Manikaran

As Fiona, Eloise, Kitty and I felt like we needed a change of environment, Fiona suggested we’d go to Manikaran as it is famous for its hot springs. It took us about 2-3 hours on a local bus to get there. I must admit that after having read in Kitty’s tourist book about India we all imagined something rather grand-ish. But when we got there I was in for a surprise. Manikaran is a small, small village and it doesn’t even look very nice. But its surroundings, however, are beautiful.

We walked down the one street Manikaran has and soon found a nice place with hot springs. It turned out to be a temple and the main place for the hot springs there, so quite many people came by. As we looked around we saw that people were putting bags in the boiling water, and it took me quite some time to realize that the bags contained rice and some fruity stuff. We bought some and by the time the food was ready we had spent 1 hour and 30 minutes there.We went into the main building as well to check things out and saw that there was a hot cave and public baths there. The baths were so full that we decided only to be in the hot caves. After that we had two horrible tasting chais from two different places, but we soon forgot about them as we were leaving. Behind one of the mountain tops we could see the moon coming. The moonrise happened within 10-15 minutes or so. It was so fast and really amazing. I mean I have seen sunrises and found them to be beautiful and peaceful, but seeing the moonrise intrigued my mind very much.

But we had a bus to catch; we didn’t want to stay in Manikaran as most disappearings are from here. When we came back to Kullu Nisha told us that about a month ago a white, dead two months old baby was found in a nearby mountain. We were glad we were safe! All the taxi drivers told us, though, that there were no more buses going to Bunthar (we needed to change in Bunthar). We were slightly freaked out so we eventually went to a hotel asking for the bus times and the guy at the reception said that there is one leaving now.

Back at the bus stand we were a bit skeptic as we saw no bus whatsoever. Then on the road above the bus stand a bus comes, but we thought it might not come by the bus stand, so we ran to the road as fast as we could and we barely made it. The bus, however, did not stop for us, but it turned in to the bus stand and waited there instead. We felt rather silly, but so glad there was a bus.

In Bunthar the bus stopped on the ‘wrong’ side of the river, so we had to cross the bridge to get the right bus to Kullu. The taxi drivers said they would take us there for a good price, but we thought we were so smart when we told them we knew a good price was a bad price and that we could just walk over the bridge. The taxi drivers told us that there is no bridge. Anything to get money, huh? As it turned out, the bridge was under reconstruction, but other people were walking there as well. We just had to climb under the bridge and cross the river. Easier said than done.

I wore and Indian outfit and not quite used to wearing t yet, so I first got stuck in some wires that held the stones together (the path was sort of shaped into some stairs, but not really at the same time), but fortunately a boy behind me helped untangle me. So I got down to the river. The others are much longer than me so they had managed to get across the river already. It was only two meters or so that we had to cross and there were stones there that we could use. But, seeing as I am less than 1.60 meters this can be quite the challenge. I literally had to stand on one rock and throw my self towards the next stone reaching out with my hands. It went all right, but I did wish I was a bit taller though. A short moment of weakness right there, but I am back loving being short.