Bye bye Delhi

It has only been a few days since I last blogged but I feel as though there is so much to catch up on! I want to talk about the last couple of days in Delhi, my new camera lens, the plans for our trek and the journey up here to Himachal Pradesh. Delhi feels like the distant past now (should I be worried about my memory?), and I am now sitting high up in the mountains in a little-ish town named Vashisht. It is a relief to be out of the big smoke; yesterday, (only yesterday!?) the temperature shot up past forty and the city felt like an over-sized, fume-filled sauna. I didn't believe our rickshaw-wala when he said it was 46 degrees but standing there waiting for the bus with sweat dripping down my legs, I began to change my mind.
Mum and I went to the bus stop at around quarter to five for our scheduled five o'clock bus. After a lot of running around, transferring bus stops and the like, we departed at about half six. I love it here the way the bus waits for every last passenger and calls people if they haven't showed up.It can mean you end up waiting an extra few hours but hey, this is India!
As we were leaving Delhi Mum started telling me about her cycle tour around India in 1988. It is such a great story and I haven't heard much about her trip before. Mum was about twenty-nine or thirty when she decided to take her bike and her camera and go to India. She turned up in Delhi and met another guy cycling up towards Leh, Ladakh at the Post Restante. They found each other because Mum was walking around with a broken gear piece. I think that is great; Post Restantes are a system I wish still existed. Mum decided to cycle north with the New Zealander and they set out a few days later. They cycled for a month and parted ways in Shrinigar and after that Mum met with a friend named Sally and they cycled up to Leh together. The stories go on for another seven months and she cycled through Malaysia and Indonesia too. There was a chance meeting with the Dalai Lama on the side of the road and two weeks in a tribe in Indonesia, but I haven't got all night! I love hearing about the adventures my mother had as a single female traveller in the late eighties. And it is fascinating to realise the immense changes in places like Vashisht now, compared to twenty-five years back.
The next few hours of our bus journey have blacked out in my mind, as my minor headache turned into a fully fledged migraine. All I can remember is how loud and inescapable the Bollywood film being played was and my desire to shoot Salman Khan, how bright all the lights were and the feeling that my head would explode. A Nurofen and two extra strong panadols later and I was alive again.Ready to sleep like a baby for the next six hours.
We were woken up at five thirty this morning in order to 'take chai'. I am glad they woke us up because it was the most stunning imagery to step out of the bus to. There was a clear view up the valley: the river was bursting its banks, early monsoon has panted the flora every shade of green, the sky was an angry grey and lightning forked across it, between shrouded mountains.The chai was well worth the early wake up as well.
We arrived in Manali at about nine am. We got an auto up into Vashisht. The poor motor on that thing struggled with every incline and in the end we told the guy not to worry and walked the extra few hundred metres.Vashisht is an interesting place. I am sure it would have been significantly more charming in 1988 than it is nowadays; what was a little town with a guesthouse and a row of old wooden village homes is now congested and overflowing with hotels, motels, guesthouses, Israeli cafes, German bakeries and trippers' bars. It still has some of its old charm - the early morning hot springs are great, some of the old houses still stand and if you walk out behind the village you can find a magical waterfall, but in general I think Vashisht is a victim of its own success.
Mum and I have had a busy day filled with lots of walking. But we have now organised our trek! It is super exciting and I will write about our plans tomorrow. A rough outline of what we have organised is this: one horse man (sherpa), four horses, twenty days, leave Thursday, wind up in Leh.
It will mean I don't write on here for around a month from Wednesday, but I will have many exciting stories to tell when we get back. I was worried Mum's flu might have put a stop to our trekking plans, so finalising our booking today was a great feeling. Twenty days sleeping under the stars and walking in the Himalayas!