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May 31, 2004
A man of the peopleIndian politics has more than its fair share of characters, but even by Indian standards Laloo Prasad Yadav is as colourful and contraversial as they come. His recent appointment as Railway minister was the biggest surprise of the new Manmohan Singh led Congress governement. The former chief minister of India's most disastrous state, impoverished and corruption ridden Bihar (his wife, Rabri Devi now has the job), Laloo sees himself as very much a man of the people and is loved, loathed or ridiculed in equal measure. He travelled to Pakistan last year as part of a goodwill delegation of politicians trying to cement relations between the two battling neighbours, and proved a massive hit with the Pakistani press and public who were taken with his straight talking and down to earth style. His inclusion in the delegation was seen in India as something of a live hand grenade which could explode in the right place or blow up in India's face. On meeting one of Pakistan's Generals, Laloo pronounced that the guy was the spit and image of Saddam Hussein. A picture accompanying the article showed the two laughing together.
Ever the populist, he has already made his mark on the Railway ministry with a decision that will be applauded by enviromentally minded or nostalgic foreign travellers and Indians alike; replacing the plastic chai cups now used on the railways with the old style earthenware cup, or kullar. For years people have bemoaned the increasing disappearance of the biodegradable kullar on the railways, and complained about the trails of plastic that now litter the railway lines from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Previous railway Ministers have balked at banning plastic cups for fear of trouble from the powerful plastics industry, although with rising awareness of the problems of plastic waste in India the move to restore kullars has long been on the cards, awaiting someone with the willpower to make the change.
The change will also be of economic benefit to Laloo's natural constituency, India's poor. Millions of these disposable cups will be used everyday, and supplying the railways with kullars will offer employment opportunities to those who do not benefit from India's economic reforms. India's elite habitually sees Laloo as something of a clown, but this particular piece of political acumen will appeal directly to those voters who so recently rejected the BJPs vision of "India shining".
The state of Himachal Pradesh placed a ban on plastic bags less than 70 microns thick last year, a move that has been largely effective. Reusable jute bags are now available everywhere, and an industry has sprung up supplying glued newspaper bags to shops to replace the plastic bags. The only downside for the shopkeepers is that the paper bags are more than twice the price of plastic.
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May 25, 2004
Where are the punters?Old Manali business owners seem to be a nervous lot these days; numbers not up to expectations, and restaurants and guest houses are running at far below capacity and trekking bookings are below previous years. The fact that the last two years have not been too good has probably contributed to the long faces, and more than a few people are wondering if Manali has really lost its shine for western backpackers. Their distress must be all the worse for the fact that Indian domestic tourism is in a big boom period, and only just down the road in the bazaar traders and hoteliers are raking the cash in.
The 2002 season was a total disaster for the village; a combination of the sectarian riots in Gujarat and the tense nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan meant business was slow at the start of the season, and collapsed entirely when tensions mounted to a peak in late May and Embassies were issuing serious warnings to their nationals to get the hell out. A few Israeli travellers who were reluctant to leave were apparently persuaded by parental threats to withhold credit card payments, while others just didn't fancy getting fried. The net effect was that in June of 2002, there were fewer travellers than would normally be here in October.
Last year started very badly, with business at the beginning of June at low levels more often seen at the end of April - the very early part of the season - although bookings picked up when trekking season started in July. There was no particular reason, although Kasol (only 70 km away) was completely packed out and it looked like that was to be the place to be. Manali would periodically fill up when a party was due, then empty again one it was over, the crowds heading back for Kasol. No parties; no Israelis, and the fact that Manali police were making the parties difficult to organise hurt local people badly. In Kasol the police were causing less problems. In desperation, a few restaurants and guest houses chipped in to organise a party just to draw the crowds.
This year seems to be much the same. We took a walk up to the chowk by Dragon Guest house - normally the busiest part of Old Manali and most of the cafes were quite empty, with few people sitting on guest house balconies. Rajiv at Cafe Manalsu has a cheshire cat grin that is usually a good barometer of earning levels, and his smile has been at half mast for weeks in spite of his new wood fired pizza oven.
One again, Kasol is apparently full of all the people, mostly Israeli, who would have been packing the Cafes here only a few years ago. I can only remember Kasol from 8 years ago when it seemed like a tiny village with only a few basic hotels set idyllically under the trees, and I cant imaging how much building must have gone on to accommodate the masses that put in brief appearances in Old Manali. One guest at our place headed off to Dharamsala yesterday and discovered the place so packed out she literally couldn't find a room in McCleod Ganj or Bhagsu, and so gave up and came back to Manali.
The recent Indian election cant have helped much. Traditionally Indian tourists occupy the main town (known as New Manali or "market") and pack every hotel in May and June, while westerners stay in Old Manali or Vashisht. But according to the papers, the Indian tourists were late this year on account of the elections, and as many hotels in town often have better facilities than in the village, many westerners stayed there.
The strange weather must have played a part in driving people away. The last few days have been miserably wet and cold with violent thunderstorms and wind, while Kasol and Dharamsala have had good weather. The weather has generally been screwy this year. March and early April is usually the time for storms, cold weather and high winds, while May should be scorching. This year was back to front and March was mild and pleasant - we didn't use the Tandoor more than a couple of times - while May has more than a passing resemblance to a traditional English summer.
Every year Manali (old and new) adds many more guest houses, hotels and shops and the image of the place slips a little further from that of the small quiet Himalayan town that western backpackers crave, and with prices rising to pay for the extra development, its crediblity as a "budget" destination is further stretched. Some parts of the main town are now not merely unattractive, they are thoroughly disgusting, with the lower part of town close to the Tibetan Gompa looking like a bad East German housing estate, with hotels so close together you could watch the TV in the neighbouring hotel from your balcony. There is in theory some restriction on building imposed by the NAC, or notified area committee, (a sort of town council) but its difficult to see where they are put into practice. The fact that the buildings always have a half finished look, with loose reinforcing iron sprouting from every roof, doesn't help matters.
Old Manali is not quite so drastic as yet, but doesn't even have the same feeble regulation as New Manali. If you have a piece of land, you can build whatever you want, and as landowners usually have several fairly small plots of land, the only way to build more rooms is to go straight up. Think of the phrase "small Himalayan village" and it doesn't immediately conjure images of 4 storey hotels, but Old Manali has quite a few of this height or more, most of which have a rather unappealing concrete look, not to mention wall to wall restaurants, Internet cafes and shops. Every one who has land has either built on it, wants to build on it when they have the money, or would happily do a lucrative deal so that someone else can build on it. Next to the road, any self respecting villager with more than six square feet has built a garage like concrete box to be rented out as a shop for increasingly bizarre amounts of money to Kashmiris, traders from Pushkar or one of the current cluster of Falafel shops. If tourist numbers are really in decline, the tourist rupee is going to be spread rather thin, it is going to be extremely hard to earn worthwhile amounts of money and traders will move to greener pastures with lower rents, leaving local landlords with a good few choices of where to park their hard earned cars and scooters. Empty shops simply give the place an unattractive and deserted look hardly likely to encourage travellers to hang around.
In seeking to develop its tourist business, Himachal could learn much from the long history of tourism in Kashmir, which has been out of the game for 15 years as major competition to Himachal Pradesh, but with the current outbreak of peace it may not be long before they are snapping at Manali's heels for tourist cash. Kashmiris have been in the business a long, long time, and the thing I really remember about the place was that they understand the value of their land as the asset that draws the crowds, and have a fair few regulations to make sure it stays beautiful enough to pull the punters in. The only way you can build a new house boat on Dal Lake is if your old one has fallen apart; the number permitted is fixed. In the outlying areas such as Gulmarg, there are restrictions on the type of buildings that can be put up such as traditional slope roofed houses, in order to preserve the look of the landscape. Imposing such regulation may make building more expensive in the short term, and may prevent some places being built on at all, but it is surely better than shooting yourself in the foot and having no tourists to fill the concrete boxes.
The road to tourist nirvana is paved with empty towns who got it all wrong. Spain managed to turn fair chunks of its coastline into building sites that the punters eventually abandoned in droves. Some Greek islands went much the same way and further south in India some bits of Goa are beginning to look decidedly iffy. And then of course there is Kovalam, the mere mention of which must make concrete magnate RK Shetty smile happily and pour another generous celebratory scotch.
Its very hard - and harsh - to blame local people for what is happening to places like Manali, even if they are the ones doing the building. It is not very far in the past that this village was, like much of Himachal Pradesh, a fairly poor place where people did mainly agricultural work and any cash income came largely from the apple crop. The fact that everyone wants a slice of the tourism pie is scarcely a surprise, and it is unreasonable to expect individuals to show restraint in building more rooms when they see their neighbours making twice as much cash because they have twice as many rooms. People as individuals generally do what is best for themselves, not necessarily for their community. If the guest houses were built in the traditional stone and wood style the impact would be less drastic, but concrete is affordable and wood is now a prohibitively expensive commodity, and in any case there would be no forest left if every guest house had pine panelled rooms. Stone cutting is a skill now in serious decline in the area, and the costs make such work available only to the very well off.
Development of tourism is something that needs an overview, a vision and a plan - a good plan - and in the future Himachal Pradesh as a whole is going to suffer badly from a lack of the framework neccessary to create a tourism industry that is sustainable and not just a short term boom and bust. The current problems are exacerbated by severe water shortages in major tourist centres, and other aspects of the infrastructure also groan under the weight of demand during peak times. Rubbish is becoming an major problem and in Old Manali and the surrounding villages their is simply no plan at all to deal with the rising piles of debris clogging nallahs like the one in Siyal village.
I generally prefer Manali in the wintertime when it is quiet and peaceful, but many of the people who run these businesses are good friends, and much as I like the peace of a low tourist season, I also hate seeing their long gloomy faces, and would happily see the place packed if it meant they were not losing money. Tourism has fickle tastes; this years backpacking mecca is tomorrows concrete ghost town and it would be a sad thing if Manali really is in decline as a destination for of backpackers, as it just wont be an option to tear down the four storey hotels and start all over again.
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Travel in style and comfortFor those with money to burn and a loathing of Indian bus travel there is a new super deluxe service recently inaugurated by HRTC (Himachal Pradesh Road Transport Corporation) and running from Delhi to all the major destinations in Himachal including Manali, Dharamasala and Shimla. For around 850 Rs per seat, you get aircon, a toilet and onboard refreshments and hopefully a bit more legroom (or less reclining seats) than the Himachal Tourism bus. Apparently the service is proving especially popular with Gujarati tourists, and it is impossible to get a same day seat during the tourist season. Bookings can be made through HRTC counters at bus stations in the state and in Delhi.
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May 21, 2004
Rohtang pass - theme park at 3995 metresThe first two British adventurers to cross the Rohtang pass sometime in the late 19th century did so on foot in the early winter and paid for the experience with their lives. Not for nothing does the name Rohtang mean "pile of dead bodies" in Tibetan. 100 odd years later, the whole experience of visiting the pass is far more civilised, and visitors are less likely to die from dysentary than from the unhealthy mixture of psychotic taxi drivers and large drops.
I felt like dying would be a pleasant alternative to tourism as we piled into the taxi at 7am for a fun day out up at Rohtang; my pounding head and greasy guts were the legacy of a few days of house to house booze consumption during the festival - and 7am is in any case something I studiously avoid unless necessary. In this case it was required in order to beat the large an inexplicable traffic jams that spontaneously develop on the twisting 51 km road to the pass. In the event, half of the tourist population of Manali had had the same idea and the road had the feel of the M25 in rush hour before we had passed Bahang, the air full of blaring horns as jeeps packed with impatient Punjabis roared past us.
The water at the Nehru Kund spring is famous; the kind of bright tasting crystal clear water only found in mountains, and so good that a friend we regularly drink with will drive to the spring especially to get a few litres to mix the whisky with. We stopped and filled our bottles, the cold water waking us up a bit and putting a dent in the hangover.
All the way from Manali to the top, the road is lined with what must be the fastest growth industry in the area; shops offering to hire "snowline equipment" to excited Indian tourists, many of whom come from hot parts of the country and have never seen snow, and so are a little unsure of the equipment needed for surviving the rigours of such high altitudes. The shops are happy to help these impressionable souls out, and offer such essentials as wellington boots, ski sticks, and vast fake fur coats in an exciting range of colours such as metallic green, screaming red, and the kind of psychadelic purple Jimi Hendrix had in mind when he wrote "purple haze". Some of the more sophisticated shops have ploughed back their profits and offer padded ski suits similar to the kind favoured by police marksmen, the net effect being to give Gujarati families the collective appearance of a large (and slightly unfit) Metropolitan police Armed Response Unit.
The road up to Rohtang is spectacular, with something new and outrageously beautiful to see at every turn of the road. The river plunging through a deep gorge surrounded by pine forest; mountain meadows at Kothi with a view onto the edge of the Solang valley; the (somewhat denuded) forest at Gulaba, more dense on the opposite bank beyond the reach of the loggers, with the acres of stumps left from "the Foresters Folly" still rotting among the young Fir trees planted later. At the iron bridge before Marhi, the landscape begins to change and become more barren, steep walls of bare rock rising above the stony river bed as the treeline falls behind.
Marhi is less of a village, and more of a high altitude motorway service area, packed from end to end with dhabas selling breakfast and lunch to the hordes of daytrippers that pass each day. As we drove in, we were waved down by a guy with a ticket book. Jamie in the front wound down the window;
"Ticket, twenty rupees" said the guy with the book.
"What for" says the slightly suspicious Jamie, his nerves perhaps still a little edgy from his bizarre dream the night before in which Tibetan Buddhist terrorists had inexplicably bombed Penzance High Street.
"Car parking charge", said the ticket wallah without a trace of irony.
A less charitable phrase for Marhi might be high altitude clip joint, but we paid anyway and parked up on a twenty rupee patch of dirt and headed for a couple of chai and a look at the view from the temple. The view back toward Palchan is something else, framed by three prayer flags and a white stupa and with a few horses grazing in the meadow in front of the temple. The chai was inevitably made to the approved standard of the Kullu Chai Mafia; plenty sugar, little milk, less tea with an appropriate a high altitude surcharge added, doubtless to pay for a few extra concrete dhabas to enhance the scenery. Places like Marhi always evoke mixed feelings; on the one hand I am always grateful for chai, on the other it is always a shame when the places that sell it have such a negative impact on otherwise beautiful places. Still, we buy, so we are also the problem.
A read of the Indian press will reveal the cunning strategies the boffins at government tourism development have. One article claimed that what the average tourist really craved was more "facilities", such as "car parks and gardens" One day soon, doubtless Marhi will boast a fine asphalt car park after they've sold a few million more twenty rupee tickets.
The last 17 km to the pass offer perhaps the most stunning views. A look off the steep roadside drops reveals piles of massive boulders strewn down the hill, one of the largest intact pieces about the size of a small multi storey car park. Small streams cascade down the rocks in mini waterfalls, passing under the road through culverts to continue on down the mountain. There is far less snow than usual, but close to the pass huge dirty patches line the roads. On some, passing Indian tourists have carved their names and messages of undying love in two foot high letters.
Apart from the stream of passing cars the road to the pass is awesome, and the mind concentrates on the fantastic scenery; Jamie used the phrase "bloody hell" frequently, so I think he must have been impressed. Arriving at the top is therefore all the more of a shock to the system, as you are suddenly faced with an oddly surreal and nightmareish high altitude Disneyworld theme park of "full facilities" which starts with the packed (currently asphalt free) car park, passes an endless line of tea stalls and moves into the major entertainment full of horses, human powered wooden sledges, snowmobiles, people in ultraviolent purple fake fur coats wobbling on skis and most bizarrely, vendors of bright pink candy floss. All this parked somewhat improbably 3995 metres up a rather large snow covered Himalayan hillside of the kind more normally associated with (non terrorist) Tibetan Buddhist monks peaceably meditating in solitude, away from the temptations of the world in the realm where the eagles soar. Had he seen this, Dante might well have considered adding an Eighth Circle of Hell.
It must be the effect of living in a large country with a massive population that convinces Indian tourists that the best way to enjoy the peace and quiet of the mountains is to recreate the aura of a packed plains town and fill it with noise. Perhaps there is an inbuilt fear of an agraphobic attack if they are not surrounded by at least 5,000 other people and the debris of a conspicuously good time. Rohtang these days has a major rubbish problem. A couple of years ago, a voluntary group came up and did a day of rubbish collection in an effort to return some element of nature to the pass. They filled a truck with ten tons of waste; plastic cups, empty mineral water bottles, chocolate wrappers etc and the HP government made a plea to tourists not to spoil the beauty of the Himalaya. At a roadblock on the way up, day trippers are handed jute bags for which they are charged 10 Rs, supposedly to collect their own rubbish and do their civic duty by collecting some of other peoples too. The bags no doubt become rubbish in their own right, as two years on, piles of garbage are strewn over the pass, with the biggest concentrations covering the large grassy areas behind the dhabas, the only contribution to cleaning the place up coming from the few crows sifting out the juicier bits of organic debris.
Some of the organisers of trekking groups and school parties on camping expeditions try hard to reinforce the "clean enviroment" message to their customers, and the message is received well in particular by young people in school parties. But the idea of not dropping litter is relatively new in Indian society, and most visitors just to what they would do at home in Amritsar or Delhi and drop their waste where they stand, although I would guess the tea stalls are still the biggest polluters. Rubbish strewn streets are an enduring image of Indian towns, but it is in the mountains that it is most clear that India must face up to the problem before it drowns under a sea of waste.
Rohtang pass has an odd, igloo shaped temple made of brick that marks the source of the River Beas, with a small stream running along the front of the temple, cutting a path through the melting snow and heading off down the hillside. A woman was washing clothes nearby in what must be ice cold water. Even at 4,000 metres life goes on.
We headed off into the chaotic crowd of holidaymakers to have a better look, dodging the mad high speed snowmobiles that roared around the flat area, their shrieking passengers enjoying a ride of a lifetime. Most people had never seen snow let alone stood on skis, so the ski rental boys were doing a good business. The mode of ski lessons is a little unorthodox. The guy renting the skis and sticks will stand behind the novice, pushing them along, usually bending over and pushing their feet or rear of the skis, sometimes pushing them uphill for a hundred metres or so. The effect is probably more like a ski simulator than skiing, but it goes down well enough. A few brave souls try a bit of downhill on a gentle slope in the thickest part of the mass of people, and the odd collision is inevitable. Other take the easy approach and hire one of the two seat blue painted wooden sledges with painted names like "Indian Express" and a push bar at the back, something like a pushchair on skis. The owners push their customers up the gentle hill, then shove like crazy on the way down to give them a fast ride, running full tilt behind the sledge. Horse treks are offered up to the mysteriously named "zero point", lines of 3 or 4 horses led along by the owners.
If I had any worries that the Saffron Boys were missing in Manali this year, they were dispelled after 5 minutes up at the pass. It was hard to walk more than five metres without a group of 2 or 3 Rajasthani kids optimistically offering, "Good saffron from Kashmir, very cheap price, best quality". Sure. Failing that they would launch into a sales pitch extolling the virtues of deers testicles (musk) or amber.
We walked toward the other side of the pass that is the gateway to Lahaul, Spiti and Ladakh. Rohtang pass is really wide flat plain with a few small rises that sits in a gap between the higher peaks, with the road running through the middle. On the further side the crowd thinned out, and it was almost tranquil enough for a Buddhist monk, or at least one with low expectations who had been brought up in an urban environment. On top of a low rise, a pile of Buddhist prayer flags was emerging from the melting snow, the support poles having been brought down over the winter.
The mountains on the far side are a truly awesome sight, a tiny taste of what awaits the traveller headed further to Ladakh or Spiti. On the far side the pass drops away sharply toward the villages of Khoksar and Gramphoo. On our previous visit we could clearly see a small glacier nestled between two large peaks, but this time it seemed a fraction of its former size, following the trend of the apparently diminishing Himalayan glaciers. We stood for a while a gazed in awe, the delicate silence broken only by revving motors and blaring horns of jeep taxis jostling to get out of the secondary mini car park on this side of the pass, in contravention of the "no tourist vehicles beyond this point" notice on the road on the Manali side. A deaf Buddhist monk could well have expressed deep satisfaction at this point, provided he hadn't turned round.
About noon a stiff cold wind began to blow and clouds began to form. From tshirt weather it quickly became "why the hell did I leave my fleece in the taxi" weather, so we headed back to the car stopping for chai and a last gawp at the extraordinary circus still in swing on the plain on the Manali side. Day coach tours from Manali only leave at about 10 am, and by the time we started to drive down at two, the road in the opposite direction was packed with buses full of people determined to prove that open space and silence do nothing to enhance the mountain experience.
With the tourist season over and the snow melted the entertainments disappear Rohtang becomes a fairly peaceful place once more. To experience the strange madness of a Himalayan theme park, now is the time, but to see it at its most serene with some Buddhist fundamentalist friends, put on several layers of clothes and go in mid September when it is almost empty.
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May 15, 2004
Dhungri melaToday was the first day of the Hadimba festival, held in the forest around the Hadimba temple in Dhungri, close to Old Manali. The festival celebrates the birthday of Hadimba Mata, incarnation of Kali, and the chief of the Gods of the Kulu Valley. Apart from the huge gathering for Dussehra in Kullu, this festival is the largest of the village festivals held around the valley at this time of year; an occasion for the people of the area to let their hair down, celebrate religion and culture - and drink too much.
Yesterday evening, Hadimba's statue was brought up to the temple in a long procession that wound its way slowly through Old Manali village, stopping briefly for villagers to give flowers, before climbing the steps to the pagoda style temple in Dhungri forest for a brief puja (prayer) and a meeting with two other god statues from nearby villages. The statue was kept in the Dhungri temple overnight, and brought out today for the "chota mela" (small festival) that precedes the main events on Sunday and Monday. The chota mela is in many ways preferable to the main mela, mainly because it is far less crowded than the chaos of the main day, making it easier to get closer to events and see in some detail what is going on. After Sundays main day at the Hadimba temple, the festival will move onto the ground behind the Manu temple on Monday, altogether a more relaxed atmosphere devoid of the commercial aspects of Dhungri.
This is now the sixth Dhungri mela I've been to, but every year I go it still amazes me how much I have forgotten or just dont really understand. The rituals of Hinduism in the Kulu valley are quite unique, so unlike those of much of the rest of India that trying to make sense of what is going on is really uphill work. Knowing people to ask questions of helps, and we spent the afternoon with a friend, Thakur Das, who is pretty good at getting to the nitty gritty of such matters, and has had three years practice good humouredly answering all the inane and ridiculous questions we can throw at him.
The area of stalls and entertainments around the mela ground grows in size every year, and this year for the first time several tented restaurants selling tikki and chana masala appeared, more usually a feature of Dussehra. This is the season for parents to really indulge their kids, and the market area is packed with stalls selling plastic toys, games and cuddly toys. One stall even had a load of Teletubbies, the toy that was in such short supply a few christmases ago that British parents were beating each other up to get hold of one. Thakur Das referred to it all as the "Dhungri plastic market". Behind the tiered seating was an eco friendly "mini" big wheel, doing a good business. No problem with power cuts as this version is human powered, the owner standing in the hub and "running" along the spokes to get up momentum.
I've waxed lyrical about Kulu Valley festival pakora before in this blog, but the stall we found today was a real world beater; fresh, perfectly cooked with just a little jeera, although the odd bit of red chilli was a bit of a shock even to Thakur Das's system. Somehow, good pakora here seems to be limited to festivals - especially in Dhungri and Old Manali - and one special chai shop next to the bus stand in Patlikuhal. The stuff sold in new Manali somehow never really cuts the mustard; too dry and rather flavourless.
I remember asking a friend at his village festival in Jagatsukh about the lack of drink. He sniffed contemptuously, "Old manali people only like drinking, we're not like that". The usual village rivalry. But the Jagatsukh crowd will be as enthusastic as everyone else to come and pay a visit to relatives and friends in Manali during the Hadimba festival. Village festivals are usually small affairs, attended by the residents of the village plus those of the villages whose gods are also invited. But Dhungri mela is different, partly due to the status of Hadimba and the size of the festival, with a large part due to the reputation of Old Manali villagers as being fond of a drink or six. For months the villagers have been stocking up on locally made rice wine and rice beer and laying in a few bottles of "english wine", (as whisky is known locally) to cater for the many guests that will appear on Sunday and Monday expecting a drink and a good feed. The visitors, who come from all across the upper Kullu Valley, often have several houses to visit, and the whole thing becomes a sort of Himlayan pub crawl with front rooms substituting for pubs. Some people will stay over for both the Sunday and Monday, while many from further away will nurse their hangovers in the comfort of their own beds.
I am very partial to the local rice wine; the really good stuff my landlord gets from Goshal village is naturally made, very clear and clean and leaves you with little more than a thick head. But the best I have had is a drink called Sur (pronouced soor), made by the Pujari (temple official) of nearby Prini village, and sadly not easy to find this side of the Beas river. Its made from herbs found somewhere on the hillside and has the appearance of the local apple juice, with a fruity but slightly spiced taste. It is also has the virtue of being hideously strong and tastes nothing like booze, inducing an especially happy kind of pissed I normally associate with a decent english bitter such as Youngs.
In all, the festival is a great time to be around Manali; tourists, both Indian and foreign, get to see a real spectacle, the local people get a chance to celebrate the life of the Himalaya and to catch up with friends and relatives, and Old Manali will be full of happily wobbly people for a few days before the serious business of the summer season starts.
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May 12, 2004
Making moviesThe Kulu Valley has been a big favourite as a movie location for many years, with the number of movies made here increasing dramatically since trouble flared up in in Kashmir in 1989. Few Hindi movies would be complete without some Himalayan scenes, and the near obligatory shots of hero and heroine making gooey eyes at each other around a tree. In many ways the area benefits from the shoots; the Government presumably charges for the use of its land, and the local economy gains when film crews use local restaurants and hotels, often during off season periods when business is in any case slack. One or two local tour operators also make good money acting as guides and location scouts for the media, both film and TV, and we recently saw some shots taken locally during the shooting of still images for car advertisements.
The filming can be a tourist attraction in its own right. If you stumble across a shoot somewhere in the hills, you are likely to see a large crowd hanging around waiting for a glimpse of their favourite star. Our friend Rajiv at Cafe Manalsu in Old Manali was dead chuffed recently when well known actor Bobby Deol came in for lunch with some local friends. It says something about India that Raj was also delighted the megastar paid his bill, presumably having expected him to rely on his fame for a free feed.
But its not all a bed of roses, and in Gulaba village on the Manali to Rohtang road shooting for Amitabh Bachchan's latest movie "Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Sathiyon". is causing an outcry from the villagers, who charge that the film crew are causing damage to the environment. In a report on channelnewsasia.com local people claim that the film crew have cut down trees on a plantation set up by the village, and that the crew have been setting up temporary structures in violation of the Forestry Dept Rules, and also claim the authorities have been lax in enforcing the rules.
The Gulaba area is certainly in need of protection from illicit tree felling. Take a ride up to Rohtang pass and look carefully in the areas off the road around Gulaba and you will see thousands of semi rotten tree stumps in among a few young trees on the now denuded slopes. Gulaba forest, once a 465 hectare area of dense Fir-Spruce interpersed with Oak, was decimated by felling of dubious legality between 1961 and 1974 in a shameful period of the area's history now known as the Foresters Folly. Few of the old trees remain, and the young fir trees planted since have struggled to take hold. The ultimate effect of Foresters Folly has been to alter the micro-climate to the point that it is no longer possible for high altitude tree species to flourish on Gulaba's slopes.
Another less contraversial film crew left a few days ago after a week filming in the Van Vihar forest between Old Manali and market, just the other side of the Manalsu from us. They were shooting night scenes for what appeared to be a war movie, and all night the forest would be lit with bright flood lights casting shadows through theatrical smoke, giving it the look of the temple destruction sequence from Apocalypse Now. The film crew also ran up a huge bill on white powder, and not the kind ingested nasally that is usually associated with the media. The shoot they were doing was evidently supposed to depict a snowy forest, but the rigours of working above the snowline may have been a bit much for the luvvies, so the director was having snow shipped down 35 km from the area below Rohtang Pass by the ton, and artistically arranged over rocks and trees. The problem was that it rained for the first 4 days and they got nothing achieved other than spending a lot of money on snow and getting very wet. When the rain had stopped the shipment of snow was rather dirty, so some bright spark had the idea of spreading salt over the top to get the pristine look, with the inevitable result that the snow melted before anyone could film it. After a week they managed to source some clean looking snow, and finished the shoot with an all night session of rifles firing and much shouting. The weeks shoot was a nice result for Manali's pick up truck owners who supplied the snow. I am told that the whole bill ran between 4 - 5 Lakh (1 lakh=100,000) rupees, or 5 - 6,000 UK pounds.
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The falafel mafiaThe new tourist season seems to have brought a new crop of restaurants and shops to the already crowded streets of Old Manali. Local people who own land next to the road make a tidy sum from renting out land for restaurants or the concrete shop units that line the road almost from the bridge to the temple, and every year seems to add half a dozen more. Last year, many of those in the lower part of the road close to Moondance restaurant lay empty, due to some heavy rent increases from the landlords. One restaurant owner told us his rent had gone up 100 percent in 12 months, and as a result of the rent increases the price of food in Old Manali went up by crazy amounts, often making it cheaper to eat in the main market; on the "momo index" New Manali is now half the price.
But empty shops dont make money, and I can only assume that the rents asked have gone down this year by a substantial amount, as all the shops seem to be filled, mostly with the usual Kashmiris selling jewellery, thankas and psychadelic trousers. Up by the Manu temple, where most customers are Indian tourists, there are 3 or 4 large shops selling shawls which they inevitably claim to be pure wool and locally hand-woven, but, so we are told, are mainly cotton mixed and machine made in Ludhiana in Punjab.
But the largest and strangest growth industry is in the area just above Moondance restaurant, which used to have one small falafel - chips - pita place, but now seems to have acquired half a dozen very temporary looking falafel cafes with near identical menus. Maybe this is the restaurant equivalent of the Saffron boys from Rajasthan, who descend on the town in vast numbers every summer, and hang around in groups of 3 or 4 attempting to sell dyed grass as saffron at improbable prices. I am sure someone flogs them a big bag of the stuff in Rajastan and says "Manali, mate? You'll make a bloody fortune up there, all those tourists with a ton of black money to burn, they love it!". Or words to that effect. Neglecting to mention that every other Rajasthani kid under sixteen will be there too with his little bag, and that every Indian housewife worth her salt knows dodgy saffron when she sees it, and scarcely any foreign traveller would even have a clue what to do with saffron. Charas? No worries. But then, there seems to be a shortage of saffron sellers so far, so perhaps they've upped their game a bit and gone into the falafel lafa business. Certainly the clustering of the new falafel places in a tight, sociable group would be familiar territory for them, although it may not do wonders for their income.
From the half dozen restaurants there were when I first came to old Manali, there must now be 50 or 60, and one day I can see the place becoming like Pokhara in Nepal, a town that must have the highest restaurant to punter ratio anywhere on earth; a place where copying your neighbour has reached epidemic proportions. There are a good few decent, stylish and well established restaurants in Pokhara, and they must have made good business over the years, mainly because they have invested substantially in creating places with atmosphere attractive to the frequently well off tourists on trekking holidays. There are plenty of extremely poor Nepalis in Pokhara too, and they have seen the success of these restaurants and decided they want a slice of the action. Half a dozen tin sheets, two tables, a few chairs and a kerosene stove later another restaurant joins the hundred or so already packed into the dwindling space near the lake front. The problem is that they invariably copy the menu, including the prices, from larger places who have higher costs, and lose the one advantage they would have had over their more stylish neighbours. The choice between 60 nepali Rs for a fixed breakfast in a small sun baked tin hut, or the same price for the same breakfast in a place well appointed enough to attract custom in central London is something of a no brainer for most trekkers.
And so it might become with Manali if this year is anything to go by. This small Himalayan village could one day become the falafel capital of the world, pushing the Corniche in Beirut into a distant second, although I doubt there'll ever be a contest when it comes to quality.
But of the new crop of restaurants in Old Manali, one really stands out, albeit not in the best location. "Tourist Point" restaurant is immediately next to the bridge on the side nearest town, and in addition to being the about the cheapest place in the village, does outstanding food, including the best plate of Hummus I've had in North India and a full menu of Indian dishes, unusual for old Manali these days.
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May 6, 2004
Times they are a changin'In my teens and twenties, like most people of that age, I used to feel close to nausea when some old git in a bar would give it the "Eey oop, things were mooch betta when I wor 't lud", number, which for those whose first language is not Embittered Yorkshire Pisspot means "the modern world is basically crap, the past was fantastic, and life was infinitely superior around the time the German Luftwaffe were rather successfully and regularly turning the city of Sheffield into a 25 mile wide bonfire on a nightly basis". It must be a feature of every generation that it remembers the past with a halcyon glow and views modernity with acute suspicion, while "da yoof" fails spectacularly to comprehend what could possibly have been so interesting or pleasurable about such things as being under a hail of incendinaries 7 nights a week, except for the possible psychadelic visual effects of a citywide firestorm.
So it's depressing as age creeps on and you become old enough to say "I remember twenty years ago..." and to discover that, slowly but inexorably, you yourself are not only looking to the past with nostalgia but becoming that same Old Git, as you bore the tits of "Da Yoof of today" by reciting how much better it all was when beer was 30p a pint and the pubs were open all day when Jug Head married the Sloane Ranger - thats Charles and Di for those who are lucky enough not to have Jug Head as their next head of state.
Perhaps at 41 you are capable of being self conscious and slightly embarrassed to be doing this, until eventually the whole condition just degenerates and by the time you are 60 odd and welded to your bar stool in the Whippet and Black Pudding you are no longer even able to discern the vomit inducing nature of your pronouncements, and actually believe you are doing Da Yoof a favour. Or perhaps it is all a cycle of revenge for tales of the Blitz.
Stay with me, there IS a point to this.
The point is, I find myself increasingly depressed by Manali's vaguely legendary full moon parties, which are quite simply, not what they used to be. I have never been a fan of techno, trance or whatever; I have never seen the talent or interest in repetitive electronic bleeps, but I can see how under the influence of hallucinogens it can be an interesting form of audio wallpaper. But then a washing machine run through Cubase can sound talented and interesting if you have a head full of acid. But still, when I first came to the Kulu Valley 11 odd years ago, I used to love going to the parties via some 3 hour uphill hike with only a vague idea of which direction was right, getting seriously fucked up, and watching blearily as the sun slowly revealed where you actually were, as you counted the number of acid casualties in terms of Israelis that had had a blotter too many and "Lost It". The whole ethos of the thing seemed more important than the music, a throwback to the eighties and the heady days when the Peace Convoy and the free festivals such as Stonehenge were as much a statement of anti - Thatcherism and personal freedom as a musical event.
In the early nineties the parties were usually held well away from civilisation, a long walk up a steep path from the road and therefore a serious inconvenience to any police who wanted to attend in an official capacity. The DJs if I recall were mostly German, and humped their PA around India in a green van, covering the costs of a generator and porters to lug the gear up hills by selling blotters and passing a hat round in the morning, something that usually met a good response. One or two local guys would set up a stall and sell chai and packets of fags or water at a couple of rupees over the odds, for which everyone was more than grateful.
But all good things end, and by the mid nineties the party scene had begun to change. The Germans with the PA seemed to have moved on, and many of the parties began to be organised more with the idea of making money. Perhaps the seminal moment for me was when one party was held close to civilisation at the tennis courts in Bahang, and the organisers had hired a bus to ferry the punters out there at 100 Rs a head. The police started to take a more serious interest, charging more to allow parties to happen, landowners demanded more for the use and abuse of their property. Organisers no longer trusted partygoers to donate adequately and charged punters for entry and stallholders for pitches, all of which seemed somehow anathema to the notion of a collective will to create a more or less spontaneous event. The whole thing began to look rather sadly like another piece of amateur commercialism, a set piece addition to the theme park experience that the travellers scene in the Kulu Valley was rapidly becoming, helped along by the passivity of the newer breed of travellers who seemed to arrive fully expecting that the entertainment would be laid on and all they had to do was turn up and pay. Goa without the beach.
When we arrived back in 2001 after a 4 year absence, we went to one of the parties held on the hill above Dhungri, primarily because Kirsten had never seen one of the parties before. At the end of the path a makeshift entrance had been made up between two trees, staffed by a few local guys (the organisers) who were taking 100 Rs off everyone for entrance. I was astonished to be told that the cops were now demanding 20,000 to let parties happen, hence the door charge. When we walked onto the small plateau where the Himalayan nightclub was being held the first thing that struck me was the sheer number of stalls, mostly laid out on blankets on the grass, but with some of the more enterprising having brought tents. There must have been 30 or so stalls and throughout the night those manning them outnumbered the clubbers about 2 to 1. A far cry from the lone guy with his kerosene stove and 50 packets of Foursquare and gone too was the couple of Rs over the odds; water was being sold for 40 Rs a bottle, a rate of inflation more in line with Londons Hippodrome than a small Himalayan orchard.
And that was the last "full moon" party I ever went to, barring the monthly two person version we have somewhere on the hillside. These days I much prefer chemical laden Indian whisky to chemical soaked blotting paper, and I think I now prefer Manali and the Kulu valley for what it is all year round and not for the laid on and rather contrived entertainment of the summer season.
But in any case, last nights party really took the biscuit. Discretion was always the watchword in the past.; hold the parties away from villages, out of earshot, the word would get round late in the day and hopefully the cops would be none the wiser till it was too late. But this particular underground party had well and truly announced itself in the national media before a single repetitive electronic bleep had been heard.
We knew there was going to be a party on the hill above Rasta cafe, and as we walked up to see the eclipse about midnight, we met a local guy we know who told us that the cops had been up and down to the village all day attempting to stamp the party out. Someone else had already told us that there had been a report in one of the Hindi language newspapers, Amar Ujalla, to the effect that an "Israeli party" was being held in Manali, and that all sorts of drug taking and foreign type debauchery was going to be taking place. It's a popular paper and someone in authority must have seen the article, resulting in some high level arse kicking, hence the cops enthusiastic desire to make sure it didn't happen. When we got to the road that heads toward Manu temple a few travellers were hanging around waiting for someone to point them in the right direction, and off to one side was a medium size white open backed truck with something like "DJ sound systems, Chandigarh" painted in huge black letters on the side, with a phone number underneath. Dead subtle. A sort of 10 foot black and white advert that would leave no sensible Himachal cop in any doubt that a party was somewhere in the area, most likely just above Rasta cafe. And probably the source for the Amar Ujalla article too. The organisers had obviously booked the sound rig in Chandigarh, and someone connected to the PA company knew it was going to be an "Israeli party" and in the way of the Indian rumour mill the word must have got along to his wifes sisters husbands uncles sons best mates cousin who worked as a journo for Amar Ujalla - Chandigarh is a major base for India's press. And so the party ended up being rather more public knowledge than intended
There were more rumours of a second attempt tonight; perhaps an accommodation was reached with the powers that be, but given the publicity, somehow that seems a bit unlikely. There was supposed to be another party in Kasol which for the last couple of years has seemed to be a less hassled enviroment for parties. Certainly a lot of Israelis had left Manali in advance of the full moon, usually a sure sign of a party elsewhere.
I'm sure there are plenty who have been to Manali in the 70s who would pull the Old Git number and tell us all that it was better back then when there was no electricity in the village and nocturnal entertainment was some dysentry ravaged hippie with a harmonica, and that the parties of the 90s were a total sell out. But I'll bet Manali's party entrepreneurs will be fervently hoping they dont hit the headlines with their next "Israeli" extravganza.
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Lunar eclipseWe took a trip up to Manali's old fort last night for the full moon and promised lunar eclipse, armed with one bottle of each of HPMC's excellent apple and plum wines. Given the cloudy nights of the last few weeks, we were lucky, there were only a couple of tiny fluffy clouds in an otherwise crystal clear sky. We weren't exactly holding our breath for the eclipse though; every time we set out to see one - solar or lunar - the sky miraculously clouds over, or the event happens somewhere behind the mountains. In any case it only merited a small paragraph in the Indian papers, so we thought it might be a partial eclipse.
The full moon in any case is enough on its own, and we always try to make it a habit to go somewhere, sit and drink some wine and just watch the valley bathed in silver, the moon light picking out the ribbon of the Manalsu river and glinting off the snow on the peaks off toward Dharamsala. The valley takes on a magical quality, the hillsides are well enough lit to make out detail and make an odd contrast with the warm tungsten lights on village houses nestled on the valley sides. The walk up through Old Manali village has a weird, ethereal quality too. The local people rarely go out at night and its eerie to walk through the perfectly silent village with the moon light giving a blue tint to the old stones and the slate roofs of the older houses. Local people being somewhat superstitious about night in general - and full moons in particular - we tend to walk quietly for fear some half cut villager will take us for Rakshas (demons) and let rip with both barrels of some ancient shotgun.
We arrived at the fort just as the earths shadow took the first bite out of the full moon, opened the wine and settled down to watch the show. As soon as the shadow started to cross the moon, it was clear it was going to be a biggie, a total lunar eclipse. As the shadow progressed, the part of the moon in shadow could still be dimly seen, glowing an orange red and becoming more visible as the shadow reduced the light from the bright part. By the time the whole face of the moon was covered the stars were clearly visible; odd to see stars and moon so clearly together, with the bright cloud of the milky way running north to south along the length of the valley. Details could still be seen on the shadowed face of the moon, but much softer than usual and with a warm unnatural glow. For sheer beauty, the sight of a red moon hanging in the star studded sky over the peaks of the Kulu Valley was an unforgettable experience.
The local story of the causes of both lunar and solar eclipses is detailed in a post from last May's annular solar eclipse. Basically its all the fault of the Shoemakers caste.
The wine finished, we tottered off down the hill just as the first sliver of the moon came out of the shadow. The wine was strong enough that I have a nasty suspicion that I might - to Kirstens disgust - have started singing, in which case I wouldnt really have blamed any villager who took us for Rakshas (or half strangled cats) and put us out of our misery.
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May 4, 2004
Food for the SoulThe only thing that could possibly be better than being in India, is being in India and owning a lot of French quality pork products - in other words a lot of saucissons. And that, happily, is my current state after Kirsten's sister arrived from Germany bearing gifts.
Coming to India is, for most people, always a question of leaving things behind that you will miss; friends, family, food, drink, neewspapers or whatever. The longer you stay away, the harder it can become to be kept from the things that really matter to you, and I suppose for most people the ability to keep on travelling is a balance between your desire to be somewhere and the desire to have those things that you miss. For the most part, I can happily kiss Europe (and the UK in particular) goodbye. There is little so compelling about the place that would ever make being there more desireable than being in India. Except certain items of food, notably sausage, french cheese and fresh bread. If we stayed in Delhi, all (or at least most) of these would be quite possible, money permitting. The well stocked (but way pricey) Delicatessen in Jor Bagh carries a great selection of salami plus imported and excellent indiginous Indian cheeses, most from Haryana, and the baguettes from Wengers bakery in Connaught place are not quite Qualite Francais, but at least up to UK standards, especially when they are fresh and hot just after delivery. Sadly, the same quality isnt available in Manali, but our recent discovery that Malai Chaska cheese is an excellent equivalent to philadelphia (and a bargain at 35 rs) did liven things up until it went out of stock 2 months ago and never returned. Lifes a bitch.
Other travellers, most notably Midnite Toker (and indeed Kirsten) are fanatical about hot spicy Indian vegetarian food, but I am not really fond of chilli and my tastes in a Brick Lane (London E1) curry house rarely go beyond a Chicken Korma, Samosa and a Peshawari Naan. The best cooks of the creamy meat dishes I love are the Kashmiris, who share with the French a passion for eating well. Its not Kashmir, but by Indian standards Manali is pretty good for meat eaters; local people are big fans of chicken and mutton, and the legendary Mr Singh in the Manu Market delivers one of the finer examples of Tandoori Chicken in North India, albeit a bit spicy for my cigarette roasted tongue. But other than the superb bacon sarnies found in Goa, Pork is not popular in India; for some the reasons are religious, in some places such as Manali it is just "not in the culture". The one place to get good pork dishes I have discovered here is Chopsticks restaurant opposite the bus stand, the best dish (for me) being Roast Pork chilli (dry). Ordered without chilli and with a couple of butter toast, a respectable roast pork sandwich can be had.
But good as it may be, it isnt my idea of Food for the Soul, of which the spiritual home has to be the Old Enemy of the English, France. The French are a people who appear to have designed the entire of their existence around eating and drinking as a form of spiritual fulfillment, leaving a bit of time over for making excellent movies and engaging in the odd (entirely necessary) strike. In short, they are everything the British have long since forgotten how to be. In fact, in global terms the only people I have encountered that appear to share both the talent and obsession of the French to the same degree (with all due respect to the Italians) are the Lebanese; the only race of cooks I know of who can do 700 interesting things with chick peas, all of which taste good. Who else but the Lebanese could serve up raw sheep (in the form of Kibbeh Nayeh - a dish of raw ground sheep, onion and cracked wheat) and persuade a confirmed lamb hater like Kirsten that it was good? Trying to find a bad meal on the Corniche in Beirut (should you be insane enough to try) would be as hard as finding a bacon butty in Riyadh. I'm not so sure about Lebanese filmmaking, though I stand to be corrected.
I recall reading an article a few years ago about the French and their attitude to food. An old man from Provence was talking about how to properly enjoy a ripe Camembert. " A proper camembert", he said, "should not merely be eaten. It should be celebrated; it should be discussed, its ripeness felt and its aroma appreciated before it is cut and savoured". The French are not merely a Nation, they are an art form, the people of Provence doubly so. Vive la France.
So Kirstens sister arrived with some of the things that can make the best place on earth better; 2 kg of various salami comprising 4 Aldi own brand of the "cheap and best" kind and an assortment of sticks of genuine, pukka French saucissons in a number of shapes and subtle variations of flavour - and fat levels. And in case that wasn't enough, 622 grams of Schinken - German cured bacon - plus two tins of Goose liver pate. As someone said; happy as a fish in water. And to cap it all off, two and a half kilos of assorted chocolate survived Delhi's 39 degrees, from the excellent Aldi special Kaffee Sahne (coffee chocolate), Herbe Sahne (dark), various types of chocolate marzipan, Kinder chocolate (for Kirsten) and a packet of "Mozart Kugeln" (I have no idea what they are, but they were GOOD!). Where to start was no problem, exercising restraint and rationing is.
Local people in Manali are not exactly wildly adventurous in their tastes - the sight of a black olive was enough to put my landlords wife off - and so offers of Frances finest dead pig are rarely taken up, but breakfast for us has been unusually good for the last week or so.
All of this epicurean perfection could now only be improved with the addition of a really ripe goat cheese or a Camembert fit to make the old guy from Provence break out in celebration, but it would take someone truly insane to board an aircraft wafting the lethal aroma of a fully ripe "weapons grade" Camembert in these days of the so-called war on terror.
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It never rains, it only pours...Finally, in the last week, the Kulu Valley got the overdue rain and thunderstorms that should have come in March, and as ever, the Gods played their part.
People around Manali will often say of themselves, jokingly, that they are never satisfied. Too Little snow, then, when it comes, Too Much snow. Too Few tourists or Too Many (when the parties are too close to the village. In March, usually a month of frequent rain and thunderstorms that prime the ground with enough water to last till the monsoon, the weather was unseasonally warm, the snow on the mountains had almost disappeared, and there was no rain. Although the early part of April was cloudy on and off, the only rain that fell lasted about five minutes in the early evening and would scarcely damp down the dust in the air; Not Enough. The cloud had one effect though, from a warm March, Manali descended into an increasingly cold and sunless April - No Good for tourism. No one was happy; newly planted apple trees were unlikely to survive, crops would be stunted and forest fires had even started on the hillsides in a few places, one even damaging the Jamloo temple in Melana village, a sure sign that the Gods were not in the best frame of mind.
So the villagers made use of an annual religious event to ask for a bit of divine intervention with the weather. On one day in the last week of April, Hadimba makes a full tour of the village, and the next day the statue is again taken on a tour, this time accompanied by the Naag Devta statue from Goshal village. During the event, the villagers made time to have a special puja (prayer) asking the Gods to intervene and bring them some much needed rain. The Gods answered promptly, with almost three days of solid rain and wind, more than enough to soak the ground, and in the higher regions lay down a blanket of fresh, clean snow over the previously barren looking rock. Rohtang pass received 4.5 feet of snow and was closed to traffic, resulting in an unexpected adventure for 100 or so Indian holidaymakers trapped by the weather on a visit to "snowpoint". A less welcome adventure for Kullu's Raja (and BJP Member of Parliament), Maheshwar Singh, who was campaigning on behalf of the BJP in the Lahaul Valley for the forthcoming national Assembly elections, and was unable to return over Rohtang pass. He was rescued the next day by helicopter.
With the rain came violent thunderstorms, huge arcs of lightning turning the sky pink, cracks of thunder loud enough to give the windows and roof slates a good rattle. The storms had an unexpected side benefit for Manali's electronics repair businesses. The lightning must have overloaded the power or cable TV lines, frying the delicate innards of a fair number of the villages TV sets.
By May 1st, the rain had begun to wind down, but had dropped the temperatures to the point everyone was walking around in winter clothes. As one villager pointed out to me, when they asked for rain, they should have been a bit more specific about how much they wanted the Gods to send, because in the end, everyone agreed there was Too Much - also not so good for the crops, and certainly not so good for tourists, many of whom had decided to seek warmer climes in the Parvati Valley.
The skies are now mainly blue in the daytime, and the weather is beginning to warm up again - albeit slowly - although there is still a cold breeze coming off the snowy peaks in the direction of Dharamsala. Weather aside, the village is fairly short of tourists as most of the Israelis have decamped to Kasol for a full moon party, doubtless to return en masse in two or three days, heralding the start of the party season proper.
In respect of the apple and cherry crops, the rain was really too late and the damage is already done. The trees had blossomed almost a full month early, when there were too few bees around to pollinate the flowers, with the result that there are few apples developing. Those trees that have apples have suffered from the previous lack of rain and the apples are likely to be small. One orchard owner who picked 350 boxes last year from his 100 trees estimates that this years haul will be more like 80 boxes - Not Enough. Especially as other apple growing regions of Himachal Pradesh have not suffered the same weather problems, and as those areas expect a good crop, market prices will be low at Delhi's Subzi Mandi. Apple growing this far up in the Kulu Valley has never been the safe bet it is even only 20 km down the road, and even less so with the unstable weather of the last few years.
The weather Gods rule the fate of India's villages, and in one vital respect at least it seems they are to be kind this year. The boffins of India's Met Office say that this years monsoon should be "normal", with rainfall for all areas predicted to be within 10 percent of seasonal averages. Which should all come as a major relief to the farmers of plains India, where many areas have suffered badly from drought in the last few years. In Manali, the recent rain means that although there may not be enough apples on the trees, there is fresh snow on the hills and, at the very least there should be enough water in the taps to provide for the voracious water consumption of guest houses filled with western travellers so insistent on a long hot shower after a hard days chilling out.
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