The perforated funnels of the air conditioning duct had been spitting cold spears all night long. As I absent-mindedly tried to stretch my frozen, numb legs, my knee jerked in pain as it hit the seat in front of me. Squinting open my eyes, I realized that for the last twelve hours I had been inside a ‘luxury’ Volvo bus scrambling up the mountains of Himachal. Moving the curtain on the tainted glass, I saw the dawn sky was still drenched in a deep gray. As the bus revved up its speed, the shadowy moon seemed to change its pallor and merge with the clusters of stars serenading it. In between steep gradients and hair pin bends, I saw the first silhouettes of the mountains. In the fifteen hour up hill road journey from Delhi to Manali, most of the kilometers are lapped up in the night. The break for tea, at five a.m. usually coincides with the mellow yet graceful change of lighting that sets into motion somewhere beyond the mountains. As I stepped out of the hostile chill of the Volvo, my numb fingertips tingled back to life as a breeze with a nip softly blew across.
The long rows of steps of the road side dhaba were beaded with colorful backpackers from the West; some feverishly brushing their teeth at the broken wash basin, some hunched over a cup of warm chai, others covered in a purple haze, sonorously singing Yellow Submarine. Made in aluminum kettles over kerosene stoves and served in glass tumblers, my first cup of tea in the mountains was hot and sweet. Filing back into the bus, we resumed our journey to Manali. As the sun slowly fanned out majestically in the speckless, blue sky, the obscure silhouettes gave way to a resplendent landscape of green, white and brown. Every two miles apart or so were rustic wooden and stone houses built on stilts with sloping roofs and tiny windows. The doorway, usually accessible by a wooden ladder, too was above ground level. Kullu and Manali are dotted with such houses, though nowadays, wood is giving way to cement and bricks. Mostly a hue of brown or red, snuggled in the valley, the houses look cozy with a lazy tail of smoke escaping out of most chimneys.
Kullu, which is forty-five kilometers en route to Manali, is a stopover for adventure sports for most tourists. People flock here for snow sports like skiing in the winters and other adventure sports like white water rafting and zorbiing during the summers. An hour and a half later, the bus finally entered the narrow streets of Manali. The abode of Manu, as the name literally means, no longer wears a demure, sleepy haven look. It is splattered with hotels of all sizes and colors on either sides of the road. Tucked in between the clutter that is the Manali market, are interesting, tiny eating joints and watering holes. Men and women wrapped up in shawls and jackets, sporting canvas shoes with a basket on their back, are a common sight on these streets. The bus arduously carried its bovine bulk through the narrow, crowded streets and finally halted in a bustling depot.
We stepped out to a bunch of eager ‘guides’ animatedly welcoming us to Manali and simultaneously rattling off a string of hotel and sightseeing options, available at affordable rates. So much for a heavenly abode! Before we could be accosted with more offers, we were quickly ferreted out of the bus into jeeps that were waiting to carry us to Solang Valley, situated thirteen kilometers from Manali. The morning sun was warm and a sweet smell of pine wafted through the Himalayan air.
I could already feel the vertigo of lightness.
