Mumbai to Manali!

It's been a whirlwind the past few days! On Friday we took a bus with friends from ISAC to Mumbai/Bombay. We went straight to the airport to try to change our plane ticket to Darjeeling. Darjeeling is out of the picture because of strikes. The whole area, including Sikkim is shut-off. We could not change or get a decent refund on tickets, so we had to come up with more options. We thought about flying into the same airport for Darj - Bagdogra airport, and trying to cross the border into Nepal. After much consideration, we decided that border crossing might be difficult, Nepal is also affected by monsoon, and we wouldn't have a lot of time to do a legitimate trek.......SO, we're in Manali!

But back to Mumbai. We spent about 36 hours in Mumbai, and despite Adam coming down with a stomach bug, we enjoyed ourselves! We stayed at Bentley's Hotel, a cheap, clean, nice place on a green side street. Hillary Clinton was staying at the Taj, so both the Taj Mahal and the Gateway to India were partially blocked and covered in Indian police. I'm sure there were plenty of secret service, but they were not visible to the naked eye - weird. Hillary however, did not invite us to tea at the Taj. We did some shopping and eating, then flew to New Delhi on Saturday night.

We have finally reached Manali, after a "character-building" 16 hour bus ride from New Delhi. Manali is north of New Delhi in the state of Himachal Pradesh. It is a popular trekker and "hippie" town. We are staying at the "Rockway Cottage", a guest house with a small restaurant and several rooms above the river that runs through town. There are temples, mountains,
glacial rivers, cute shops and eateries. Both Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism are prevalent. We're hoping to spend the next week visiting temples, doing some trekking, and hopefully getting some good views of the Himalayas! (We're in large green mountains right now, we'll have to go out of town a bit to see the snow peaked himalayas...)

So it's been a bit exhausting, I stink, Adam dropped his wallet in the rickshaw and is trying to hunt down the driver. I'm looking forward to a shower, dinner, and a good night's sleep. Will update with pictures soon!