Manali
Manali was the first mountain town that I visited. It rained off and on the entire time I was there. My travel companion at the time was Gadi from Israel.
being a professional musician, a basoon player in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, he was obsessed with music, and entertained both of us with a bamboo flute that he bought on the street. He is very good at imitating any kind of music that he hears and spent hours surfing TV channels to find flute music to learn. It was Gadi who inspired me to take a singing lesson when we got to McLeod, something that I enjoyed very much. I'll take another lesson when/if I get back to McLeod.
Gadi was a good sport about the rain for the first few days and we went out on the local bus to tour some of the temples and castles in the area. I liked going to Naggar, where we saw some beautiful paintings by a famous Russian artist who brought is family to India to live 100years ago. I have learned from my sister Kristen, that it is worth the hassel to bring art work home, and picked up a print of the Russain painter that is currently rolled up with my yoga mat.
The morning that we left town, we woke up to perfect blue skies and sunshine. Because the bus ride to Manali was so uncomfortable, Gadi decided that it was worth the money to pay for a private jeep to take us to McLeod Ganj durring the day, that way we could enjoy the view and sleep in a bed instead of on the bus. Our taxi was supposed to pick us up at 8am, but did not arrive at the hotel until 11am!! I got a lot of reading done that morning. The drive was not uncomfortable, but I am not sure that I would agree with Gadi about spending the day seeing the sights from the taxi being worth the extra money. We got stopped in two traffic jams, and very narrowly escaped a collision. The front seat made me very nervous as I could see how close we were to the other cars and the edge of the cliff. I opted for the night bus on the way back to Manali on my way to Leh.