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.