It’s been a while since I’ve written now, but just after our hike we went to Manali to visit Mrs Sundershana’s orphanage and Vashist orphanage. We arrived during twilight and went to see a Buddhist temple before going to Mrs Sundershana’s, it was pretty nice but as I had to pay to take pictures I didn’t feel like it. By the time we arrived at Mrs Sundershana’s it was very dark, almost a bit scary. The orphanage was nice, but apparently Mrs Sundershana has started to take advantage of the situation. The children are not allowed to leave the house, teachers come to them to give lessons, and Mrs Sundershana is not to be disturbed unless there’s something extremely important.
After leaving, we stayed for about 20 minutes as we had to go to Vashist as well before it got too late, we felt that
we should definitively invest some of our time at Mrs Sundershana’s. Arriving at Vashist the children are busy preparing for Diwali; the festival of lights. We got some tea and started interacting with the children. They are so well behaved and easy to get along with. I sat with a group of boys and we started making mini
cricket out of play dough. It was great fun. The lady at Vashist gave us dinner and insisted on us staying the night over because, apparently, a grizzly bear was hanging around their house and she didn’t want us to go to a hotel in the dark. We had been extremely lucky not to meet it because when one of the older boys was going to shut the gate the bear was trying to get in; talk about action!
Kitty, Eloise, Fiona and I got the room where the older girls were sleeping. There were enough beds for all, but they insisted on us having the room alone. After getting ready for bed Fiona mentions how last time her and Anja (her sister) stayed there a massive spider lived in the room. I with my fear of spiders did not like this at all. The Hindus believe in reincarnation and any living being could be their late grandmother or whatever. I can’t remember who screamed, but the spider had not moved out. On the wall between the beds resides a big black spider! We all panic for a while until I say that we have to kill it. Fiona seems to catch on that I am seriously afraid of this spider and climbs on one of the bed with a shoe ready to kill it. But trying to kill a spider which is about the size of your hand when it has its legs spread out, and is rather thick, isn’t great fun when the ‘weapon’ you hold in your hand is a crock
(the type of shoes) about size 38. The spider moves further away and we try to find a bigger thing to kill it with. At one of the desks there’s a Spiderman board the size of an A4 paper saying Best of Luck. How ironic, but I grab it saying we can use that one giving my weird comments I usually do when I panic so that people won’t be so freaked out by it. I don’t know if it helps, but it is a habit I have which I can’t seem to control. Anyways, the spider is getting close to a hole in the wall and we realise we have to kill it before it gets in there because then it might come back during the night.
Fiona is still on the bed; they have bunk beds, and is now unable to reach it. We all close in on the wall trying to figure out what to do. Suddenly the spider falls off the wall, Kitty screams and runs to the back of the room jumping up on a table. Eloise is not far behind her, and I am about to follow as well. I see the spider running towards one of the beds and I think Shit, it will get away and then we won’t be able to kill it, so I smack the Spiderman thingy on the floor and luckily I hit the spider. I start jumping up and down having the creeps all over my body. I tell the other that I hit it and Fiona comes down from the bed and uses the crock to smash the Spiderman thingy properly down on the floor. We can hear this crunching sound which disgusts us, but also reassures us that the spider is dead. Oh m
y god I am SO relieved, but still a bit shaky. We sit and talk for a bit, and plan games we can do with the kids for the next morning. Going to bed I slept in the one the spider had been the closest to, and I was sure I was going to have night mares about that creepy bastard. Surprisingly I woke up several times during the night because of bad dreams about cows. I mean, how retarded is that?
At
worth the warm bath. We go back to Vashist and the view is beautiful. Manali is higher up than Kullu, so some of the mountains had snow on the peaks. We start playing games with the kids, and after getting breakfast we take the bus back to Kullu. We had to leave a lot earlier because we were invited to a show one of the English schools was having. The show was nice, but it lasted for so long so we left after 2 hours and 30 minutes. Apparently it lasted for about 4-5 hours…
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