Day 10: Pleasantness continues to descend

9. Manali

“Look at the commercialization maan!” – SF on Manali, upon arrival

“You know what Vishnu, I think Manali is the closest to the Himalayas, the “not so fit” people can reach” – O on Manali

It must be close to 7 when we reached Manali. The place, I tell you, is totally in contrast with Leh. Commercialization has spoilt the beauty of Manali. It’s a honeymooners’ paradise. We did see quite a lot of couples cuddling and walking with hands around the other’s waist and stuff like that.

We had a train to catch from Delhi the next day.

The 19 hour bus journey had spoilt any enthusiasm that was left in us. We hardly spoke. The waiter at “madras café” in Manali stood by our side for 15 minutes waiting for us to order. That was the scenario. We found ourselves seconds away from drifting to sleep when Oneiro asked me to pass the water bottle. I turned and turned back with the bottle and he was fast asleep.

Day 10: Pleasantness Descends

We left for the bus stand at 0000hrs. I think you should write this down somewhere. There are absolutely no streetlights at Leh. Pitch dark. You never know which pot hole is waiting to gobble up your foot or which dog’s tail is going to be the bait. Having undertaken the journey far and wide, we went all the way wherever destiny took us. Our internal sense of direction worked quite well and we reached the bus stand. A couple of firangs were waiting for the bus too. And we later found out in the 12 seat maxi-cab, apart from the driver, 8 of them were firangs.

The view along the Leh to Manali route is like a very nicely edited movie, which has won the award for cinematography. If you find this analogy horrible, then it only means that there is no other parallel that I can think of to explain you with words. I’ll try and post pictures.

One of the noteworthy events on this journey was that, I could satisfy my life long desire of having chocolate tea. This happened at this place called Darcha, which is a stopover for bikers and other travelers in need of a good meal. No longer did I see chocolate tea on the menu card, the feeling of being overjoyed engulfed. My first ever!

We seemed to travel uphill, downhill, between planes (the geometric planes), over the wooden bridges, on the gravel, in the flowing water, boy. Don’t even begin to ask. It was so pleasing that we didn’t take any photos. Coz, if we had indeed taken, we had to take every single frame of the travel. We decided not to click any snap.