Tagne 2001

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Dan's Diary

Day 4 - Sunday 1st July 2001

Fresh trout and pizzas at Johnson's Café

Someone ringing our doorbell at 8:15am woke me up. I lay there debating whether to get out of bed and answer it or not when it rang again. Fortunately for me Jon went to see who it was. A little man was waiting by the door. He saw Andy and I were still in bed, and said "oh sorry sir" to Jon before leaving. I wished someone would hit him for waking me up. The phone rang at 8:30am. Jon being closest answered it, but he soon put the receiver down again when he couldn't understand what the chap on the other end was saying. Andy put the telly on at 9:00am, where a Batman and Robin style film was on. A man was being attacked by a fellow man, who got hold of this chaps head, wedged it between the rungs of a ladder and then lifted up his feet and wedged them in the rungs above his head. This poor chap was left there upside down, helplessly waving feet and arms in the air, much to our amusement. The phone went again, this time for breakfast. We said we'd be down in a minute, but before we had chance to move the doorbell was ringing. A waiter had come to take our breakfast order. He gave us the choice of American, Continental or Indian breakfast. We all chose the American as it was the biggest of the three breakfasts. Then came a barrage of questions; "Do you want Cornflakes or Porridge?, Hot or cold milk?, Jam or Marmalade?, omelette, boiled, poached or scrambled egg? But you can only have omelette" He hastened to add. "Tea or Coffee? Black or white?" Just give me the food, you feel like saying, anything will do, but in the end I just said yes to anything. Andy, Jon and I went down to the restaurant and waited for our breakfast. When it came it was very nice. Alan and Steve turned up and ordered a breakfast each. They too had had lots of phone calls and their doorbell had rung several times but in the end they got fed up of answering them, which was probably why they hadn't ordered breakfast. The receptionist came and hassled us repeatedly for our passport details. I think he thought we didn't understand his poor English but in truth we weren't going to interrupt our breakfast to sort out some Indian Bureaucracy.

After breakfast, we went back to our room and listed all the food and equipment we needed to buy. This list was then given to Rahul, so he could organise the purchase of these things. We then gave our passport information to the Hotel receptionist before taking auto-rickshaws up the hill into the centre of Manali. We paid the 50Rs to the driver for a return fair and followed Rahul to the Internet café. Alan and I left the others on the internet (60Rs for one hour) and went off with Rahul to do the food shopping. He took us to a small Himalayan Store where we bought cheese, tins of tuna, toilet rolls, lighters, sugar, salt, sauces and pickles, tea, biscuits and much more. We bought more than we had intended, for the shopkeeper, seeing he was on to a big sale kept saying "Do you want this? Do you want that?" I paid for the goods and Rahul told us that they would be delivered to the hotel. We crossed over the road and into some side alley where we got tarpaulins for under our tents and some rice. Alan and I then left Rahul and the others in the main square where we were to meet Steve, Andy and Jon at 1pm. They weren't there so we walked the short distance to the Internet café and found they were just finishing.

We walked to the main square where a child was beating a cow with some sticks. The Gozy restaurant was our stopping place for lunch, as recommended by our Lonely Planet guidebook. I had a very nice egg curry. The bill came to 615Rs. The previous evening our bill had been 618Rs. It seemed no matter what we ordered, or where we ate our bill always came to around 610Rs. We came out of the restaurant and stood there. No one had even thought about what to do next, let alone decided. It didn't take long before the street sellers were swarming round us trying to flog us their handicrafts. This annoyed me because we could have so easily sat in the restaurant for an extra five minutes, decided what we were going to do and then we needn't have been hassled by the street sellers. In the end we walked, to nowhere in particular, but just to avoid the street sellers. An Indian boy came up to Alan with a basket and said "For 10Rs I'll show you my snake". Now Alan doesn't get offers like that every day, but even he said "No thank you" and kept on walking. The boy persisted following saying "10Rs for this". After a while he gave in and took the lid off. Inside was a baby cobra, sitting upright and waving its head around. Steve and Andy suddenly vacated the area, while Alan told the boy to go away. The boy said to Alan that he now wanted 10Rs to take the snake away. It was almost worth giving him the money for his originality, but we resisted and after a brief try of the same trick with Jon, the boy left to pursue some other unlucky tourist. Jon and Andy went to have a look around Manali while the three of us got an auto-rickshaw back to the hotel. I recognised the same auto-rickshaw we had got on the way up by the cloth tied to one of his handlebars and told the driver we had paid for a return. He nodded and we got in and sent him to the Hotel Victoria. It was clear that he didn't recognise us from this morning as he freewheeled several kilometres down the valley before taking us up a steep side road. We informed him that it was not the right way and pointed back down saying "Hotel Victoria Palace".

He said "Ah Hotel Victoria" pointing down the slope. "Hotel Victory" he said and pointed up the road. He had misheard us and was taking us to the wrong hotel. When we finally got to the hotel, the driver wanted 25Rs. I tried to tell him we'd paid for a return fare that morning, but he didn't understand saying "25Rs up, 25Rs down". I paid him and went up to my room.

Andy and Jon returned at 3:45pm, Andy having bought a chess set off a street seller for what he thought was a good price but later turned out not to be. Andy then proceeded to tell me how he and Jon had only paid 10Rs for the auto-rickshaw back to the hotel. They had agreed a fare of 10Rs before getting in, but when they got to the hotel the driver wanted 30Rs. They paid him 10Rs and walked away.

Five minutes later the doorbell went. It was the receptionist, informing us that the auto-rickshaw driver wanted 30Rs. They explain the story to the receptionist and he tells the driver in Hindi. The receptionist informs us the normal fare is 30Rs, but Jon and Andy wouldn't be beaten. There was a stand off until the auto-rickshaw driver walked out of the hotel, accepting he'd lost this one. The receptionist returned to his post and we watched some more Popeye and Scooby Doo (in Hindi). I played chess against Andy and lost, while watching Jeremy Clarkson's Extreme Machines on BBC World.

We decided to go for our meal at 8:15pm. We asked a jeep leaving the hotel for a lift into Manali and he agreed for a fee. We were dropped in the main market square, from where we walked up the street. After some time, Alan checked the guidebook for he was unsure as to whether Johnson's Café, the place where we wanted to eat, was further on or whether we'd passed it. It turned out to be further on so we kept on walking. On reaching the place we had the usual standoff: no one wanted to go in first. Very quickly someone would get fed up, brave the unknown and take the initiative and open the door and walk in. We would all follow, me last just in case it was one of those restaurants we didn't like and would embarrassingly walk straight out of. It was pizzas all round, except for Steve, who had trout. The pizzas were not as we were used to back in England, but they were very nice nevertheless. The waiter saw Steve's wallet had fallen from his pocket, so he picked it up and returned it to him. That would have been a good one, if our finance officer had lost his wallet containing all his money. Puddings followed, even for those who couldn't finish their pizzas, which I thought was a little excessive. The crème caramel went down a treat. The bill was settled and we caught auto-rickshaws back to the hotel at 10:30pm after walking down to the main square. Andy wasn't feeling too great so he went straight to bed.