In India, No Clothes!

Am presently in Manali. I’ve had some problems. Lufthansa (probably United, actually) lost my bag, meaning i quite literally have only the clothes on my back, plus a backpack full of everything that was too valuable to risk keeping in my checked baggage. Good move. I still have the laptop, camera, and the absolutely essential field equipment, e.g. my field notebook and GPS. Nevertheless, that's still more than $1,000 worth of gear that's lost if the bag doesn't show up sometime. Furthermore, Indian law prohibits me from declaring more than Rs.8000 of lost items going into the country, which is about $160. That's my stove. Suck.

When i arrived in Manali yesterday morning, Dorje/Vijay/Naveen had conferenced and decided i needed a few days mandated rest before making the fairly unpleasant overland trip to Leh. I do not have any other clothes, aside from the heavy jacket i wore on the plane. Today i'm in Old Manali to buy some shirts, a sweater, and hopefully some long underwear.

Manali is presently in the middle of its summer tourist season, and it’s easy to see why. The temperature maxes out at about 75F and dry in the sun, which is abundant in the pre-monsoon months. The hills are cloaked in pines, the last i’ll see before Ladakh, and framed in the background are spectacular peaks still above snowline.

The downside to this is that Manali quickly becomes nothing short of chaos in the primary tourist areas (New Manali). The secret is to follow the hippies. I prefer Old Manali’s setting—entrenched on a wooded hill next to the Beas. Vashisht rhymes with Hashish, and that’s all you really need to know about Vashisht.