Ffion and Patrick's trip

The journey from Jibhi to Shimla looked daunting on the map and it turned out to be just as we expected. The distance covered between the two is not huge compared to some of our journeys, but going over the top of the Jalori Pass in excess of 10000 ft and changing at a small town called Sainj to cross the valleys of southern Himachal is enough to take the journey time to well over 10 hours. The first 12km from Jibhi up the pass took 70 minutes and as with all the bus journeys so far the bumpy nature of the road caused some unsettling of our stomachs. The road was mostly cleared of snow but there was plenty on the mountain above and below and there were a few hairy moments when we met busses coming down the hill and neither bus seemed willing to reverse along the single track road. Fortunately we both survived unscathed down the other side of the pass and along to Sainj, eventually arriving in Shimla Interstate bus station (several kilometers away from the town centre and considerably lower down the steep hill) that evening. Shimla is a good example of very poor town planning. It was built as a hill station for the British to escape the heat of Kolkata and Delhi and was originally a long, thin town spread along a ridge. Since then the town has expanded across but also downwards on a hill that is so steep that an outdoor lift is the most sensible way of getting from one level to the next! We made our way up to check in to our hotel and after going out for tea at a recommended restaurant were pleasantly surprised to find a really good chicken saag and egg curry at the end of a long day's travel.

The speed of our trip and the timings of the trains meant that we only spent one full day in Shimla, though we made sure to fill it with as much of what the town had to offer as we could. The half timbered town hall was reminiscent of Chester and the parish church with, allegedly, the best stained glass windows in India, could have come straight from any British town. We walked down this mile of old empire and round to the Himachal Pradesh state museum. This had interesting displays of temple sculpture from all around India, wooden carvings, displays of traditional Himachal textiles and the obligatory weapons gallery. Possibly the best gallery was one dedicated to the work of Gandhi who spent time conducting meetings with various other important figures during the independence negotiations, many of which were held in Shimla. From the state museum we went on to the former Viceregal lodge, now the Institute of Advanced Studies. The lodge was the summer seat of power for the raj and another building that is a little piece of Britain abroad. After a samosa and chai, we went for a guided tour around the parts of the inside which are open to visitors (many are reserved for the students of the institute). The main hall is clad in Burmese teak, all imported, the chandeliers in the dining room were brought in from Belgium and many other parts of the lodge were taken from other corners of the former British empire. The conference room was where the independence documents were signed and there is a table which apparently split in half when the partition deal was agreed. As with many tours we had been on in India there was a throng of Indians who seemed quite disinterested in what the tour guide had to say but took some pictures and then sped off ahead. After a stop on the way back for coffee and chocolate cake, and a quick look around the church we packed our bags again for the journey down from the mountains the following day, taking the viceroy's toy train down to Delhi.

The first hour of our journey to Jibhi was familiar to both of us as we were simply retracing our steps from Kullu down the valley to a small town called Aut. Ffion got a bit worried when the bus headed through the town and into a tunnel but it turned out that the big reservoir which had been under construction when she was last here had (unsurprisingly) been finished and had caused a small change in the route. We climbed slowly but surely up into an offshoot valley and, after another 2 hours, arrived at the small village of Jibhi. We stayed at the charming Doli Guest House which was where Ffion had stayed when working in a local school and orphanage with The Kullu Project 7 years ago. We were greeted warmly by the owner, Mr Rana, had settled down in the garden for chai and a sandwich. At first glance Jibhi looks like it consists of only 25 houses, a school, 3 shops and a bank but it actually spreads further with houses and small holdings sparsely scattered along the mountainside.

The only tourist activity available in Jibhi is walking so we spent our two days in this unspoiled village attempting to do short walks to local points of interest. I say attempting because our first walk to ‘the waterfall’ (marked on Mr Rana’s hand drawn map with no scale or key) took us around 2km up a very steep set of concrete stairs in the middle of a forest before we realised we’d probably taken a wrong turn at the beginning of the forest. Our second walk was going to be an all-day affair up the side of a very steep mountain finishing at a fort. After less than an hour we realized we didn’t have enough food, water, strength or stamina to reach the top. Instead we ticked off a small temple where we got giggled at by a group of small children, one of whom was clutching a lamb, and took a stroll through the forest and a small village before returning to the guest house. Our third walk was to a village and, again, the lack of scale on the map caused us some issues. We reached the bottom of what looked like a short flight of stairs up the side of a mountain to a temple. After climbing for about 20 minutes and not finding the temple we asked some young boys who’d obviously just come from the temple where it was and they pointed to the very top of the mountain. We decided we’d probably seen enough temples that week as it was so wimped out and walked back again. Although we failed to find most of the things on our map we weren’t too bothered as breathing in the crisp, clean air and wandering around the forests and villages was a pleasant enough experience in itself. After just two nights it was time to move on but we were sorry to leave Mr Rana, his staff, the guest house and the village.

Our journey to Kullu was short (less than 2 hours!!) and simple and we were soon checked in to one of the few hotels in town. Compared to the calmness of Dharamsala and the beautiful views at Manali, Kullu has very little to offer a tourist save a couple of small temples. Luckily we weren’t there to be tourists, we were there to meet with Virender (a.k.a. Viru), one of the ‘boys’ from the orphanage in Jibhi which Ffion worked in 7 years ago. Viru and his brother Raku were two of the most enthusiastic people Ffion’s group of volunteers from Atlantic College encountered at the 5 schools and orphanages they worked at and Ffion has kept in touch with Raku and, through the wonders of facebook, has also been in contact with Viru for the last few years. Viru took us to a traditional sweet shop and we sampled a few of their milky, nutty (rather sickly) delicacies whilst he told us about his new life working for the Home Guard in Kullu. We were both pleased to hear that he was doing so well for himself, having come from such an unprivileged background, and really hope he’s able to fulfill his dream of getting a place in the police force in the near future. Viru had obviously told all of his friends that he was expecting foreign guests as many people popped into the sweet shop to look at us and to check if Viru had been telling the truth about having friends from other countries! After the sweets we were taken to meet Viru’s friend Tarun who conveniently has a house next to the local snooker hall. We chatted about our lives and professions over takeaway momos (Tibetan dumplings), went for a short walk to see the town’s brown playing field and then played a match of snooker; team Tarun and Viru easily beat the two of us. Although we didn’t spend long in Kullu we had a lovely time and were very grateful to everyone we met for being so generous and open. The next day we were up early to get back on the buses to our most remote destination in India.

Our bus ride from Dharamsala to Manali was going to be the longest of our whole trip: an estimated 11 hours in total. We arrived at a chilly Dharamsala bus stop early for the 6am bus and, for the first 6 hours, headed South East and, broadly speaking, downhill to the market town of Mandi. Some of the roads were normal, tarmacked roads whilst others were little more than a gravel path carved out of the side of a mountain that didn’t seem suitable for anything bigger than a quad bike. Despite the bumpy ride we managed to enjoy the magnificent mountain scenery again. From Mandi we went North and mostly uphill through the Kullu Valley. In 2004 Ffion spent almost 3 months in the valley volunteering in schools and orphanages through an organisation called The Kullu Project. Our main reason for returning to the valley on this trip – other than the cool weather and the beautiful scenery – was to revisit some of the people and places Ffion knew back then. She was pleased yet unsurprised to see that very little had changed in the valley until we reached Manali which has transformed its busy main street into a pleasant pedestrian precinct and added a new temple to the market place. When we arrived in Manali we took an auto to Tourist Hotel where Ffion had stayed at when working here and went out for tea where Patrick sampled the Tibetan noodle and meat soup dish called Thentuk. That evening we met and had a brief catch up with Dev Raj, the hotel’s manager who couldn’t believe it was 7 years since Ffion was last in Manali.

Manali is a popular spot for Indian tourists the whole year around but it’s only really busy when Westerners visit during the trekking season. It’s too early for much trekking at the moment as there’s too much snow on the mountains and it was strange to be in a town that was obviously in low season. Several times we tried to order something off a café menu which we were told was not available and even more times we ordered and then saw a young boy being sent to the nearest shop to buy the ingredients. We therefore seemed to spend a lot of our time in Manali sitting in cafes waiting for food to arrive and appreciating the mountain and forest scenery.

We did manage some sightseeing though. On day 1 we walked up to the Hadimba temple above the new town. Most Hindu temples we’ve seen have been stone structures with painted carvings around the outside and inside the shrine. Hinduism is a faith with many origins which has subsumed animistic beliefs from remote areas like the Kullu valley where every village has its own temple to its own god which often has no relationship with the Hindu trinity of Shiva, Vishnu and Bramha. It’s therefore not surprising that temples in Kullu look very different from those in other parts of India. The Hadimba temple is made mostly from wood adorned with beautiful small carvings that wouldn’t look out of place on a Scandinavian church. It’s a square structure with a large, pyramid shaped roof. The temple was busy but we did poke out heads inside and saw the two temple caretakers offering sweets to devotees and stoking a small fire in a pit next to the deity (a small, doll shaped creation with a metal face). We enjoyed looking at the temple and smelling the sweet aroma of the deodar trees all around it and we were amused at the number of people with angora rabbits and yaks hanging around waiting for tourists to pay for their photo with a ‘native’ animal.

On our second day we went up to Vashist, a small village a few kilometers North of Manali itself. We visited another two old, wooden temples and saw the thermal baths that were part of one of them. We noticed that the wall surrounding the women’s bath had been extended higher at least twice and, later, when we went for lunch at a café slightly further up the hill we could tell why – before the latest extension you would have been treated to a view into the bath to accompany your chai and samosa! We walked around the village a little and Ffion was pleased to find a waltnut tree that she had been shown 7 years ago by the children from the Vashist orphanage. They told her that the tree played a large role in village life as it was where children were taken on their first birthday for a naming ceremony which involved cutting their hair and eating a sweet paste made from the tree’s walnuts. Later the same day we went to visit the Tibetan part of Manali where there was a monastery and two temples. One housed a huge seated Buddha; downstairs you could only see his body and upstairs you could only see his head which was sticking up through a hole in the floor.

On our final day of sightseeing we walked to Old Manali a few kilometers North on the other side of the river from Vashist. We visited yet another temple which, although the building was fairly modern, housed ancient stones which marked the spot as having been the site of a very old temple several centuries ago. In high season Old Manali is a hippy / druggy / Israeli hang out and it was strange to see so many closed shops and restaurants. For lunch we found a café that had only reopened that week and the waiter was busy repainting some walls when he wasn’t serving us or the handful of other customers. We’d had OK weather most of our time in Manali but that day a storm started at lunchtime and lingered for the rest of the day. We spent several hours in the café drinking tea and playing backgammon before running back to the hotel in a short break in the rain.

The following day it was time to pack up and head off on a remarkably short journey to Kullu, the capital of the Kullu Valley.

The massive network that is India's railway system doesn't run much further north than Amritsar so our next onward journey was our first government run bus, travelling into Himachal Pradesh (literally the Himalayan Province) to Dharamsala. The rattly bus took us out of Punjab and gave us our first sights of Indian mountains, which was quite an exciting moment. We wound our way along the Kangra Valley before heading up towards the snow capped peaks on the horizon. The major downside of bus travel is that seemingly short distances take a long time to cover, so our arrival in Dharamsala was under cover of darkness, as we made our way from the bus stand to Macleod Ganj, Dharamsala's upper town, where the centre of Tibet's government in exile is based.

Shortly after the Chinese invasion in 1959 many Tibetans headed over the Himalayas into Nepal and India, including the Dalai Lama, Tibet's political and spiritual leader. The Indian government granted them refuge and gave them the town of Dharamsala as a base, and the majority of Tibetan community in India still live here, with many continuing to make the dangerous border crossing from their homeland to escape intimidation and to seek a better life. This gave the town a greatly different atmosphere to everywhere else we had been, with the heat, dirt and chaos of the plains replaced by (relative) quiet and relaxed people going about their business under the cool gaze of the towering Dhauladhar mountain range.

In keeping with the spirit of the area we decided to take our time over seeing what was on offer and experiencing the Tibetan culture available to sample. On our first day we went to the Dalai Lama's monastery and temple complex, circumambulating the central area in traditional Buddhist fashion and spinning the golden prayer wheels to 'send out' prayers in all directions. We then walked to the nearby village of Bhagsu, taking in the dramatic scenery looking up into the high mountains and down towards the valley below. From the road we could see the cricket stadium in Dharamsala, one of the most picturesque venues in the world, although unfortunately there was no live sport on while we were there. In Bhagsu we found an unusual temple, which seemed more like someone's barn than the home of a god, certainly in comparison to the ornate and sometimes garish temples in previous cities. The centre of the temple was a bare courtyard and around the edges were a few small, dark rooms. Inside one was a small deity decorated with red cloth and next to it a fire pit. Bizarrely for such a cool area we found a large open air swimming pool just next to the temple which we think belonged to a nearby hotel.

The following morning we went to the Tibetan Museum, located in the main monastery complex. The museum was small but densely packed with information about the Tibetan experience at the hands of the Chinese and the struggles that they find in leaving their homes to come to India. Some of the examples of human rights abuses and policies pursued by the Chinese government are atrocious and genuinely shocking, and the lengths to which Tibetans will go to to escape speak of how terrible life can become in Tibet. We read first hand accounts from refugees who had been placed under surveillance by the Chinese government simply for handing out leaflets about Budhism and others who had been forced to have their legs amputated after catching frostbite on their long journeys over the Himalays. In the afternoon we went for another walk in the direction of Bhagsu, this time continuing through the village and up to a waterfall tucked away in a steep valley a couple of kilometres beyond the temple. The stiff uphill climb was worth it both for the feeling of the fresh mountain air and the views back down the valley.

On our third day we went for another short walk round to the church of St John in the Wilderness, around a kilometre out of Macleod Ganj in the opposite direction to Bhagsu. The church was well hidden in the forest and when we got to the locked doors we could see that the church had probably not been in use for some time. Next to it we found a large monument to a colonial administrator who had died in Macleod Ganj and a few graves for the children of British government and army officials. That evening we went for a cookery lesson, specifically in the art of making momos, traditional Tibetan dumplings. Our teacher Sangye was very clear with his instructions and we learned by observing and copying, eventually coming out with a pretty accurate and tasty likeness of mixed veg, spinach and cheese, potato, and chocolate momos. He told us that the first three were traditional Tibetan recipes but that his family would turn their noses up at his new invention of momos filled with cocoa powder and sugar. Tibetans prefer to make sweet momos from tsampa, a ground roast barley flour that is used in many of their dishes.

Many of the other travellers we met in Dharamsala were spending an extended time there to assist the Tibetan community in some volunteering capacity or other. We decided to contribute to this a little in the short time we spent there by spending a morning helping at an English speaking class for Tibetan refugees. Rather than the conversational setting we had expected it turned out to be at a much higher standard, with the participants debating whether factories were good or bad. The philosophical approach that many of the Tibetans took was very interesting, many thinking along the lines of 'what would the Buddha think / how would the Buddha react to factories?'. The number of these projects and the number of volunteers willing to help is certainly giving the Tibetans assistance in building a life in Dharamsala.

Buddhism is a central part of the Tibetan community and on our final morning we walked down the hill to the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives to sit in on a lecture given by one of the monks from the Buddhist monastery. We were under the impression that the talks would be suitable for visitors coming for a one off introductory experience, but after an hour of in depth analysis of the life of an eighth century Buddhist devotee we realised that the class was part of a series of talks given to those who had a greater understanding than we did.

We spent an amount of the rest of our time simply admiring the stunning views and enjoying some homemade cakes from our hostel, whose portions were enough to make a full meal! After 5 highly enjoyable days, our onward journey began again at 5am as we got on our second state bus to make a twelve hour journey to Manali.