Only 2 weeks left!!!

The past couple of weeks have been great.

After recovering from my little mudslide ordeal, I went to Naggar, a small town about an hour-long bus ride from Manali. Weird place. It's famous because some Russian painter that I don't think anyone has ever heard of lived there and painted the surrounding mountains. It's also the place that the most offbeat old Europeans you will ever meet go to smoke and die. I originally went there because it's the start of a supposedly wonderful trek to Parvati Valley. I couldn't find anyone to go with, and to go alone would have been a) lame and b) really expensive, so I just decided to take a bus to Parvati Valley. The evening before I was going to leave, I met an older German couple in a bakery who were planning on starting that very trek the next day, so I joined them.

The trek, hereby referred to as “ScheisseTrek,” was pretty much as the name indicates – crap. The first day was nice, about 7 hours of steep uphill, but enjoyable. We got to 3400m, to a little room made of mud where we were to spend the night. It was freezing and pretty gross, and the next morning the guy tried to charge us $70 for it! We fought him for a couple of hours and eventually got it down to $40, which was still absurd, but at least we could leave. Oh and the guy working in the hut stole my hiking sticks in the night! Luckily, I found them hidden in some bushes a few minutes walk away the next morning.
As we were about to leave, one of the porters decided he would go no further, so the German lady ended up carrying her big backpack for the rest of the trek. The porter knew what we didn't – snow was coming. By the time we got to the top of Chandrakani Pass – 3600m – it was snowing and freezing, but at least it was beautiful – Kullu Valley on one side, Parvati Valley on the other. We then had to go down an incredible steep “path” for 4 or 5 hours, on which I fell multiple times, courtesy of rain and crappy Indian hiking boots with no grip. We finally got to Malana, the most unpleasant village in India, and could relax. The residents of Malana claim to be descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great, and have a special caste system that forbids them from touching or being touched by foreigners. The result is that any visitor will be find 1000 Rs if you touch a person or a building. This makes for a very awkward and unpleasant experience while walking through the village. We wanted to buy a bottle of water, and got shooed away from the first store. When we finally found a store that would sell to us, we had to throw the money on the floor and they in turn placed the bottles of water on the ground. Weird.
The last day of the trek was about an hour's walk to the road to Jari, and then potentially 17km of walking on the road, which would have been pretty crap so we decided to take a taxi instead. And so ScheisseTrek finished in wonderful Jari.

I spent pretty much all of last week in Jari, a small village at the beginning of Parvati Valley. It's wonderful, with very few tourists and incredible scenery. Parvati Valley itself is incredible – it's really narrow, and the jagged mountains shoot up right from the banks of the river. From Jari I was able to go on a couple of day trips to Manikaran, which is beautiful and spiritual, and Kasol, which is actually Israel - everything was written in Hebrew.

Once the rain stopped (the monsoon is finally over, yay!) I dared take a bus to Shimla, about 8 hours away by bus, which is where I am now. It's a very strange place. At this time of the year it's almost exclusively frequented by Indian tourists and honeymooners, and has kept a very British/colonial identity. The town, which is massive, is dominated by Christ Church, and all around is British architecture and old British-looking cars. The place makes me a little uncomfortable, because I feel like this is exactly what it must have looked like under colonialism, but with a few more brown faces in the mix. It was fun meeting up with a some girls from the internship who came up for the weekend, but now that they've gone back to Punjab, I'm eager to leave and go to Rajasthan. I decided to forgo on Rishikesh and the rest of Uttarakhand, because it's essentially underwater due to heavy rains.

Tonight I'm taking an overnight bus to Delhi, from where I will directly take a bus to Jaipur. I only have 2 weeks left in India (!!!), so I won't be able to discover Rajasthan the proper way, really taking my time, but I'm really excited to end my time here with a taste of “real” India.

I would also like to briefly describe my attempt to get the debit card that was sent to me via Poste Restante to the poste office:
- Hello, someone sent me a letter, could I check if it's arrived?
- No check. No cash.
- No. Do you have a box where I could look to see if my letter has arrived?
- Letter box is outside.
- No. A letter was sent to me 'Poste Restante', could I see if it's here?
- You want stamps?

Today, when i finally got the letter and sent off a parcel, which took all of about 3 hours, I gave my passport to the lady, and when she saw my birth year, she started cracking up and calling me baby. She then walked off and I heard her speaking hinidi, pointing at me, and saying "baby" to all the other employees. Oh India, I will miss you.

Also, I am currently eating dried dates that are so dry they actually taste like wood. Delish.