We Go Up.... We Go Down... (Oct 22)

Up, pack, check out, down to breakfast.
Achariya arrived with Negi during breakfast and told us that Negi would arrange a taxi and meet us at the petrol station.
We finished eating, climbed into the taxi and we were off.
We got to the petrol station and Achariya explained that we would drive to the start of the trail in the taxi, drop off our bags for the horses and then hike up to the first camp. We also picked up our guide for the ride up - Keshau.

Manali is at around 6K feet above sea level. According to Achariya, our first camp is at around 8K feet. Our drive was back and forth and up and down. The start of the trail seemed a long way from town! We were surprised by the tall growths of pine trees, though we're not sure why exactly we didn't expect to see pine trees in India. Of course, you don't usually think you'll see monkeys in a pine forest either, but we did. As we were driving, a family of monkeys scampered across the roadway similar to seeing a family of raccoons at home.
At some points on the drive, I was reminded of the Black Forest in Germany. Brad once said that the more that he travels, the more he realizes how similar we all are.

We came to the end of the road and unloaded the packs. The men would be along shortly with the rest of the gear that would be taken up the trail by the horses. When the truck arrived with the supplies all the loading and unloading started. One of the baskets that was being brought along was moving and making noises. I realized that we were taking live chickens with us! I really hope that they're for eggs.

We grabbed our day packs and started down the trail to our first camp. Keshau speaks very little English but is quite friendly. He says it should take us about 3 hours to get to camp. As we hiked we marveled that we could have been in BC, Colorado, Upstate NY... even Morocco or Peru. It's very beautiful and I'm sure the photos won't do it justice. (Michael... any recommendations for cutting haze???)

We passed many apple orchards and I have to say... the apples were quite delicious... green and crispy. I guess they'd be organic, since there isn't much technology let alone pesticide use going on up here. That was another thing that surprised us. The apple orchards. There were plenty of them, terraced up the mountainside.

We climbed up ... and down... and up... and down...
I had forgotten how tiring it was to climb in higher altitudes... not as much air up here!
Going down, I'm great. Going up, I'm a bit slow.

Part way there we came across a German couple riding an old Enfield motorcycle. They were on their way down. They said that they had been visiting a friend up in the mountains for a few days.

Right when I thought I was about done (too tired to go on.. no lunch... only a few cookies and an apple... ) we arrived! Right on schedule too. It took right around 3 hours.

Our first camp is at the entrance to some sort of nature reserve. There are 3 buildings - 2 seem unused and the caretaker lives in the other one. It is surrounded with beautiful flower gardens filled with marigolds and a variety of other flowers similar to what I'd expect to see at home. We realized later that the flowers are likely for honey. There is a small opening in the side of the caretakers building where you can see the bees going in and out of a beehive. What better way to ensure lots of honey than to plant flowers for your bees!? The marigolds here get 3 and 4 feet high! My flowers never did that.

We sat and rested for awhile, just chilling. A short time later the horses arrived. There was a flurry of unloading and setting up of the kitchen, etc. The guys set up a tent on a small plateau above the gardens. It turned out to be for us. We get the 'penthouse' suite. We grab our bags and start to get settled. There are so many butterflies. Yellow, orange, even blue ones. There seem to be alot of crows too.



When the sun sets... it really sets. It dropped below the mountains at around 6:30 pm and it was dark and instantly cold. We sat on a mat outside the kitchen tent and watched them make dinner. Our cook is from Nepal. We had rice, some yummy fried potato and onion mixture and mutton. The broth for the mutton was very rich and flavourful but not too spice.

We sat out and looked at the stars - there are so many!! We could even see the milky way. As with camping, after dark there's not much else going on so we were in bed by 8:15 ... and it was definitely cold. I was wearing full long johns, fleece socks, cotton bed liner, fleecy blanket and my sleeping bag - I could have used another blanket!

Once I got myself situated, I did warm up. We had a sleep pad that they provided us plus our thermarests but the ground is still pretty hard and it's a challenge to stretch out in a mummy bag. Regardless... we were tired from our hike so we slept.