Around Manali

In Summer Manali gets incredibly busy, but it’s amazing how quickly you can get out of it all. Just a few metres into the apple orchards and you’ll be on your own, apart from the occasional villager working in the fields, with the sounds of the river, birds and insects as a backdrop.

Surrounding villages

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	Goshal village

Sure, trekking is a big thing around here, but since we are basically lazy, we haven’t caught the vicious trekking-frenzy-virus. Instead it’s just nice to go for little walks around here, and to surrounding villages, one of which, for example, is Goshal, a 30 min to 2 hours walk from Old Manali (depending which way you go and how many fag breaks or "natural beauty appreciation stops" you have). It’s very pretty with it’s traditional wooden houses; concrete hasn’t made as big an advance here yet as just 2 km north in Manali. Since the only way you can get there is by foot, it’s quiet. An old rickety narrow bridge leads over the Beas river to the main road at the less idyllic village of Bahang, which basically is one of the many military camps around here.

Solang valley

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Solang Nalla in summer

Driving further north up this road, you’ll get to the village of Palchan, where there’s one of the rare turn offs on this "National Highway". This leads up to Solang, which in winter is a skiing area (it definitely can’t be called a popular skiing resort). It has a small slope for absolute beginners, it’s extension is probably good only for advanced or suicidal skiing fanatics, since it leads through a lot of trees. The small drag lift, only a few metres long in any case, seems to be used only for the skiing classes, everybody else has to climb up under their own steam – and no cosy ski hut which serves hot punch awaits them on top – so, not quite like the Alps then. We were told that people can be carried up by donkeys, as an appropriate substitute for a ski-lift, but we didn’t see any when we were there. Instead there were lots of sledges pushed by two to four people – depending on the number and size of the passengers and the steepness of the hill – but only a couple of VIPs were pushed up the small skiing beginners hill.

In summer and early winter Solang is popular for its Shivling – " the icy dick" as Woody calls it. It’s a small icy hump, in which you can see only with a lot of imagination any resemblance with the penis of Shiva (Shiva lingam), Shiva being the god of destruction and reconstruction, a lingam a phallus symbol.

Rohtang pass

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	Around "snow point"

Following the main road at Palchan for another 30 km or so will get you to Rohtang Pass (Rohtang means "pile of dead bodies" in Tibetan. Closed for about 7 months of the year (due to snow) this is one of the two gateways for the remote areas of Ladakh and Zanskar (the other being via Kashmir). At an altitude of roughly 4000 m it’s chilly even in summer. There’s a kind of a big open barren plain up there with brilliant views onto the surrounding snow capped mountains. The small lake there would just add to the beauty if it wasn’t for the Indian passion for "tourist facilities" and "tourist amenities" which shows in form of a plastic swan paddle boat on the lake. In late summer (when we went) about a km further down along the road (or a few hundred metres by foot) is "snow point". "Snow point" is the destination for most Indian tourists in Manali, of which so many have never seen snow before. It moves with the season and the snowline, in winter the "official" point is Solang Valley, with the coming spring it moves further up the road (and mountains) first to Kothi village, later in early summer to Marhi. The road is lined with hundreds of shops or stalls hiring out wellington boots, gloves and synthetic fur coats in all shades of unbelievable colours. I have no idea who would actually manufacture these kind of coats, in Europe you’d be hard pushed to find anybody going even to a fancy dress party wearing such a monster.

Naggar, the old Capital

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Storm clouds in Naggar

About an hours drive from Manali (20 km to the South on the east bank of the Beas river) is the very pleasant village of Naggar. It’s fairly popular with visitors who come to see the castle – evidence of Naggar’s former glory days as capital of the Kullu Kingdom, now a Himachal Pradesh Tourism Hotel. From the castle’s inexpensive restaurant you have an excellent view over the valley; after staying so long in Old Manali it’s odd to be at a place where you can see the river but not hear it. Up on a hill is the Krishna Mandir, an old style temple, well worth visiting. Behind it a path leads first through some forest, then a steep hill up to a wide flat (-ish) meadow with wild flowers and a beautiful view. As we were told by a friend (thank you, Judith), it’s possible to walk all the way from Naggar to Kullu (20 km by road) along a ridge on the hills. We’ll have to try that – maybe this summer?

Another sight-seeing spot is the Roerich gallery, a little outside the village, which shows the art of the late Nicholas Roerich, a Russian painter of International repute, who lived in Naggar and died in the 1940s. Masses of paintings made in his exrensive travls in the Himalayas, under all kinds of different light conditions are displayed. A sort of Himalayan JMW Turner?