Himalayas

Our trip is soon coming to a close and we really have no idea what the last leg of it will look like! Last night, in a desperate attempt to fit everything in, we called the travel agent at North Berkeley Travels to see if we could afford to extend our trip by a week. He laughed at us. So, we'll have to make do with the time we have.

Right now we're in a touristy town called Manali. It's all beautiful mountainscapes, lakes, waterfalls, and a LOT of hotels: most people use it as a gateway to the more remote areas Leh and Spiti Valley. Our original plan (before we left the States) was to go to Leh, but it's a two day journey just to get there, so we had to rule it out for lack of time. Spiti, on the other hand, is only 10 hours away, and is supposed to have the same Alpine desert landscape (crazy, right?) as Leh (it's in the same altitude, ~3500mtrs) while being less touristy and cheaper, too. We made friends with a couple nice bay area folks (one of whom we actually have seen in Jodhpur, Jaipur, AND McLeod Ganj) who want to split a jeep with us for the five days we'd be in Spiti.

At the moment however, NO jeeps are leaving Manali: not to Leh, not to Spiti, because one of the passes is closed due to a mudslide. So EVERYONE is stuck here. We'll only find out in the morning whether or not we'll be able to go.

Manali is nice enough, but it isn't the place we want to be right now because we just left Upper Bhagshu, which is, we think, our favorite place in India to date.

Bhagshu (also called "upper McLeod Ganj") is located above McLeod Ganj (also called "Upper Dharamsala), which is loacted above Dharmasala, one of the larger cities of the Himalayas. Upper Bhagshu is located above all of these places, and is a very, very small place that feels essentially like being in a treehouse. To get from one place to another (and, to just give some scale, most days we went to Upper Bhagshu, Bhagshu, and McLeod) meant just to walk up and down: literally, there is no going left or right in any of these places. Even to get to our hotel, which was located in what we called "Upper Lower Bhagshu" we had to take a 10 minute hike through unlit, unpaved switchbacks. Except when we would take the shortcut, which involved walking six stories through another hotel and exiting out the back onto the hill. Though we were eventually asked by reception to stop: ("Friend! This is not a common walkway!" he said).

McLeod, beacuse it is a major city for Tibetans, has more of a town-like vibe, with a lot of Indian tourists and small shops and restaurants. While there, we went to the Tiebetan museum, where we saw a very sad but informative movie about the Tibetan refugees in India, and visited the Buddhist monastary where the Dalai Lama lives.

Bhagshu is somewhat similar to McLeod, though smaller stil, and still has a few bigger hotels. There, we made friends with some young shopowners, who we would watch the world cup with while drinking chai, surrounded by blacklight posters of Shiva. We also visited a little waterfall with one of the Israeli friends we made in Upper Bhagshu, Yiftach.

Upper Baghsu is the Israeli hangout, so much so that all of the signs are in Hebrew, every restaurant serves Israeli food, and many of the Indian people there are fluent in Hebrew. It's composed of only about a dozen cafes/guesthouses, a few places to do yoga, take music/cooking/macrame/whatever classes, and that's just about it. There is no road, just rocky pathways. Walking up and down, we would see the same group of people on a daily basis. In fact, we ran into Yiftach easily twice a day without ever making a plan. Every night, one of the cafes would have some people playing music, and that would be the place where everyone would gather and drink chai. Everyone has at least 6 cups of chai a day in Bhagshu.

It's pretty hard to describe the feeling of this place; it was even difficult to photograph in any descriptive way because of how it is laid out, vertically and hidden under trees. But suffice it to say we had a wonderful time in a beautiful place. And we got to see the Dalai Llama, in the pouring rain, on his 75th birthday.