Christmas and New Year Giggles!!

Hello sorry it's been so long. It was the day before Christmas Eve that we last blogged. So to update you - Christmas Eve we walked around Log Hut Manali looking for Emily's guide from World Challenge, but no one in the area had heard off him. Therefore we went for a wander in the hills and ended up doing more scrambling down hillsides on our bums!! Great views of the valley and river below, until we found our way into the sewage works!!

For the evening we were off to a posh restaurant / hotel for a meal and party, so we dressed up in our Punjabi's. We were the first ones to arrive and there was a big mix up over the price of our meal, as we thought we'd agreed a deal. It was all very embarrassing, but was worked out in the end. We had a great evening of food, wine and dancing, to the amusement of the other guests who were mainly Indian.

At the end of the evening the Indian / Scottish friends we had made suggested going up into the hills to the place we were going skiing at the next day. After a bumpy, windy journey over mainly unmade roads we arrived in what seemed to be a snow covered valley. We felt very Christmassy as we pushed each other along in sledges and slid down a massive icy slope on our backs, it was loads of fun even if we did get a bit bruised!!



Christmas Day - after only 4 hours sleep we dragged ourselves out of bed and went skiing. After another bumpy ride which felt longer than the night before we arrived. There seemed a lot less snow than the night before and the valley didn't feel half as magical full of people. We were taken onto a 25 x 20 metre flat patch of icy snow with our instructor. He didn't say a great deal, so Dawn been the beginner got most of her advice from Emily. With no slope it was hard work pushing ourselves along, but Dawn got the hang of it and didn't fall over once. We then asked if we could hit the slopes? The response from the instructor was, 'your on the slope.' We looked at each over in shock and said, 'no this isn't a slope, this isn't skiing!!' He replied with 'there's no snow and your beginners.' Emily said `I'm not and even though Dawn has never skied she can handle a slope.' Deflated we pushed ourselves up and down the patch a few more times and then took our skis off. We went for a walk up the muddy, icy slope where the cafe and ski lifts were. We sat in the sun for a while watching the Indian holiday makers make the best of the muddy snow and try to ski and sledge, least we weren't the only fools sold a skiing trip when there was no snow!!

We returned to the office to complain. By now Dawn was feeling terrible and the speedy, bumpy, windy drive back had added to this. Emily complained at the office and after threatening to sit in the office all day until we got half of our money back. We went for breakfast, were Dawn was sick and then both feeling very run down and ill went back the the guest house for a rest. Throughout the afternoon Emily got worse as well feeling very flu like, going hot and cold. As the sun went behind the hill we felt freezing, so the staff at the guest house kindly let us join them by the fire bowl in the kitchen to warm up. We spent the rest of the night and evening in bed watching Star Movies, (the main English TV channel). So not the best Christmas all in all, but at least Christmas Eve had been a great one.



Boxing Day - We both still felt cold and flu like with stomach pains, not sure if it was a bug or some kind of food poisoning. If it was food poisoning that would be very ironic, as since been in India Christmas Eve was our most expensive meal!! Around late morning Ramesh (Emily's guide from World Challenge) came to our room and invited us to his house. We followed him up the hill to log hut and found we had walked right by his house a few days before. His house was set in a lovely little orchard. We climbed a small ladder up to a cosy room with a log stove in the middle. We had coffee, met the family and he showed us photos of his various expeditions. There were loads of photos of Emily's trip, with Sarah, Robin and Miss Read also. He remembered them all well and Emily and him reminisced about their trek.

We spent the rest of the day in the sun and then at 8pm left to get the night bus to Shimla. Lovely as Manali is we will be glad to get to go south to the warmth.



The 8 hour bus ride was cramped and Emily still feeling ill, was sick out of the window a few times. We really hoped Shimla would be nice and cheer us both up. How wrong we were! First everywhere was fully booked or closed so we were traipsing around at 5:30am feeling ill with heavy bags. Eventually we found an expensive room with no water, a view of the noisy bus station-oh happy days. We booked our train out of there for the next day with a lot of confusion and queing-booking a train is a circus act here! Make sure you have a spare hour or two!

After this we headed to the British part of Shimla which turned out to be nice, there was a church, tudor housing and a town hall. We also did the western thing to cheer us up by finishing the day with a Domino's pizza and hot chocolate! YUM!

We left the next day on the toy train but before leaving we annoyed the Indian army(-ask us about it when we get home!!!!) The train journey and views were amazing, we wound down the mountains sometimes doubling back on ourselves. The views were extensive and stretched as far as the Tibetan/china boarder it was breathtaking and made Shimla worthwhile.