Mandi

A few days ago I was in Mandi, a small, religious town composed of several monasteries and hundreds of religious pilgrims. While we were there, +1 and I witnessed a brazen, daylight theft. Most of the store owners have open air stalls and lack a front wall/door – a garage-type door is used to shut the store down at night. Each shop is usually manned by the store owner and they occasionally have to step away from the shop – to use the restroom, grab a bite to eat, chat with the store owner next door, etc. This particular shop had a slew of snacks and trial size toiletries hanging from a bar at the front of the store. The guy lifted an entire string of chips – about 10 packs total – he ran in, snatched them, and ran out in seconds. By the time people around us realized what had happened he was halfway down the street.

All you could see was a blur of monkey and a string of blue bags flapping in the wind behind him.

In addition to thieving monkeys, Mandi has a slew of trout in their small lake. Merchants sell fish food and locals throw in raw dough. Everyone seemed to feed the fish – they all congregated on one side of the lake where they were fed and were fat. In addition to feeding the fish some people also pet them, and a few tried to pick them up. The trout literally spend all day, everyday, clamoring against one another, fighting for the next bit of food. If there is a Dante’s hell for fish, this is probably one of the deeper levels. I’ll post video once I get a good internet connection.

I also befriended a baby cow and +1 and I spent some time talking to a Buddhist monk that ran a coffee shop (proceeds went to the monastery). He was very kind, but he didn’t have a family and seemed pretty lonely. I also met a guy from Philly who was insane. I don’t mean crazy like the homeless guy in the street whose eyes you avoid because he’s yelling at an invisible person. That kind of crazy is comparatively mild. This crazy was calmer, had a soft voice, spoke very very very slowly, and knowingly smiled at you as though the two of you shared a secret you hadn’t been let in on. It was the kind of crazy you inexplicably pick up on within seconds of meeting someone, even if you’ve never met anyone like them before. The coffee shop monk later brought him up and told us (without us asking) that he’d gone insane after spending 3 years in a local monastery.

We only spent a couple of days in Mandi before spending 7 hours on a local bus to travel 80 kilometers through the mountains. 7 hours. 80 kilometers. I shit you not. I sat in the suicide seat at the front next to the driver for the first hour.  Most of the roads were paved but they usually aren’t wide enough for two vehicles, so you often end up with one set of tires on the pavement and the other in the dirt. That’s fine when you’re on the inside, but when you’re on the outside and there’s 12 inches between the tire and a 800 foot drop it’s entirely different. The trick is not to pay attention, which I failed at doing. The tires had no tread and parts of the dirt shoulder that lay next to the paved road had washed away such that you absolutely couldn’t scoot off the pavement, which meant if another vehicle needed to pass in the opposite direction one bus would have to back up until they got to a point in the road with a wide shoulder. And that’s just the rural areas. In the city, it’s the opposite – rather than fearing the pain of death I was sure we were going to kill someone on the street and it seemed like I was sitting in an opening scene of a horror movie where a bus is barreling out of control through crowds of people and the camera zooms in on the bus driver and you see his head doing 360s atop his neck.

Luckily, everyone lived.

A couple of days before our trip, 40+ people weren’t so lucky – they died when their bus dropped off into a 200ft gorge in an area near us. All of that being said, the drivers we’ve had have been the most skilled ones I’ve ever seen. They make NASCAR look like child’s play.

 Now I’m sitting pretty just outside Manali at a hotel with clean sheets, hot water, a backup generator, and a balcony overlooking the valley of the gods. +1 and I just had dinner in a shack raised up on thick sticks with a wood/cardboard floor and a tarp ceiling. For 73 cents we gorged ourselves on a spicy thali. Thali is the set Indian meal served at local restaurants and is usually cheaper than any other meal on the menu. We both had veg tahli, which typically consists of rice, veggies, beans, lentils, and chapattis (a flat bread). Spicy lips, spicy belly, spicy bum. Yum yum.

I’m off to rest up for our next adventure. Love ya’ll!

Erin