The guest house was perched on top of a hill in the Old Town. It was lovely to be somewhere with peace and quiet. This was until the local snake charmer turned up and produced a couple of Cobras and a baby Boa for us.
I am well known to be a snake lover, I immediately went and hid in my room! I am not ashamed to say I am scared witless by the demonic little buggers!
Scott is braver than me and was holding them, above is the baby Boa. Hats off to him!Manali is full of hippies. I think mainly due to the vast quantities of dope that grows everywhere.
It just grows by the side of the streets, in the gardens and next to the pavements in huge bushes. I giggled to myself at some of the others who newly arrived with us as there eyes just got bigger and bigger as they saw it all growing everywhere. They obviously had a different agenda to us!After a bit of rest it was time to get the bikes built and make sure they survived the journey, the local guys in the guest house were keen to help.
And curious about the bikes.
Once built we decided to go for a wonder around town, it start to rain heavy (it is monsoon season after all) and was quite refreshing to be cooled down by the rain.In the evening we went out to a restaurant with our new found friends and had dinner and a few beers.
The conversation mostly evolved around "where have you been?" a comparison of temples and how long they have meditated for continuously without even a toilet break. When we told them we were here to ride our bikes to Leh, after their looks of "idiots" had vanished we decided it was time to get out of the restaurant, as all the hippy psychedelic wall murals were starting to freak Scott out. So we decided it was time to go on the hunt for a beer.
'A' beer turned into quite a few and a great night was had, meeting people from all over the world - Israel, Peru, Germany, Australia and a couple of fellow Brits. A few of them were planning the same trip as us, but on motorcycle.
The conversation mostly evolved around "where have you been?" a comparison of temples and how long they have meditated for continuously without even a toilet break. When we told them we were here to ride our bikes to Leh, after their looks of "idiots" had vanished we decided it was time to get out of the restaurant, as all the hippy psychedelic wall murals were starting to freak Scott out. So we decided it was time to go on the hunt for a beer.'A' beer turned into quite a few and a great night was had, meeting people from all over the world - Israel, Peru, Germany, Australia and a couple of fellow Brits. A few of them were planning the same trip as us, but on motorcycle.We woke up in the morning with one of the guys from the guest house mowing the lawn
We had one more day to get the last and final bits ready for the off the next day. We jumped into a Tuk tuk to go to the local ATM.
After queuing for just under an hour, as this was the only ATM in the town and the last one until we got to Leh, we took out the money for the next 2 weeks. Talking to a few other travellers it was advised that we only took small 100 rupee notes (about £1.25) with us as the smaller places would not be able to give change for larger notes. Of course the ATM only spat out 1000 notes. bugger, off we went to try and change them down.
Scott, after his successful mission to change the notes down to 100's. It was rather a large wedge of notes, but still was only about £120 worth! We were now ready and eager to go!
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