Thursday, October 2, 2008

Mountainous Manali


We took the plunge last night and hopped on a 10 hour bus ride through a winding mountainous route to the astoundingly beautiful city of Manali, India.

Upon arrival this morning, we were immediately enamored with the place. It is so lovely. Snow-capped mountains in the distance, nearby foothills, beautiful trees and gardens, and best of all, no monkeys.

In the sun, it is quite comfortably warm. In the shade, it feels much, much colder. The forecast for today is a high of 20 degrees celsius and low of 3. Hopefully we'll be adequately prepared for sleep. Shimla had a similar climate, with a high of 20 and low of 9. I think this is the coldest it will get for us in India, which is awesome. :)

This is definitely the most beautiful place we've been to in India as of yet. Our hotel room is pretty large. In fact, it has about 3 rooms as well as a washroom and a balcony which overlooks a beautiful garden and snow-capped mountains.

That's all for now! It's dinner time.

3 comments:

mbesh said...

I haven't checked back in a while, and there are so many gems! I'm so impressed by all the amazing things going on with you guys over there. The pics are great: I wish to see the untamed Beshai beard. I certainly hope the both of you continue enjoying your journeys without any terrible problems! Love you guys!

Kathy said...

Love the dialogue!! Everyone at work anxiously awaits the latest posts. Love to you both. Mom

Anonymous said...

Not only do we miss you, we envy you too! I read that there's a strike in India's Bollywood film industry so I'm surprised that filming is going on, but the news isn't 100% accurate. You may not get to see the news on a daily basis, so you may not have heard that some type of national emergency has been declared in Kashmir and a curfew has been imposed telling people to stay in their homes. Trying to supress protests against the government. It's probably lucky you didn't go there. The buddhist retreat sounds like a real treat. When I was in high school, we used to have 2 day silent retreats at school. Very interesting.