Closed for the Season (Nov 6)

Tea, breakfast, yoga on the veranda...
We decided to walk to Vashist today - a nearby village further north a couple of km and on the other side of the river. The guide books indicate that this is where a large number of people choose to stay when they are remaining for longer periods of time in the area. There are also some yoga studios that we've seen posters for and a public hot springs bath. If we decide to move over to Vashist, Achariya also have us the name of a guest house to stay at.

Vashisht has a small Tibetan colony on the outskirts - it can be spotted by the prayer flags prominently displayed on all the buildings. We stopped at a couple of hotels and checked them out. It's low season now so the places are pretty empty. We decided that the places were pretty nice, we'd walked 1 1/2 hours to get there and we were hungry. We'd discuss our next move over lunch!

The World Peace Cafe wasn't open... the Freedom Cafe wasn't open... the Rainbow Cafe's chef was in Kulu so we could only get Naan and Pakora... everything was pretty much closed down for the winter.

We needed to eat something so we stayed at the Rainbow Cafe. The cafe is on the roof of a building overlooking the public hot spring baths. Brad had stuck his hand in the water that was flowing out - it's pretty hot! There were women washing clothes and dishes in one part... the other part had the pool with the bath section. There were a variety of people bathing, soaking, and just generally splashing about. As we sat and had our snacks we could hear some of the kids below protesting quite loudly about taking a bath. I guess kids don't like baths here either!

Over the screaming children I overheard a conversation next to us in the cafe between a young man who had been writing letters and an older couple. The young man had been traveling since July. He had cycled through much of Europe and was now cycling across India. The would take some major fitness (and a really tough butt!)

As we sat and snacked and contemplated, we decided not to move to Vashist but to move on from Manali to Dharmasala. We strolled back to Manali and stopped at the travel agent that Achariya had introduced us to so we could book our bus tickets. The bus leaves tomorrow evening.

We stopped to do some blogging, emailing, dinner and then headed back to our hotel. Using our experience of the previous evening, we got a big blaze going right away to try and avoid some of the smoke issues.

Warm and toasty, a spot of tea and sleep.