of you are aware at my lacking fitness, at these heights it just makes it impossible.
The ministry was nice, nothing spectacular, but the Tibbetians are just so sweet.
Then we went on to Kibber village, which was a quaint Buddhist village.
Now we are walking round old Kaza a bit, not a beautiful place, but a few shops around.
The weather here is rather cool, but not too cold for me. I bough a shawl, which seems to be a pre-requisite for anyone traveling in India, it keeps me warm.
The food so far I'm not that impressed with, but I find what to eat.
I think that about covers what's been going on, I'll go walk round the "market" now.

Greetings from India

Location: Manali
Country: India

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Recovering from 3 nights with no sleep, but I will start from the begining.
I was surprised to discover the Uzbekistan Airways is not as terrible as one would expect, it was quite decent actually, even the food was edible. The only thing I could really complain about was that the film was in Russian, so I gave that a miss.
I met the couple (Ran and Meital) that were "shiducht" to me at the airport and sat with them on the plane, they were very nice.We started of with a 4 and a half hour flight to Tashkent (Uzbekistan), there we had a 5 hour wait in what could be described as an airport I guess, but didn't look much like one, looked more like an old mansion. (I wanted to upload a picture, but it's a crummy dial-up connection here and that would take forever, not as good as the dial-up connection via my LIGs). We somehow managed to pass the time in Tashkent with Taki.
Then we had a 2 and a half hour flight from Delhi. The plane was almost empty, so I actually managed to dose of for a bit.
What you have in mind when I say Delhi airport is what it actually is....As you walk out the airport, you see people sleeping on the pavement. India welcome for you.I took a cab with Ran, Meital and another Israeli guy to the Main Bazar. All the Israeli's from the flight arrive there, so wasn't easy finding a place to sleep, not fun at 04:00 am with a heavy bag on your back. We eventually found a place which was a bit more expensive, but decent. There too there were a lack of rooms, so I ended up spending a night with some strange Israeli guy that I didn't know (separate beds!!).
Luckily many people prepared me for how horrid Delhi is, so I wasn't in too much of a shock when morning came and I saw where I was.
Me, Ran and Meital decided it would be best to get out of Delhi ASAP.The only plan I had about India was that I was gonna go to Daramsala first, which goes to prove that there is no point in making any plans. Ran and Meital convinced me to start with Manali.
There is a 13 (theoretically 13, usually more) hour bus you can take to here, but we arranged for a jeep with 4 more people. It cost about 4 times the price, but it is still cheap, and just so much nicer than going on the bus. I decided that it would be ok to treat myself to this.
That isn't to say that the ride was actually nice, it was not easy. It took us 15 hours (which isn't too bad). But the second half of the trip is all these small winding roads going uphill. We were lucky to have a nice driver who didn't go to fast, but I have to say some bits were really scary. Needless to say, I did not sleep on the way. Add that with the night of the flight and the night before that my nerves refused to let me sleep, we have reached 3 almost sleepless nights. How I didn't get a migrane is beyond me, but I thank my body for being strong for a change.
Arrived in Manali at 06:30 am and fell asleep as I hit the bed.At the moment staying at a guesthouse in Old Manali which is nice but a bit noisy, so will either change guesthouse, or go to a village near here alled Vashish I believe, which is supposed to be nice.
The view here is spectacular, green mountains all around. It is not very warm, but still possible to be in Tshirt, so that is fine. And it's preferable to Delhi which was like being inside a furnace.
Yul, Michal - Just met 2 girls here who said it is raining most the time in Daramsala. Is it worth going there anyway, or should I skip it?
Yul - Just got a mail from Limi, apparently she is also in old Manali at the moment, so I'll go look for her, should be fun seeing her.
Shahar - Pls change the time zone for me to India.
Well, that pretty much brings you up to date, so I'll sign off for now and go see what this place has to offer.

D-day minus 1

Location: Moshav Hanniel
Country: Israel

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"All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...."

Tomorrow is the big day, I don't think that my brain will fully comprehend what's going on until it finds itself walking down the dirty, cramped streets of Delhi, but my nerves system on the other had, seems to have caught on only too well.

I spent yesterday packing, my bag weighs about 13 kilo, which isn't as bad as I feared it may be, but still rather heavy considering muscles is not something that I have been blessed with.

I really tried to cut down to what I consider to be the bear minimum (Shahar - get that picture of the hair-drier from SpaceBalls out of your head).

I have made contact with a couple (friends of friends of friends) who will be on my flight, so I have someone to land with, which is nice, especially since I am supposed to land at 02:00 am.

Seeing as the clock continues to mercilessly chop minutes away till the flight, I noticed that I have very little time left for last minute bits and pieces and last minute panic.
Next post - India (or maybe they have Internet at Tashkent, where I will have the great pleasure of spending 5 hours on a stop over).