Manali - inside out!

Manali (alt. 1,950 m or 6,398 ft), in the Beas River valley, is an important hill station in the mountains of Himachal Pradesh, India, near the northern end of the Kullu Valley. It is located about 250 kilometres (155 mi) north of state capital, Shimla.

Manali is administratively a part of the Kullu district, with population of approx. 30,000. The small town was the beginning of an ancient trade route to Ladakh and, from there, over the Karakoram Pass on to Yarkand and Khotan in the Tarim Basin.

If you are heading towards manali from delhi you will come across a lot of intresting things on the way.

FIRST: kurukshetra

there is bramha sarovar and is belived where Lord Krishna gave the teachings of Geeta to Arjuna

BRAMHA SAROVAR

History

According to Hindu scriptures, Lord Brahma created the universe from the land of Kurukshetra after a huge yajna. The Brahma Sarovar here is believed to be the cradle of civilisation. The sarovar is also mentioned in the eleventh century AD memoirs of Al Beruni, called ‘Kitab-ul-Hind’.

A sacred shrine dedicated to Lord Shiva stands within the sarovar, accessible by a small bridge. According to scriptures, bathing in this sarovar increases the sanctity of performing the ‘ashvamedh yajna’. The tank offers a breath-taking sight during the Gita Jayanti celebrations held in the last week of November and early December every year when there will be ‘deep daan’ and ‘aarti’. This also happens to be the time when migratory birds from distant places wing it to the sarovar. The Birla Gita Mandir and Baba Nath’s haveli and temple are the neighbouring attractions.

Brahma Sarovar Kurukshetra

Sri Krishna Chariot at Brahma Sarovar Kurukshetra

[edit]At Present

Today Brahma Sarovar has been renovated. It is 1800 feet long and 1400 feet broad. The tanks are especially crowded during solar eclipse because it is believed that a dip there during the solar eclipse absolves one of all sins. One of the most delightful occasions is the Gita Jyanti celebrations held in the last week of November or the first week of December. The tank presents breath-taking spectacle of Deep daan (ceremony of floating lamps in water) and Aarti organized on this occasion

KRISNA MUSEUM

They dont allow cameras inside but if you are in kurukshetra you must visit this place. its got a wonderful collections of historical artefacts ranging from 3000B.C to modern era and also stuff from the harrapan civilization.

SECOND: ROCK GARDEN CHANDIGARH

The Rock Garden project was secretly initiated by Nek Chand around 1957. It was discovered by the authorities in 1975, by which time it had grown into a 12-acre (49,000 m²) complex of interlinked courtyards, each filled with hundreds of pottery-covered concrete sculptures of dancers, musicians, and animals. The authorities took over, and the garden was inaugurated as a public space in 1976. It is presently run by the Rock Garden Society.

Nek Chand Saini (नेक चंद सैणी)is an Indian self-taught artist, famous for building the Rock Garden of Chandigarh, a forty-acre (160,000 m²) sculpture garden in the city of Chandigarh, India. His family moved to Chandigarh in 1947 during the Partition of India. At the time, the city was being redesigned as a modern utopia by the Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. It was to be the first planned city in India, and Chand found work there as a roads inspector for the Public Works Department in 1951.

Its almost impossible to imagine that this place was made single handedly by Nek Chand . Must visit this place , craetivity at its best, and certainly the best dumpyard any city could ever imagine!

NOW WE START OUR JOURNEY TO MANALI!

If you are travelling in a taxi then its most probable that your driver will ask you to buy some woolen articles.Reason being that they too will get a comission on that material . and if you really want to buy stuff then go to old manali, other wise kullu is not a place to stay for a long while because of pollution the place has lost its charm.

PLACES TO VISIT IN MANALI

1. the market place. nice bargains and good place to eat

SPECIAL MENTION : Ludhiana Ki Rasoi .. home like food in manali . excellent!!

2. snow point..

how to reach : get you taxi placed in the lower part of the hill, do not get tempted to go to upper part because then you gonna get stuck in the traffic blockage that lasts almost for an hour (minimum) .

Best way: take a horse ride to the snow point and rohatang pass if possible.

pros and cons

1.you wont be pestered by the kesar vendors and other irritating elements

2. excellent view with enough time to enjoy

but

its costly and one horse cant cost you up to rs.1000

try to bargain they get down to rs 700

SECRET ABOUT MANALI

THE NEW ISRAELI HIPPIE HANGOUT

For those of you who wonder where all the hippies have gone, we've found one of their secret or not so secret capitals: Manali, India. Perhaps they grow them here along with the apples and peaches in the orchards that dot the land, or perhaps they just come from Israel. But between "March 15 and July 31" (according to our favorite internet café manager) Israelis descend uponManali in droves for the summer, taking a break from their capital, Goa. As such, we missed them by a week and only encountered the stragglers. Nonetheless, there were still plenty of stoned, natty haired, baggy clothes wearing youths stumbling around the streets and laying around on pillows.

Given the special place we have in our heart, not to mention our own slight hippie tendencies, we made good use of the infrastructure that accompanies hippie hangounts

roof tiles

. Most notably the food which was absolutely amazing here. In addition to the scads of "english" and "german" bakeries which all seemed to focus strangely enough on croissants, there were inumerable restaurants serving all kinds of fare. Your typical travellers restaurant menu consists of pizza, pasta, perhaps some other continental fare, a few japanese and korean dishes to satisfy those from that region, a lot of potato dishes, and of course indian food which we focused on. The restaurants were so good here we couldn't decide whether River Music (best lemon-galic trout and tandoori chicken), SeshBesh (best service and best drinks including banana-date shakes), or People (best vegetable dish in months) was our favorite.

Other spin-offs of the hippie hangout culture which we did not avail ouselves to included chai drinking, snake charming, drum/didgederoo shopping, checking out reiki/yoga houses, head shops, trance music outlets, and far out clothing tailors. The inumerable jewelry shops including a very persistent create your own design establishment did attract one of our interests if not our rupees. A new addition to the gamut of essential services is of course, the internet - which occupied an awful lot of our time as we tried to change our flights and India schedule (unsuccessfully), get caught up on long overdue admin (like tax extensions - yuck), and plan out the rush of countries coming at us on the horizon for which we didn't have a solid plan for

is this india or switzerland

. Manali was an excellent base for us to get caught up with ourselves while enjoying as much of the creature comforts as one can hope to find in this part of the world.

So why have they chosen Manali? We didn't ask so one can't be sure. It could be because of some chackra vortex, or some astrological alignment, or some sort of energy lines. Our guess is that it is nothing so esoteric and instead for the same reasons we liked it. That would be the services available (see above), climate (nice and cool compared to the rest of India), accomodations (tons of guest houses including our most excellent Tiger Eye Guest House), and the natural beauty of the Kullu valley and Old Manali in particular. This is an outstandingly pretty area and has a deserved reputation as such that attracts not just hippies, but honeymooners, vacationers, and a ton of folks on their way to Leh (our original plan). The Kullu valley, known in ancient Hindu scriptiures as Kulantapitha or "end of the civilized world", sits at around 4000 ft at the beginning of the Himalayas. Huge walls of stone rise steeply from the river valleys allowing glimpses of snow capped peaks (when the clouds permit). While steep and mountainous the soil is rich and the landscape lush with heavy foliage including both pine trees and deciduous trees. The combination of which creates stunningly green meadows with amazing vistas often filled with the apple orchards that the area is famous for. There are great hiking trails that traverse the steep hillsides up towards hidden valleys and remote villages. We only took some short day hikes and unfortunately missed some of the world class trekking that draws hiking enthusiasts from all over the world.

Last but not least on the list of attractions are the people who inhabit this area
mountain hideaway
. A hodgepodge of ancient and recent tibetan refugees, Kashmiri traders, and the native Thakurs, high-caste land owning hill people. The Thakurs are easily identifable as the men usually wear Kullu or topi caps (kind of a fez shape without the tassle but with embroidered sides) and the woman drape themselves in colorful scarves all over their heads and bodies. The architecture was reminiscent of Nepal with wood sided houses but with giant slate shingled roofs. We stayed in upper upper Manali in the midst of a small village where cows roamed the streets, kids played marbles on the sidewalk, (separate of course) groups of woman and men sat around kibbutzing, farmers carried their giant baskets of green stuff (we're not sure what) up the stone stairways, and every little house had a tiny garden with flowers and usually an apple tree. The whole feel of the place is quite idyllic and they seem to have achieved a nice balance of traditional farming with tourism which might be one of the reasons why the locals are so refreshingly low-key. We felt like we had made friends with most of the shop owners and restaurant staff by the time we left. It's that kind of place.

The guidebook warned that this was a place where travellers found themselves lingering and we could see why. It was a good place to spend some time just hanging out, like

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TRIP TO ROHTANG PASS

How to reach?

if you want to see the real beauty of rohtang pass visit it at two times of the year

first, spring time which is not recomended by me because you wont see any rohtang pass but only the population explosion of india!! Jokes apart, spring time is in between late may to early july.
This is the time when the valley is lush green and ornamented with flowers
second , mid dec to mid jan.- everything is coverd in snow and the beauty is almost unreal!

when travelling on a bike - you can easily reach the snow point but i really did not find any good place to park there ,when in a car , park you vehicle in the lower part and follow the road

FUN FACT : you can jump from one level of road to the other simply by trekking the path taken by horses, its dangerous as its pure mountaineering with normal situations of less amt of oxygen and touch and steep terrain
or if you are ready to spend some money then take a horse ride,will cost you about 700 to 1400 per person but in my opinion - worth it!