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Tagne 2001 |
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Dan's DiaryDay 41 - Tuesday 7th August 2001
The alarm went off at the arranged time of 6:10am, but almost as soon as I had switched it off I was back in a deep sleep. It was 6:38 when I next came round, awakening to the sound of the doorbell. It was the man from Zingaro Travels checking that we were up and ready to leave. Knowing that time was short we got dressed and threw everything into our rucksacks, not in a mad rush but there was certainly no time to feel tired anymore. We were just about ready to leave by 7am. The room was cleared of bags and checked for anything that might have been left behind. The bags were then ferried down the stairs and loaded onto the waiting coach. We waited for Steve to show himself from the bathroom, but in the end we got fed up of waiting. We went downstairs and sat in the reception and were there so long they even had time to make and bring us a cup of tea. It was 7:50am by the time we all piled into the coach. It pulled out of the hotel car park and turned right taking the only road out of Manali and down the valley. The road followed the Beas river as it weaved it way along the lush green valley. Apple trees thrived in these fertile soils, being almost pulled down by the weight of their own fruit. Small fields of seven-foot high maize plants lay on the flat alluvial plains. Old river cliffs bursting with rounded boulders were grey scars on the thriving greenery. Our journey through Kullu saw none of the hold ups experienced on the way up and as a consequence the town seemed much smaller than our initial visit. We stopped outside a roadside dhaba and had a Paneer (cheese) pancake type thing, which was hot and spicy and surprisingly nice for breakfast. By 10am we were on the road again, noting the decrease in kilometres on the road signs. We soon left the mountain valleys and entered a region of rolling hills. The road became wider and better tarmacked and we were able to reach a good speed. We stopped near a large artificial canal belonging to a HEP scheme for lunch. Chicken curry was on the menu, and after an unusually long wait for service for a dhaba, we got our meal.
The road still followed the rivers for as long as possible. They were wide and flat, their power hidden by their enormity. After a while the road climbed gently up the valley side, only to drop down again, crossing a bridge over the river, before ascending up the other side. The road climbed up and up, giving us a view for hundreds of kilometres into the hazy flat plain in front of us. We entered a small village and then had to do a U-turn because the turning we wanted was too tight for our coach from the direction we were coming from. We were back onto a single-track tarmac road with passing places. We met first a truck and then a coach on one narrow stretch and ended up reversing back up out of the way of both. I felt that we were going nowhere fast. The road soon widened with gravel on either side of the single lane of tarmac, hence no more reversing was required. However our coach would never slow down when we pulled over on to the gravel to let another vehicle that was coming in the opposite direction past. Hitting the potholes and bricks that littered this lane at high speed resulted in my behind frequently leaving the seat. We passed many fields containing what looked like giant beehives, the size of small huts. These were haystacks. The red clay soils were being excavated in many places, to be made into bricks. Piles of dried bricks stood scattered all over the ground. Many women were busy working in the fields, picking crops. Huge bundles of grass could be seen walking along the side of the road; hidden underneath would be a teenage girl. We passed a dry river valley, where cattle drank from the few remaining stagnant pools. Further on we went through a small village. The women were cleaning the laundry by the side of a stream while the children splashed joyously in the river. Broken motorcycles and rickshaws lay in roadside garages waiting to be repaired. Two men fought to change the front wheel of their truck. A group of middle-aged men sat in a café staring at the passing vehicles. A few people sat in their sheds watching the world go by, waiting for those all-important customers, and an elderly gentleman with a large beard sat on a stool all alone. We stopped for a drink, not long after passing the place where we had stopped to eat on our journey up. I ordered a cold bottle of coke to try and counteract the increasing heat and humidity.
We had been back on the road for an hour or so before we reached the outskirts of Chandigarh. They had just had a huge downpour, and there were occasional big puddles that covered the width of the roads. It was getting dark but it was still extremely busy. A man and his wife passed us on a motorcycle. The woman was sitting sideways on the back clutching a tiny baby. None of them were wearing crash helmets. Our bus driver wasn't sure of the way so he stopped and asked a bystander. He couldn't understand so in the end our driver paid a rickshaw driver to lead us to the Hotel Pankaj. As we pulled up into the parking lot, the roof-rack caught an overhead wire, pulling it down. Several people started shouting and the bus stopped. A lengthy palaver followed before the driver's mate got out and climbed a tree to extricate the bus. The coach was unloaded and our bags were taken up to the hotel. Our room was nice and cool, being air conditioned, compared to the sticky environment outside. We sorted out our things and asked a member of staff for a mattress, as there were only two beds in each of two rooms. We decided to have tea at the restaurant under the hotel. I visited the coach as I had left my camera behind when unpacking it. Narinder and Deui decided that the restaurant was too expensive for them so they went and ate elsewhere. I ordered a Muli kofta, with naan and rice, which turned out to be a nice vegetable-and-cheese-parcel curry. Once all the coke and mineral water had been drunk we paid and went back upstairs to our rooms at around 10pm. There was no mattress in our room so we took one we found on the landing. Before long three room service staff were helping to make up the extra bed. They saw that the fan wasn't working and kicked a man out of an adjacent room and gave it to us. I did appreciate their hospitality but I couldn't help but feel slightly guilty. We were told to leave our rucksacks in our old room so we just let them get on with moving the mattress to the new one. The TV in the new room was better but the electrics were worse, with Jon receiving a shock from one of the switches by his bed. We set about getting some sleep after a long day traveling and an early start in the morning.
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© Copyright Steve Jolly 2001. |
