Well I am sitting in the internet cafe for probably the last time while still in Manali. I have to say, I didn't have nearly as much fun anywhere else in India as I have had here. The weather is beautiful every day, gorgeous landscapes and very scrumptious food. However it has been nearly a week in this small town, and we don't have all that much longer to find the rest of India. So tomorrow evening we will be taking another horrendously bumpy bus ride out of this hill station and into another, we are headed to Mcleod Gange and Dharamsala, which are right next to eachother. The Dali Lama's residence is in Dharamsala, and it is about 3 kilometers away from Mcleod Gange I believe. It is unfortunate that he is not currently at home because I have heard that he gives many lectures and speeches when he is, but of course he is out speaking to the rest of the world just like he should be.
So, I realize now looking back at Saul and I's last week here that our plans to fit in all of these crazy extreme sports while were in this city, was perhaps a little ambitious. We did manage to fit in a couple of really fun events, as well as meeting some other cool travelers and we also did a fair amount of shopping. So about two days ago we went white water rafting on the Beas River, which runs right through Central Manali, and that was honestly so much fun, we thought about going again today. We got down to the river early in the morning had to wait around a bunch untill there were enough people to fit into the raft, and then we departed. At first I was a little skeptical about what the rapids were actually going to be like, mainly because the raft that went before us had a whole bunch of small children on it with a couple of adults. I was quite wrong though, it wasn't exactly what I had pictured when I think about the white water rafting you may see in a movie or on tv, but it sure as hell was a bunch of fun. The rapids got to about 5 feet tall at some points of the river, and I almost fell off a couple times, however I was being dumb and not really holding on, there was also a part in the river that we got to jump of the raft and into the river, but damn was that shit really really cold. Either way the whole river rafting trip was about 15 km which took close to two hours and it was well worth the 10 bucks I paid for it.
Yesterday we had some ambitious plans to wake up early, get to the ski hill around 8 or 9 and go zorbing. Then we were planning to come back to town, see a friend off on the bus at 2, and then we were going to try and do some mountain biking in the evening. Too bad that I felt like absolute shit when I woke up yesterday. I tried to eat my egg sandwhich and my bannana lassi, but I just couldn't stomach it, so I forced Saul to skip zorbing that morning hoping I could take a nap and come out of that shit mindset. I woke up again at about 1230, we went into town to meet our friend at a restaurant to eat, and I was still feeling really sick, I could only eat about half of the chicken spring rolls that I ordered, so mountain biking ended up not happening either. So instead yesterday was spent trying to hash out our plans of what to do next and what bus to take, and also what to do with the time that we are most likely going to have left over after we are finished seeing Mcleod Gange. Oh well, today made up for any shittyness that happened yesterday.
We started today off really big indeed, we woke up real early today with plans and the determination to make it to the ski hill to go zorbing. We walked down to the motorcycle rental before we got breakfast, reserved two bikes then went to eat a delicious breakfast at the Freedom Hall Cafe where they blare reggae music all morning then switch to some hard hitting house after about 1 pm. The music choices here are so weird, lots of american music, and mostly really bad. After we ate we went and picked up our motor bikes, I was riding a yellow Hero Honda, and Saul was on a Baja Pulsar. We took off, and sadly we learned to ride as we went down the hill which was probably not the safest thing, either way we figured it out pretty quick and then stopped for gas. The shitty place that we had rented the bikes from didn't provide any gasoline in the tanks of the bikes we just rented. This was just the first of signs that showed we should not have gone where we did to get these bikes. Either way we took off after grabbing some gas, and headed north towards Solang ski resort. The entire way there it is just a bunch of switchbacks up the mountain side, along with a couple off road gravel detours, the roads are shit everywhere in India I swear. We made it to the ski resort without to many problems however it did seem that Saul's bike wasn't operating exactly how it was supposed to. We did the zorbing thing, it was a little pricey at about 6 bucks a person but after we paid the fee and did the damn thing it was definitely worth it, soooooo much fun. I have a video that I'll post to facebook or something when I get the chance to use a computer that can take my camera memory card. After that we hiked around the hill a little and chatted it up with some friendly local juice salesman, than we hit the dusty trail back to manali. This is where even more signs of our shotty bike rental became apparent. On the way back I had to stop several times for saul to catch up, his bike kept stalling out and the gears were sticking. He said that a couple times there were patches on the road that caused his tire to slip and him almost to take a spill on the rented bike. We finally reached Manali, well I did anyway, I looked down the hill and I didn't see Saul anywhere. I went back down the hill two times looking for him, but didn't catch him anywhere. I eventually sat and waited, and then about 10 minutes later I see him walking up the hill. Im thinking oh shit, the bike is down a valley or something. Turns out he was just frustrated with the gears and clutch and left it at the bottom of the street. I deceided I would go down to the bike and check it out and see if I could figure out what was going on, even though I don't know dirt about motorcycles, but at the very least I figured I could drive it up to the guest house.
I got down to the bike, started it no problem and took off, I figured I would take it for a little spin and see how the bike ran. About 15 seconds into the ride, I am going down the hill and start to break for a car that is comming towards me, and then all of the suddent the front tire locks up and I go down with the bike in hand. I slid a little ways, in front of about 6 or 7 cabbies all the while screamming "What The Fuck Was That?" I come to a halt and stand up, I'm cursing up a storm at this point because there was no reason for that to have happened at all, I was going really slow and I barely touched the hand break. All the cabbies come over and begin to calm me down, telling me everything is fine, and making sure that I am all right, i have a small bit of road rash on my arm but ive had worse from my bicycle. After everything checks out on my person, we begin to look at the bike, and it is prettymessed up. I started freaking out again, because I didn't want to pay the exhorbent prices that I knew that this rental shop would charge me. Thank god for the Indian Cabbies, they were so great and offered me great advice and even told me where to go to get it fixed before I brought it back to the shop. Honestly if there isn't any money involved, Indians are the most caring people ever, extremely accomidating and genuinely interested in you and your well being. This is something that has been shown again and again whenever I meet locals that aren't trying to make a buck off of my tourist self.
So back to the motor bike, all of the cabbies were telling me it wasn't going to cost much at all to fix the broken clutch lever and busted light, they told me to roll my bike down the hill to this mechanic that specializes in Royal Enfields and that he may be able to help me out. I found the place no problem, it was about five minutes away from where I tipped and it was a very nice looking shop. I stood in the waiting area for about five minutes, no one showed up, so I started walking around and calling out for someone to help. Pretty much instantly the owner showed up, he was in the back watching some weird ass bollywood movie. I told him what had happened and asked if he could help me fix it, at first he told me that he wouldn't work on it because it wasn't a Royal Enfield (Which are the sweet bikes that all the Kool Kats ride around India, Google it!) I told him then that all that really needed to be fixed was the clutch lever and he said he would take a look at it. He came out and took a look at the bike, and realized that the damage was minimal, he said he would fix it~ Next thing I know, his brother and son are out taking apart the clutch lever and started working on the light too! I sat there for maybe fifteen to twenty minutes and chated it up with the owner, he was a really cool guy and told me I should never have rented bikes from those jokers up the hill because they trap tourists and then send them out on the road on very unsafe crumby bikes. After everything was fixed and I had paid up, (it only cost 150 rupees,) he then pointed out all of the stuff that was terribly wrong with the particular bike that Saul was riding all day. First off he showed me the front tire, it was almost completely bald and it was also next to half flat, no wonder the bike kept slipping while it was being ridding. After that the throttle was in terrible shape and would stick when it was revved too high. On top of that, the gears were sticky and would only shift about 75% of the time! So it all makes sense now why the bike would randomly stall out when ridin' half the time when the gear was supposedly changed it was still in the same gear. We ended up taking the bike back, pointing out what was wrong with it and got most of our money back....well actually we only got 200 back out of the five hundred, but either way we got some back. So it was almost a good thing that I had tipped the bike and had to take it to a mechanic so that we didn't end up going out riding in the mountains again with a terribly shot tire, and then saul would have slipped off a cliff. Horrible though, I know. Well thats basically India for ya.
Well I shall update again once I reach Mcleod Gange!!
Peace,
J a k e
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