Manali sucks

Because, as I became a full-time smoker again (yes, I know. Sorry, Dad), the fact that smoking on the street is prohibited makes my whole re-smoking life quite difficult. Later information proved that smoking is prohibited only on the main street of Manali but that only eased life post-day number one. And because, as it is not winter, there’s not much to do around here.

At 2000 meters altitude, Manali and its surroundings make for the best skiing resort in India, provided you have snow to ski on and equipment to ski with. A skiing costume is not hard to find, as I’ve witnessed on my way here: there are tens of roadside huts that can provide some of the latest type of ski outfits (if this were sometime in the ‘90s) and there are many places in central Manali that advertise skiing equipment. Nevertheless, none of the places offer snow.

Back to Manali’s suckiness: I broke my ‘Longest Time Spent on a Means of Transportation’ record by riding the whole 475 km from Leh to Manali in no more than 19 hours straight! Apart from a sleepdeprived self, there’s the issue of tending to my bumps and bruises, because you simply can not ride so many hours without a good reason, the good reason being that Indians don’t care so much for their cars (or, for that matter, for their people), so they tend to avoid the construction of good motorways. But more on that later. Manali simply has to provide me with a good room 

• where I can tend to my aching head (from the ride, because sitting way in the back of a 7-seater jeep along with 9 other people means that I looked like a professional bull rider at a rodeo contest);
•  where I can get a (preferably hot) shower (after not bathing for a while because Ladakhi people don’t believe in cleanliness with water);
• and where I can just lie down and try to straighten up my internal organs and my spine (from the ride, because sitting way in the back of a 7-seater jeep along with 9 other people means that we all looked like kangaroos trying to outrun each other while still being in the same jeep).

Still, Manali does suck. Not as much at night, when, apparently, the smoking prohibition has, somehow disappeared, and also because it’s not as cold as I’ve been led to believe. It’s quite pleasant after the minus-something temperatures from my previous Leh nights, and after the plus-hundreds from Amritsar and Jammu, to name just the last places I’ve been to. Also, Manali ends up being quite nice for offering me just what I needed:alcohol, cigarettes, good company and a room complete with a king sized bed and a hot shower (well, mostly hot, if I get to it during the day, and lukewarm when I want to use it by night). Last but definitely not least, Manali is the greatest place in the world after the aforementioned 19 hours crammed up in a jeep.

This is how it all happened: there are only two ways to get out of Leh. One consists of a two day bus ride to Srinaga rvia Kargil with an overnight stay in Kargil and the other is an already mentioned 19 hour jeep ride to Manali. Also, there are airlines that can take you to Delhi in just over an hour but that type of travelling (meaning the safe and reliable type) is not my style.

As I’ve already done the (quite safe, problem free) government bus from Srinagar, I was left with the adventurous bus ride to Manali, the one that crosses four passes, one of which being the second highest drivable pass in the world, standing high at over 5000 meters (5328 meters to be exact). The same that people say meant the most horrible bus ride ever and we’re talking here about semi-professional globetrotters. Well, this actually has some truth in it, as we’re again referring to Indian road builders: the thing is they don’t care which way the road goes; the main thing is that the road takes you from point A to point B, regardless of the physical highs and lows of said road. This means that they blasted through some mountainsides and just put some asphalt on their way (not a lot). They completely shut out the fact that it would have been a lot easier to build roads through the valleys and just construct some tunnels to connect those roads; no! These roads (if one could ever call them that) are, as I’ve already mentioned, on the side of mountains, similar to the tracks left by goats or yaks on their way to the grazing grounds.

So, as I myself have seen, Indian sensibility to comfort is completely inexistent: get a road, if possible higher than your altitude comfort zone, with more curves than is humanly possible to count, put a jeep on it (because no other car – especially government buses – is willing to drive on that road anytime after the end of September, the risk of bad weather being too high), and strip the road of asphalt. That’s what Ladakhis do to enjoy themselves. Also, get a lot of people inside the jeep and amusingly watch them barf their way to Manali (which also happened, as the annexed picture proudly shows). 

See the dusty streaks on the front passenger's seat?
Well, all I can say it's that's not just dust...

Start driving, stop for dinner 50 km later, when your unaccustomed passengers will start wondering why they wanted to take this ride in the first place, and just jump and wobble 19 hours to your destination. Don’t mention that a full stomach might be the cause of at least some mild discomfort and let your passengers think they are stronger than they are. And, again, get some music: anything and everything from pop Indian to hip-hop Indian (with some late ‘70es American hits – Rod Steward apparently rocked back then!). Put all the backpacks on the jeep, so the chances of everything freezing and getting heavier from the lumps of dust present in every nook and cranny are considerably higher. Call this a journey!

As a considerate passenger, I quietly sat crammed between a young Indian wrestler (at least, by the amount of space he needed, he seemed to be some kind of wrestler) and a generous Portuguese, who kindly shared his rum with me, although, at some point, I found that being self-conscious and aware meant being a nano-second better than alcohol imbibed, if only for being able to brace myself before the next jump that threatened to send us through the rooftop of the car. Nobody flew away but some of us (yours faithfully mostly excluded) soon learned how to live with both a headache and back/knee aches.

Anybody who can sleep through something like this must be called special, which is why I have to say Indians are super humans, because all they were all able to sleep for abundant amounts of time right in front of my sleepless eyes (I even suspect the driver to have been in the arms of Morpheus for some minutes); Romanians are sub humans when it comes to sleep on one of the most dangerous roads in India. So are Portuguese.
The main entertainment on our way, although hard to see - but this became a part of the entertainment, were the hilarious road signs that promoted safe driving and no hanky panky:
'Hurry burry spoils the curry'
'Don't gossip. Let him drive'
'Got brakes. Got licence'
'If married, divorce speed'
and, my personal favorite:

When the driver said that we have just 70 km to go until we reach Manali, I was profoundly torn between falling to the ground right then and there and driving my pigs to market, getting out and, whatever the costs, walk or even crawl to Manali, or invent a new way of teleportation straight into the hot springs that Manali promised. Nevertheless, after some tea and the obvious hairpin curves, gravel, dust and dirt, we stopped on a hilltop from where you could almost see the promised city.

‘Have to wait one hour’ the driver gravely said. ‘Traffic only possible in one direction and we have to wait...’

Well, what to do, but wait? Sleeping. On tremendously loud Indian hip-hop. The last hour to Manali was just a small (but significant) reminder of the already conquered Gata Loops, but the bumping head and the twisting and turning simply didn’t go well with my sleepy self. After we managed to unfold out of the jeep and beat some sense into our benumbed legs, me and my Portuguese best friend (when chances that you are about to die exceed normal limits and get into the realm of not just possibility but high probability, people physically closest to you tend to become your best friends) headed for the first Manali beer and, subsequently, to our first encounter with Manali suckiness. The rest is history.