Cycle

The rickshaw captains are at the bottom of the transport strata. They hire out their rickshaws and hope to makke a profit at the end. It's awfully hard work and you'll never see a round captain. Fit as a something fit and also essential to the dual-pricing economy which I have become so familiar with.

 

 

 

 

 

They have some great old cycles that would fetch quite a packet back in Hipsterville aka inner-city Sydney. Hippsterville also has a dual pricing system. If it's old and shit it's worth $500, if it's new and works really well, it's worth half that. Insert any object into above equation.

 

 

I know this lock looks cool and everything but I wouldn't trust it to lock my cucumber to my lunchbox. These are the type of locks that you sneeze into and they submit and throw themselves open.

 

After Delhi we headed for Manali, a launchpad to Leh in the Himalayas. The bus ride there was 14 hours and we left after dark. It was a strange experience looking out the bus window. For hours (approx 6.57) driving out there was constant human habitation of some sort. In Australia if you drive out of the city about an hour you will quickly see a sharp drop in the number of houses followed by desolatation for hundreds of kms. Outside of Delhi however there was constant shops selling wares by the roadside. It's not like how we have truck stops every 100kms, you can just stop anywhere you like in Delhi!

I thought it was a sign that the population density pushed people to the outskirts to find places to setup shop. Even in the middle of nowhere at midnight I saw the silhoutte of two kids running with empty carts back towards the city. A farmer had even raised a herd of white-medium-sized-fluffy livestock under a partially built freeway overpass. We were turning around a bend and the driver suddenly braked because 4 cows had decided to sleep on the outside of the corner.

Eventually we made it.

 

This is a few kms out from Manali and it was our final rest stop. There is a landslide in the distance.

 

Someone stopped to dump rubbish over the edge.

 

 

A waterfall that looks suspciously unnatural.

Hotel view.

 

I think these are slate tiles. Slate is a great rock because it breaks apart in nice flat pieces. It's used in quality billiard tables. If you tap the surface and it sounds hard like marble than it's probably slate, if it sounds like wood, then well it's wood.

 

Lots of singing and people around, turned out to be a wedding.

 

Next three pictures were taken from the same place.

 

Um, this grows everywhere on the side of the roads. You walk around and the smell fills your head. It's quite aromatic I think but not quite an aphrodisiac. Probably the opposite.

 

Went for our first ride. Thirty kms around Manali. Half way through my brethren were wounded in battle and needed suntanence to continue their journey. I managed to trek through the wilderness and locate and apple tree which I raided.

 

I think this is a mozzie, I also think it's Latin name is giantus maneatus.

 

Finit.