Back to the Himalaya

1/23 I was hoping for peace and quiet in Manali which is a major backpacker place in the summer and supposedly dead in the winter, but I ran into an unexpected winter carnival for the Indians. At first I was a bit disappointed by this, but the carnival was fun (it lasted all week) and it was still easy to find quiet in the mountains by just taking some hikes and going skiing. The carnival had lots of live music and dancing all day and all night and various performances by all types of Indian cultures. Also, lots of tasty food stalls. I was told that the carnival had people from all over India coming to show off their culture. The first day I watched a huge and well done parade with lots of different tribes/ethnic groups from all over India wearing their fanciest local attire. During my whole time in Manali I ran into about 9 westerners and 4 of them were med students volunteering at a clinic (2 from australia and two from chicago). The first of the future docs I ran into was stephanie from australia. One of the floats in the parade was a rather blunt float about getting the terrible british out of India. I commented to her that I hoped she was british as they had stopped for a while right in front of her and that is when I found out she was an aussie. One of the funny things about the parade was that on two occasions, we were actually the cause of the parade stopping completely as people in the parade actually left their floats or their spot in the parade to come take photos with us!

That afternoon I explored Old Manali which is a little village where the tourists usually hang out, but it was mostly dead except for the locals. On the way through the town I did a couple sled runs with some of the young kids around who had built these tiny sleds with runners and had quite the sweet sled course going down a frozen road. I hiked up to a nice viewpoint of the Himalayas on a ridge but then had to stop as the snow became too deep as I hit the north facing slope. The town of Manali also had a fair amount of snow, but most of it was packed down as it hadn't snowed in over a week. After the walk up to the ridge I checked out some of the temples around town and then watched some of the winter carnival performances.