August 1 - 13

I had trouble gaining access to this blog when I first got to India, so gave it up for a while.

Arrived in Delhi about 11 pm on the 31st, took a taxi to the Paharganj area, arriving after midnight, and the taxi had to let me off some distance from my hotel as the street was torn up.  As I walked down the dark street, a cow suddenly loomed out of the darkness but I managed to avoid it.  Further on, masonry was tumbling onto the street from a building demolition site.  A man on the street stopped me and yelled at the workmen to stop and let me pass.  I heard the bricks come tumbling down again soon after I passed.

The next morning I looked around a bit in the rain and headed north to Chandigarh about 2 in a rickety bus, arriving about 7:30.  The next day I made the long (11 1/2 hour) trip in another rickety bus further north into the Himalayas, up the Kullu valley along the Beas river, to Manali at about 6500 feet.  Beautiful scenery along the way.  Manali is surrounded by steep green mountains covered with cedar trees and dripping with waterfalls.  Plus there are apple orchards everywhere, with trees covered with apples.  I spent a couple of days looking around, visiting temples and waterfalls and an old fort at Naggar and preparing for the trip to Ladakh, including buying a down jacket and some other clothes.

Then the rains hit, closing the passes to the north.  And I got sick, getting the flu, which knocked me out for about 4 days.  (Didn't take me a full week in India before I got sick.)  Meanwhile, it kept raining, more heavily than usual they say, including a freak rainstorm, something like 2 inches in an hour, that caused mudslides and flash floods that killed more than a 100 (probably several hundred) in Ladakh. 

Reports were that the road to Ladakh would be closed for a week or two, or more, so I decided to head to the Spiti Valley, also a Tibetan area.  On the 12th I set off at 6 am in a jeep bound for Kaza in Spiti, but after less than 2 hours we hit a roadblock caused by a landslide on the Rohtang La ("La" means "Pass") to the north.  We were well above the treeline, at about 11,500 feet up, I think, so about 1500 feet from the top.  It was rainy, the road muddy and rocky.  A bulldozer fruitlessly moved rocks and mud off the road only to have more debris slide down.  A long line of vehicles waited on each side.  After more than 6 hours of waiting, with no progress made, two others and I decided to get our gear (it had stopped raining and there were some great views when the thick clouds briefly parted) and hike down the muddy switchbacks and the rocky paths between them to the little settlement (Marhi) we had seen when the clouds parted, about 1000 feet below us.  It took us an hour and a half to get there, but once there we could get something to eat and catch a 5 pm bus back to Manali.  The roadblock still hadn't been cleared and I've heard here in Manali no one got over the pass.  The bus ride was very crowded and uncomfortable.  I was wedged against others in the aisle and finally sat on my pack leaning against a pole as we descended the switchbacks down.  At one point we were stopped by two cedar trees recently fallen and obstructing the road.  A group of men, maybe 40 of them, lifted them away from the road.  Back in Manali about 6:30 I checked into my hotel and went to bed about 7:30 after a long, hard day.  No shower, no dinner (though I had eaten at about 4 in Marhi). 

The next morning was sunny and I showered and ate, washed my clothes, and relaxed all day.  Clouded up in the afternoon and by evening it was raining hard again.  Time to make another change of plans.