Continuing my relates about our October holidays: Manali

[Before it's to late to be still fun to tell about it, I want to continue in this post telling about our Diwali holidays (Oct 21 - Oct 31.06). In a recent post I talked about Delhi, the indian capital, where we stayed 2 days. Now, let's go real north, and let's take a look at our next stop, Manali, in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.]

MANALI: a small bite of the Himalayas


Himachal Pradesh State, in red - India

Manali is one of the most popular hill stations in the indian state of Himachal Pradesh. In itself Manali, the town, has nothing in particular, besides being a town full of hotels, hostals, restaurants, shops and travel/sports agencies. Well, of course it has an awesome view with snowed mountains, so that's why it's worth! The town in this sense is the place where all tourists gather and stay, but the real fun happen around Manali when people go to into the mountains to trek, raft, do paragliding, river crossing, fishing, skiing, camping and all other kind of sports and nature related activities. Manali also is a destination for honeymoons, at least that is why we have been told, however even if it was not a honeymoon trip, we really wanted to go there to experience the Himalayas, at least in their Indian part.

Main activities we did were a one-day car excursion to a place called Rohtang Pass, which is the highest point near Manali (of course there are higher points in the region, but for that you need to go even more North on teh way to Leh) and also we did a one day trekking, with a guide. The rest of the days we discovered the town itself, its food and it's few historical places - but it was so good to go to a place where the touristic places are not just temples or acrhitecture, but where nature itself (in this case the Himalayas) is the spectacle.

One of the stops on the way to Rohtang Pass


Trying to go higher ...!

A small yak ride ... you find several of them as part of the "snow attractions"

Diverse photos in mainly indian tourist enjoying snow ...

About this higher parts of the mountains, we must say that it was a bit disapointing to see that there is a lot of litter/garbage, for being a place with such a real natural power and relatively less restaurants and businesses around. But still ignorign this dirty spots, the landscape up there is for sure one of the most amazing ones that one can see.

Trekking - a walk into small villages in near Manali

As said before one of the activities we did was an almost one day trekk towards the Solang Valley, near Manali. You can get a guide to show you the way and a lunch pack for 500 Rupees (10 USD) per person and have a perfect plan.


Me and the guide at the start of the trekk

The coolest of the trekk, was that even if we did not go so high, the guy kind of took us around his village and we basically passed by houses of many people he knew, even had chai (tea) in his sister's house until we reached his own house, where we ate our lunch packs. Was cool to see how this people live, how their houses look like, how they speak (the local language sound rather similar to chineses than hindi!)

Village House near Manali


Mint Tea and nuts - the snacks during the trekk


You see these brave women all over the place carrying these heavy reserves to feed their animals ...

Do not doubt to go to this place of the world if you have the opportunity and specialli if you are one day in India. It's a different India! It's experiencing a cold India, with high landscapes, with heaps of nature around, with indians with a lot of chinese aspect, villages and lifes that are run and lived in a slower motion than in the big indian cities, wonderfully fresh air - I personally feel very lucky to have the chance to come to this place of the world and realize how few we dare to imagine how people here understand their world... and see what we can learn from that.