Manali to Dharamsala

The road to Dharamsala

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We left our base at the Sun Park hotel in Manali to head off to Dharamsala but things started a little slowly. Our poor driver, Mr Singh, was late arriving because he’d been staying in a drivers’ hostel where there was no hot water in the morning because the cold night had frozen everything. We were due to leave at about 8.30 but finally hit the road closer to 9 o’clock. There’s no point stressing about such things when you’re surrounded by giant mountains and it’s the done thing to take your time. The first couple of hours of the journey were simply retracing our route from a few days earlier, heading back along Route 21 towards Mandi. Although we’d been there before, the route felt...Read More

We left our base at the Sun Park hotel in Manali to head off to Dharamsala but things started a little slowly. Our poor driver, Mr Singh, was late arriving because he’d been staying in a drivers’ hostel where there was no hot water in the morning because the cold night had frozen everything. We were due to leave at about 8.30 but finally hit the road closer to 9 o’clock. There’s no point stressing about such things when you’re surrounded by giant mountains and it’s the done thing to take your time.

The first couple of hours of the journey were simply retracing our route from a few days earlier, heading back along Route 21 towards Mandi. Although we’d been there before, the route felt fresh as we’d been half (or fully) asleep when going the other way. After about two hours we stopped at a roadside dhaba for lime sodas and some interesting local toilet facilities and for Mr Singh to get tea and something to eat and then got back in the car and carried on along the rough roads, heading to lower altitudes than those we’d left behind.

The lower altitude areas were characterised by quite different scenery. This is a big fruit growing area and we passed lots of orchards and juice processing plants. Mandi seemed to be the biggest city in the area, with a wide, rock-strewn river passing through the centre of the city. I’d have liked to stop and have a look but we still had a long way to go and had to press one.

In the early afternoon whilst driving through some orchards, the car got a puncture and we had to stop. Fortunately there was plenty of shade so we weren’t too exposed to the hot mid-day sun. Mr Singh must have had many punctures in his driving career but he clearly didn’t really know what he was doing. Tony, my husband was torn about what to do and held back until Mr Singh realised it wasn’t going to work before getting involved and helping him to put the jack in the right place. The spare tyre had even less tread than the now punctured one and we had to hope that it wouldn’t rain for the rest of the journey. When they finished fixing the tyre, Mr Singh declared "You sir, very good man sir".

We then drove on, back up the mountainsides and into the higher Himalaya. The scenery was as good as it can be but after a few hours it becomes hard to really take it all in any more.

Twice along the route the car was stopped and our bags were searched. Elections were due to take place soon after and police were checking cars for smuggled alcohol, although quite why they might think two very obviously foreign tourists would have decided to subsidise their holiday with illicit liquor activities was a mystery. My bag was opened and examined in the middle of the road whilst I sat in the car and glared as menacingly as I could manage.

Eventually we arrived at about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. Approaching Dharamsala we started to see a change in the people we passed. More were wearing the robes of Buddhist monks and the people were looking more Tibetan and less Indian. Increasing numbers of foreign tourists were wandering around, and as we passed through Dharamsala and up to McLeod Ganj, the home of the Dalai Lama and his followers it was clear that this was going to be a very different type of Himalayan town than we’d visited before.

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Mall Road Manali

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Many Indian cities have a street called ‘Mall Road’ and Manali is no exception. I cannot be sure, but my assumption is that it’s a generic term referring to a pedestrian street with only very limited vehicular access. The most famous of the Mall Roads is in Shimla and has long been a place for promenading back and forth, looking in the shop windows, looking at other people and wearing your best clothes because other people will equally be looking at you. In Manali there is also a Mall Road but it’s rather more down to earth than Shimla’s namesake. For a start it lacks the ‘Little England’ rows of shops and civic buildings which echo the builders’ memories of life back home in the Home Counties of gent...Read More

Many Indian cities have a street called ‘Mall Road’ and Manali is no exception. I cannot be sure, but my assumption is that it’s a generic term referring to a pedestrian street with only very limited vehicular access. The most famous of the Mall Roads is in Shimla and has long been a place for promenading back and forth, looking in the shop windows, looking at other people and wearing your best clothes because other people will equally be looking at you. In Manali there is also a Mall Road but it’s rather more down to earth than Shimla’s namesake. For a start it lacks the ‘Little England’ rows of shops and civic buildings which echo the builders’ memories of life back home in the Home Counties of genteel England. Manali was never the sophisticated and scandalous summer bolt hole of the British and their government in India so it picked up fewer pretensions and fewer ‘Englishisms’.

We walked the length of Mall Road Manali as part of our day’s sightseeing. More precisely, we walked it twice – once up, once back – in search of a place to eat and a bit of people watching. We found a bustling street filled with people of all colours and types of regional dress, strolling around. The locals in their traditional brightly coloured clothing, and Indian tourists from across the country all mingled with their different outfits. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry and most were wandering, drifting from shop to shop, stopping to look in the windows, buy a few souvenirs of find somewhere for a hot drink and something to eat.

Mall Road is not very long – my guess would be that the pedestrian area is no more than about a quarter of a mile long – and it’s actually just a small section of route 21, the Leh Manali highway. At the southern end of Mall Road, the highway (I use the term loosely, this is India, it’s not Route 66!) is diverted through a dog-leg that bypasses the pedestrian area and rejoins route 21 close to the bridge which crosses the Beas River.

The Taxi Stand (the place where, not surprisingly the taxis all gather to wait for business) is at the southern end of Mall Road. The Bus Stand, is across the road from the taxi stand. Heading up the road – by which I mean heading north or against the flow of the River Beas – you find a small wooden temple on the left hand side. This is one of those Indian temples that looks brand new but could – for all I know – have been there forever. We didn’t go in because it looked like they were still building it but of course they may have been doing repairs. The road is quite wide and nobody needs to jostle for space. We looked in the windows of the souvenir shops, tried to find a place to eat and then, once we’d eaten we wandered back down the road.

Our hotel had no wi-fi (despite claiming that it did) so we found an internet cafe where my husband deposited me for half an hour (about 10 rupees) and went shopping whilst I was tapping away. Freed from the constraints of me watching over him, he buzzed about Mall Road and the surrounding back streets and bought a glow in the dark Ganesh covered in small crystals which he swore he would put on the dashboard of his car and a pair of adhesive printed eyes to put on the bonnet of his car. We have the most ‘desi’ Peugeot in England and probably the only one driven by a white guy who isn’t a Hindu.

After I’d done my mail, we wandered a little more. I spotted one of the ‘Pimp my bunny’ ladies in traditional dress taking a rest with her angora rabbit friend. We popped down the side streets to look at the beautiful vegetable displays and to try to track down a book store which turned out to be closed for no apparent reason. We photographed the small vehicles lined up for delivering goods and then eventually, when we could take no more, we stopped for cold coffees in a cheap street-side cafe. Eventually we headed back to the car park to find Mr Singh, waiting for us and ready to take us to our next temple.

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Khyber

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Restaurant | "Up the Khyber"

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Our day of Manali tourism had started with some pretty intense sight-seeing. We’d been to two temples (one Hindu, one Buddhist) plus a museum and a park and we’d worked up quite an appetite and were keen to find somewhere to eat. We walked up the Mall Road all the way from the bottom to the top and when we reached the end, we came across the Khyber. One of the typical handicrafts of Manali is hand-painted wooden items, including lots of customised signs – things to hang on your door, house names, things with cheesy mottoes and so on. We decided to get one made for my sister and her partner because they have a canal boat and the style was like an Indian interpretation of traditional B...Read More

Our day of Manali tourism had started with some pretty intense sight-seeing. We’d been to two temples (one Hindu, one Buddhist) plus a museum and a park and we’d worked up quite an appetite and were keen to find somewhere to eat. We walked up the Mall Road all the way from the bottom to the top and when we reached the end, we came across the Khyber.

One of the typical handicrafts of Manali is hand-painted wooden items, including lots of customised signs – things to hang on your door, house names, things with cheesy mottoes and so on. We decided to get one made for my sister and her partner because they have a canal boat and the style was like an Indian interpretation of traditional British bargeware. We found a plaque, spelled out the name of their boat on a piece of paper and handed it over to the man in the shop directly beneath the Khyber. He wanted a deposit and we had no change but when we told him we were going upstairs and that we’d not be able to escape without him spotting us, he agreed to waive the deposit. Such satisfaction – shopping and dining combined.

We headed upstairs up a narrow staircase into a rather empty restaurant. There was one table taken by a group of men involved in heated discussions. I had the impression they were connected to the restaurant and that we were probably the only clients. I wasn’t worried about the place being empty as we’d arrived quite late for lunch. Actually, if I’m honest, emptiness doesn’t bother me too much.

For reasons I find difficult to rationalise and even more difficult to explain, the restaurant reminded me of a boat. Even more inexplicably, I’d have said my mind floated off to an imagined houseboat on a lake in Kashmir. I have a fertile imagination when I’m hungry.

The restaurant is laid out with little booths along the window side of the room and tables and chairs in the other area. We grabbed a booth of course and settled in to watch the world go by. This was the perfect place for a bit of people watching as the Khyber overlooks one of the city’s few roundabouts and is opposite the Police Station. There are always things to see when there’s an Indian police station. We were also visiting at the time of local elections and watched a political candidate making his escape after a rally.

By the time we reached the Khyber we were about six nights into our trip and were – sorry to say – getting pretty bored of Indian food. Yes, I know that’s sacrilege to say it but our hotel included dinner and we were wondering HOW we’d work up some enthusiasm for the same menu for the third night in a row. What we wanted – and what Khyber offered – was plenty of choice. We could have had trout and I was tempted but when I found pizza on the menu, I didn’t need to look further. It’s also worth knowing that Khyber openly serves alcohol – not something you can take for granted – and plenty of different meat dishes.

Tony ordered a cheese pizza and I ordered a veggie delight. We sipped our drinks – two glasses of delicious sweet lassi – and watched the roundabout below. The pizzas arrived after about 15 minutes which is the perfect time to convince you that they didn’t come out of a box in the pizza and have been freshly prepared. Tony’s was about 8 or 9 inches in diameter and decorated simply with tomato sauce, lots of cheese and herbs. Mine was quite a lot smaller which was fine with me as I get bored with bigger ones. It contained a really surprising mix of veg including carrots, green peppers, cabbage, mushrooms and (please shoot me now) pineapple. The bases of our pizzas were medium thick and thankfully baked right through. That sounds like something that we shouldn’t need to comment on but not all Indian restaurants that offer pizza can actually cook them.

My pizza was tasty and filling and I decided to put the cabbage down to the chef probably not having spent a lot of time in Italy. When we finished eating, we dragged our meal out a bit longer with a couple more glasses of the delicious lassi and then asked for the bill. I didn’t keep a note of what we paid but it was certainly cheap by European standards and less than £10 for sure. You can eat a lot cheaper if you eat Indian dishes so you do pay over the odds for something as exotic and sophisticated (yes, honestly) as pizza but it was money well spent.

We didn’t need to hunt down our painter man when we left as he popped up to deliver the plaque to us whilst we were eating. He did a beautiful job. We left with full tummies and a good souvenir gift. Read Less

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on May 11, 2013

Khyber
city centre
Manali, Himachal Pradesh

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A Wedding in Vashisht - Maybe

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Watching the ceremony Photo - Manali, India

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After a long day of tourism, we were pretty much ready to head back to the hotel for a snooze but Mr Singh, our driver, had other instructions and wasn’t letting us go anywhere until he’d ticked off all the attractions on his list. The last of the day was to be the Vashista Temple. It’s located in the village of Vashisht just a few miles outside of the city upstream of Manali and on the opposite river bank. Getting there took about 15 minutes as we passed along winding narrow roads. We had no particular expectations but were surprised when we arrived in a bustling little place, stuffed with tourist taxis. Everywhere else that we’d been had been very quiet and in most places we were the onl...Read More

After a long day of tourism, we were pretty much ready to head back to the hotel for a snooze but Mr Singh, our driver, had other instructions and wasn’t letting us go anywhere until he’d ticked off all the attractions on his list. The last of the day was to be the Vashista Temple. It’s located in the village of Vashisht just a few miles outside of the city upstream of Manali and on the opposite river bank.

Getting there took about 15 minutes as we passed along winding narrow roads. We had no particular expectations but were surprised when we arrived in a bustling little place, stuffed with tourist taxis. Everywhere else that we’d been had been very quiet and in most places we were the only tourists there – in fact sometimes the only people there. We realised there must be something a bit special about this place. We also solved the mystery of why there were no backpackers in the main city – quite simply they were all in Vashisht.

We still didn’t know what we were about to see but we left Mr Singh with a characteristically vague "back later" from us and a smile and a head wobble from him. He headed off to find a cup of tea and we set off up the hill, passing all the evidence of backpacker focus. Somebody had lost his passport and was offering a reward via posters pinned up on wooden electricity poles. Restaurants offered ‘international’ cuisine – including (and not temptingly) Israeli food as well as plenty of pizzas and easy foreign tourist food. Bars advertised cheap beer and film shows and if you were looking to get a massage or learn about meditation, this was clearly the place to be. I could almost taste the banana pancakes in the air.

We saw the temple just as we heard the sound of drums and horns and spotted a crowd of locals gathered around a small square. A young cow bellowed indignantly as two men tried to milk her in a pit in the middle of the square. On the buildings around the square, people were sitting on the upper balconies, looking for a better view of what was going on.

In the middle of the square stood a young barefoot couple, he in saffron robe topped off with a rather unattractive grey sweater, she in a white dress with embroidered edge and draped in a deep red, gold trimmed scarf. She was wearing her best jewelry and the two were joined by a pink scarf tied to each of them. Next to them stood another man, older than the first, but wearing the same saffron robe and a rather smart navy blazer. He was tied by a pink scarf to another young woman, dressed very similarly to the first. Beside her was an older lady dressed in the same way. I guessed – but wasn’t sure – that the two couples were getting engaged or married and that the older woman was the mother of the second woman. Of course, it was only a guess. We couldn’t ask the others around us as we were the only foreigners watching the events.

Back in the pit, the cow had gone and several men in impressive hats were lighting candles or lamps. One held a bunch of burning twigs and the drummer and horn blowers stopped their musical exertions for a while.

We were baffled about what was going on but rather enjoying being a part of it (whatever it was). Then my husband suggested that whilst everyone was distracted by the ceremony, perhaps we should nip into the temple since it would be quieter. A few minutes later when we were inside, we heard the musicians and the ceremonial party leave the square and head off up the hill past the temple. I’ll probably never really be sure what was going on but it was a rare opportunity to witness a ceremony that was clearly important to those who were involved.

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Vashishti Temple

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Attraction | "Would you have a bath at a temple?"

The temple next door Photo - Vashishti Temple, Manali, India

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Finding ourselves in the little village of Vashisht in search of the Vashishti temple, we got distracted for a while by a ceremony happening outside. When we realised that people might leave the ceremony and head into the temple, we decided to pop in first before the rush – or at least that’s what we hoped. We’d seen no more than a couple of people in either of the temples we’d visited earlier in the day but the area was very busy. Indian tourists hadn’t been very interested in the ceremony and when we had removed our shoes, we realised by the dozens of others lined up outside the temple that we were not going to be alone. There are three temple buildings in the village, two of them ...Read More

Finding ourselves in the little village of Vashisht in search of the Vashishti temple, we got distracted for a while by a ceremony happening outside. When we realised that people might leave the ceremony and head into the temple, we decided to pop in first before the rush – or at least that’s what we hoped. We’d seen no more than a couple of people in either of the temples we’d visited earlier in the day but the area was very busy. Indian tourists hadn’t been very interested in the ceremony and when we had removed our shoes, we realised by the dozens of others lined up outside the temple that we were not going to be alone.

There are three temple buildings in the village, two of them looking very similar and sitting at street level and the third, raised up above the others behind them up a slope. The two lower temples were built up of alternating layers of stone and wood which produced an attractive striped ‘layer cake’ effect when viewed from outside. The wooden areas were heavily carved with faces, animals and geometric designs. Hanging from the edge of the roof were what looked like wooden icicles. The roofs of the buildings were covered in large stone tiles which looked heavy and irregular in design.

The main building is entered via an arched doorway. It won’t cost you anything to go in and nobody collects money for leaving your shoes, but donations are always welcomed in any temple. Once we were inside, we found a small inner courtyard thronging with visitors. One side of the courtyard was taken with the doorway we’d just entered through and the next was an open wooden verandah. Directly opposite us was another area where a Hindu priest sat beside a pit of ashes, receiving gifts and dispensing blessings. On the fourth side was an inner temple building. We weren’t able to get into that due to a large group getting their photographs taken at the entrance. To the side of this smaller temple was an alleyway and there were signposts to the men’s and women’s baths. We later learned that there’s a hot spring which bubbles up in the village and these baths offer visitors a chance to bathe in those holy waters. I wasn’t at all tempted, preferring my own nice warm hotel shower or bath to public displays of flesh and washing but I was happy to let those who wanted to, get on with the job. Having seen a lot of bathing pools at Hindu temples, this was a rather different set up with the baths enclosed in buildings.

When we left the temple building we left our shoes where they were and headed up some steps to the next temple on the level above the first. This appeared to be an older building and didn’t have the ornate carvings or striped wood and stone look of the lower temples. Instead it was painted with white paint with glossy red lines and pillars contrasting against the white. We walked around the outside then peered in through the doorway but there was nobody inside and little to see. Instead we sat down outside on the tiled ground to enjoy the views of the village and on to the mountains beyond. We stayed for about quarter of an hour, just watching the temple visitors wandering around, trying to avoid the angora bunny ladies and then heading back to their coaches. The contrast of the old stone roofs against the bright blue skies and the snow capped mountains in the distance made for the most wonderful peaceful views.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on May 18, 2013

Vashishti Temple
Vashisht Village
Manali, India

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