This blog is retrospective and largely drawn form the
contents of my hand written notebook. All the photos were shot on film
and have just been digitised, quickly without aiming for high quality, and some underexposed shots overstretched with Photoshop in an attempt to get realistic colours. Joan and I retired on 1 April 1996 and set
out on the first of what we expected to be many years of world travel
for which we had spent seven years of holiday travel in backpacker
fashion, in preparation for much greater freedom in retirement. In quick
succession we spent 60 days in Sumatra, 30 days revisiting old haunts
in France, the birth of Joe our last grandchild, and then in the run up to Christmas these 60 extraordinary days in
India. Completely unaware of the onset of Rheumatoid Arthritis in Joan
which would stop us in our tracks until able to resume backpacking in southern Thailand in Nov 1999. Then Sicily and guiding our extended 10 person family backpacking around southern Thailand in 2000. Followed by a second break due to another arthritic knee, until Peru in May 2003.
I sensed an
interesting difference between this notebook and the later blogs on
similar travels, whilst transcribing.
NEW DEHLI 10 October 1996
Gary kindly drove us to Swansea station to catch the 13.20 bus to Heathrow. We flew by Lufthansa via a change in Frankfurt to Delhi arriving at 00.45 the next day, as usual those days without a booking, changed $300 at Thomas Cook at a poor exchange rate for a bunch of tatty but whole notes which had been frequently stapled together (normal enough treatment by banks for currency, though we later became more careful as torn notes would be rejected).
We decided to stay put in the airport until daybreak but got talking to an on overconfident young English trader with a girl met on the plane in tow, who had been held because of damage to his luggage. He explained he often came to Delhi and suggested we shared a taxi to the backpacker Paharganj district near the main railway station and checked into his recommended Hotel Saina. The girl insisted on a separate room but there were no more beds available until tomorrow so we went off for coffee on a rooftop cafe in the Hari Rama Guest House just along the road opposite the Main Bazaar. Soon dawn was breaking.
The room was 250rp, I think the exchange rate at the time was around 60rp to the pound. Joan and I slept until 13.00 then walked down to the railway station and via the Chelmsford Rd to Connaught Place in the centre of Delhi by 16.00. We ate in the well known United Coffee House with a 60/40 split of Indians and foreign tourists. It was wonderfully cool and enjoyed our meal of Tandoori and Jal Fareze, chapati, rice, ice cream and coffee for 340Rp. On being accosted on the street we booked a bus trip for the next day to the main tourist sites of Delhi for 80Rp, a taxi doing the same would have been 450Rp.
The next morning we headed for the Railway Station with a view of buying tickets for Simla and for the first time met the hassle of India, for innumerable touts stopped us from crossing the main road. They were intent on taking us to buy tickets in one of the many Travel Agent offices on the Paharganj side. I ploughed on but Joan got waylaid and we got more and more interruption. It took fully 20 mins to cross the road outside the station, once we had made it everything went quiet and we soon made our way to the advance booking area on the first floor. There were two queues on for the smaller for tourists paying in Rupees with exchange certificates, the one full of Indians paying in US dollars (I assume they were buying several tickets at a time for hotel guests) was extremely slow, but we abandoned our quest at 9am so as to be in time for the tour bus.
On joining the tour we refused to pay extra for an Air Conditioned bus and instead were picked up by a minibus though we rejoined the others at the Red Fort, the very first stop. I described as a very miss able tour mainly because there were about a dozen sites to be visited as well as lunch. See the following photographs.
Later that night we ate a good dinner at the Hotel Metropolis and booked a bus to Manali for the following overnight journey, this cost 250Rp plus a further 180Rp for the prized front seats.
Sunday 13 October
We walked to see the famous Lutyens designed parliament buildings, then after convincing a Singh tuk-tuk driver we intended to walk further we made our way to Connaught Square in spite of frequent attempts to convince us that it was closed on Sundays and that we ought to be taking a trip to the Shopping Emporium, for only 50rp a taxi ride. It was mainly closed but were delighted to find the United Coffee House was open.
Luckily our seats included a
guide to get us to the bus, who ensured we got the seats we had paid
extra for. The bus owner was not at all happy since he had planned to
get a good tip from those joining on route. The bus was full of
backpackers all initially very reluctant to give up their baggage to be
loaded on the roof. We set off at 9pm for a comfortable overnight
drive.
KULLU 14-15 & 20-22 October
We got off the bus at Kullu 15 hours later to find and book a room for the forthcoming renowned Dussehra festival, most were going further. An English party had got off earlier at Buntal to go up the Parvati valley. So as to rescue my rucksack quickly I climbed the rear ladder, stood on the roof and hoisted our rucksacks before realising how dangerously close my head was to the overhead power cables. The first hotel recommended wanted 450Rp a room for a minimum of 5 nights of the festival. We eventually settled on new hotel the Aroma Classic with lovely rooms and gorgeous views for 200Rp and also booked three festival nights at 450Rp. However there was a snag, lack of sufficient water pressure for our first floor radiators meant the room with huge north facing picture windows was cold - so we slept in our sleeping bags. The food however was good and I particularly remember the Aloo Kashmiri, a delicious form of rough chip potatoes we never met again.
That first afternoon we made a late start to visit the
Parvati valley by local bus, back to Buntar then inland to until we were
stopped by the return bus which was blocking the road with a broken
prop shaft. Not deterred we decided to walk the last 4km Manikaran in a
region currently a unexplained murder scene of two camping trekking
backpackers, in the British papers.
If I remember correctly a British father went out hoping to solve the mystery surrounding the death of his child. We had just sufficient time to look around the town see the sulphur hot springs and baths and eat some delicious Indian style rice pudding from a street seller, thick spiced and sweet with raisins. We rarely missed an opportunity to eat it again, we were beginning to savour the huge variety of Indian food not available in Britain. At 4pm we started to walk back but were soon picked up by an Indian family on holiday in Manali, on a day trip with a driver. The road was still closed but both buses and cars were getting through. We stopped long enough to witness the attempt to pressure fit a new drive shaft connection using the weight of a huge boulder lever over the joint by crowbars, they had obviously done something similar before.
Manali
We walked to the bus station and almost immediately caught a bus to Manali, which incredibly was only half full - to begin with - and put our rucksacks on the back seat. We ended up in the Sawan Hotel looking for a pee. In fact it was an excellent vegetarian restaurant and they found us a nice room for 150Rp. Fine cloth was available everywhere Kullu (woven) and Kashmiri embroidered. We got on well with the two young Kashmiri salesmen, who invited us to come and talk at any time and so we learned of their story. They were both Hindu exiled from their country,, their family house had been burned down in the ethnic cleansing and and their father sent to Jammu to suffer 47 degree heat as compared with the delightful cool of Kashmir. One was an M Sc in Maths and a Brahmin who had hoped to work in a Defence Organisation but failed in his own appraisal by being too complacent, too interested perhaps in making the grade as a professional cricketer. He was now continuing his father's shawl business.
They told us of the Hindu caste system, which he wanted to see the end and thought would go in the next 10 years - I hadn't realised it was a fundamental of the Hindu system, nor of the fact that you could only be born as a Hindu, there was no entry for converts. The caste system had originally been related to occupations. He thought the top three Teachers, Military, Business were converging then they descended right down to the lowest caste which was still above the untouchables. The major problem was the huge population growth particularly in the lowest castes, population was only 300 million in 1947 on independence, but was now 800 million in 1996 of whom 300 million were considered middle class and the middle class cut across caste boundaries. He felt that Indians were basically intelligent and that rung true as they and the Chinese seem to have dominated business in much of Asia and the NHS is dependent on the skills of Indian trained medics. As I write in 2014 the population is well over a billion, perhaps exceeding even that of China. We were learning fast, fascinated and welcomed, now proud possessors of three shawls, two Kullu and one Kashmiri, as Christmas presents.
Old Manali, 17-19 October
Manali is a thriving town but Old Manali belongs to a much earlier rural world, except for modern accommodation like the Splendor hotel in which we stayed, guests of another would be cricketer. The owner's normal style was to encourage treks into the mountains but felt it was just too late in the season for the cold and snow were due. We breakfasted on fine brown bread and eggs but went to the Shiva for dinner where there was a small inner room always full of travelers and longer stay types smoking pot. The food was good and so was the company, German, French Canadian, Japanese, American, Israeli, British, Italian and French - as cosmopolitan as it gets.
We had met the owner of the cafe before and soon made good friends. He expressed pleasure in having an established couple and obviously didn't think too highly of most of his clients. Not surprising because he was a Botany professor in the university of Jaisalmer and a Brahmin. He was on extended leave for bad cataracts and read with the use of a magnifying glass. The last night he offered to cook us a special meal because I kept asking for real Indian food not that tempered to westerners tastes. It was superb, Dum Aloo, Zuccini, Mutter Paneer, followed by Kheer - our rice pudding again.
The following morning we went back for a lesson in Indian spices and herbs, on one plate were the ten spices of Garamasala and plates of herbs. Joan took notes of the proportions, the various uses and the time of addition - tomato and the powder from unripe mango were very late.
He gave us his address and telephone numbers in Jaisalmer and asked us to contact him after his return on 14 November. This cafe was the money spinner, for although a professor he earned only 12,000Rp/month with a take home pay of only 7,000Rp/month and was sad that he could never afford to visit the western world whilst we found it cheap to live in India. The sign outside the restaurant said 'Food is our hobby, Fun is our business' a good summary of Shiva.
The middle day we walked to Vashisht where there were hot springs and small shops. The last day we walked up the mountain following the river. The locals were sawing tree trunks stranded on the rocks in the stream to make logs for use as firewood which were taken back to Old Manali a 90 minute walk away. On the return we stayed high on the mountain with superb views of the valley before descending to the temple.
But it was the old wooden houses of Old Manali which were of most interest, they were deeply carved and said to be between 100 and 400 years old. The rooftops viewed fom on high were made picturesque by the golden corn and hay drying on the flat roofs. The villagers seemed welcoming although they must have endured a steady stream of backpackers viewing and taking photographs.
We talked to a girl 35ish from Edinburgh now on holiday from Hong Kong who thoroughly recommended Spiti from which she had just returned. Obviously the Spiti region, 50km north across the 4000m Rohtang Pass into Tibetan ancestry, half Buddhist half Hindu, is as yet relatively untouched by tourists.
KULLU for IT'S UNIQUE DUSSEHRA FESTIVAL
We arrived towards evening to a rapidly changing scene. The road south and the Maidan (meadow) was now covered by tents, tent material shops and restaurants. Along the road they were building imported clay into ovens, long ridges of clay to contain log fires serving also as support for large cooking pots. People were starting to gather but it was nothing compared to the 100,00 people expected for Dussehra.
Each
day there was a constant sound of drumming as the villagers paraded
the gods they were pall-bearing around town.
Everywhere was a bustle of
activity as they all got ready for the festival. At the entrance to the
maidan were the knife sharpeners with grinding wheels operated from
bicycles, the rear wheel being off the ground, nearby was a huge knife
and lock stall.
Elsewhere were impressive areas concentrating on cooking and water carrying pots, often in brass, the biggest being huge. Other shops sold cheap jewelry, glass bracelets. worn by the dozen on each wrist, and necklaces. We nearly bought some glass bracelets for Rachel 10rp for 12, they are very commonly worn in mass.
A large area was devoted to a whole range of food
stalls offering Tibetan, Chinese, local Mandi food, southern Indian food,
coke pepsi and coffee stalls and a long line of stalls selling Indian
sweets (Rusgulla, Berfi, Amarti). A research worker showed us around a stall devoted to
apple growing, once he found we were interested he gave us a variety of
apples to taste. Only in the last 10 years have apples been grown
commercially in the Kullu valley, after being introduced by British and
American missionaries. The Indian taste favoured the sweeter American
varieties. Over he next few days we were to develop a great liking for
bottles of Kullu apple juice.
Crowds gathered around the side shows,
snake charming, Hudini tricks with small boys, performing monkeys. It
was not clear to us how they made their money. We kept our eyes open for pick pockets but saw none at the time.
In town we discovered a small
permanent tea stall used by the locals, who besides cardoman tea 2rp
served sweets 3rp for five, somosas and excellent curd by the plate for
5Rp. We were to become frequent customers.
At 4pm the festival started
as a party of dignitaries took their seats, luckily we were right there
having gone to the highest point to get better photographs, until then
we hadn't understood why nearby soldiers were defending the wall.
Attention
then switched to the large god covered by a tent on a chariot with
wooden wheels, presumably that from Manali. Other teams carrying gods
all assembled jostling with one another to greet the chief
god. Again we had got a good position - so had the pick pockets. each
party was accompanied by trumpets. The wheeled god with men on board led
the procession to various key area of the maidan.
One god elaborately surrounded by a material fence with a large clear area of grass was perhaps the focal point for the gods entering the town paid their respects in turn. Maybe this was the powerful god from Manali. On the other side of the river there was a single god by the main bus station.
That first evening there was an opening ceremony in the ampitheatre followed by dancing,singing and the appearances of a famous Indian film star with a troupe of 24 women dancers (Manisha?). The theatre was arranged in three sections, the first chairs seat for performers, then two further sections for VIPs plus the one at the back with an entrance fee of 10rp. Originally thinking it only a ceremony we did not pay but later stumped up and joined the large throng at the back sitting on the hillside. We stood next to three Indians who could speak some English who kindly gave us their tickets which would give us entrance to the second row for future evenings, providing there was space. We took advantage of this for the following two evenings and thus had a good view of the folk dancing troupes from Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, the singing, acrobatics and fire dancing. Every evening they selected lottery winners from a tombola. Most acts were accompanied by bands with drums and pipes but the Gugarati dancers, who were excellent performed to taped music.
During
the days we an mused ourselves with looking around the stalls and fun
fair and eating new foods especially Tibetan fried lamb momos, noodle
soup, Marsala Dosa the dosa being very thin crisp pancakes and Marsala
the potato and vegetable based filling.
The various gods were each kept in the tents close by, again there were definite areas, not spread out indiscriminately. Each morning the drumming started, then the gods were paraded around town, possibly prompted by the need to keep warm. In the evening the crowd large all day would swell to capacity.
The
last night we attended the festival but had to leave
just as the Russian act started in order to catch the overnight bus to
Daramasala. In fact the bus was 10 mins early and we almost missed it
after stopping to watch the beginning of a Son and Lumiere about the
history of India.
 |
| Joan with Joe born 20 Sept 1996 |
NEW DEHLI 10 October 1996
Gary kindly drove us to Swansea station to catch the 13.20 bus to Heathrow. We flew by Lufthansa via a change in Frankfurt to Delhi arriving at 00.45 the next day, as usual those days without a booking, changed $300 at Thomas Cook at a poor exchange rate for a bunch of tatty but whole notes which had been frequently stapled together (normal enough treatment by banks for currency, though we later became more careful as torn notes would be rejected).
We decided to stay put in the airport until daybreak but got talking to an on overconfident young English trader with a girl met on the plane in tow, who had been held because of damage to his luggage. He explained he often came to Delhi and suggested we shared a taxi to the backpacker Paharganj district near the main railway station and checked into his recommended Hotel Saina. The girl insisted on a separate room but there were no more beds available until tomorrow so we went off for coffee on a rooftop cafe in the Hari Rama Guest House just along the road opposite the Main Bazaar. Soon dawn was breaking.
The room was 250rp, I think the exchange rate at the time was around 60rp to the pound. Joan and I slept until 13.00 then walked down to the railway station and via the Chelmsford Rd to Connaught Place in the centre of Delhi by 16.00. We ate in the well known United Coffee House with a 60/40 split of Indians and foreign tourists. It was wonderfully cool and enjoyed our meal of Tandoori and Jal Fareze, chapati, rice, ice cream and coffee for 340Rp. On being accosted on the street we booked a bus trip for the next day to the main tourist sites of Delhi for 80Rp, a taxi doing the same would have been 450Rp.
The next morning we headed for the Railway Station with a view of buying tickets for Simla and for the first time met the hassle of India, for innumerable touts stopped us from crossing the main road. They were intent on taking us to buy tickets in one of the many Travel Agent offices on the Paharganj side. I ploughed on but Joan got waylaid and we got more and more interruption. It took fully 20 mins to cross the road outside the station, once we had made it everything went quiet and we soon made our way to the advance booking area on the first floor. There were two queues on for the smaller for tourists paying in Rupees with exchange certificates, the one full of Indians paying in US dollars (I assume they were buying several tickets at a time for hotel guests) was extremely slow, but we abandoned our quest at 9am so as to be in time for the tour bus.
On joining the tour we refused to pay extra for an Air Conditioned bus and instead were picked up by a minibus though we rejoined the others at the Red Fort, the very first stop. I described as a very miss able tour mainly because there were about a dozen sites to be visited as well as lunch. See the following photographs.
 |
| Red Fort? |
 |
| Memorial to Mahatma Gandi at Raj Ghat |
 |
| Bahia Temple Delhi |
 |
| Quatab Minar |
 |
| Quatab Minar |
Later that night we ate a good dinner at the Hotel Metropolis and booked a bus to Manali for the following overnight journey, this cost 250Rp plus a further 180Rp for the prized front seats.
Sunday 13 October
We walked to see the famous Lutyens designed parliament buildings, then after convincing a Singh tuk-tuk driver we intended to walk further we made our way to Connaught Square in spite of frequent attempts to convince us that it was closed on Sundays and that we ought to be taking a trip to the Shopping Emporium, for only 50rp a taxi ride. It was mainly closed but were delighted to find the United Coffee House was open.
 |
| Negotiating with the Sikh taxi driver |
KULLU 14-15 & 20-22 October
We got off the bus at Kullu 15 hours later to find and book a room for the forthcoming renowned Dussehra festival, most were going further. An English party had got off earlier at Buntal to go up the Parvati valley. So as to rescue my rucksack quickly I climbed the rear ladder, stood on the roof and hoisted our rucksacks before realising how dangerously close my head was to the overhead power cables. The first hotel recommended wanted 450Rp a room for a minimum of 5 nights of the festival. We eventually settled on new hotel the Aroma Classic with lovely rooms and gorgeous views for 200Rp and also booked three festival nights at 450Rp. However there was a snag, lack of sufficient water pressure for our first floor radiators meant the room with huge north facing picture windows was cold - so we slept in our sleeping bags. The food however was good and I particularly remember the Aloo Kashmiri, a delicious form of rough chip potatoes we never met again.
 |
| View from our hotel bedroom window |
 |
| Manikaran |
| Using weight of rock to push fit repair bus prop shaft |
If I remember correctly a British father went out hoping to solve the mystery surrounding the death of his child. We had just sufficient time to look around the town see the sulphur hot springs and baths and eat some delicious Indian style rice pudding from a street seller, thick spiced and sweet with raisins. We rarely missed an opportunity to eat it again, we were beginning to savour the huge variety of Indian food not available in Britain. At 4pm we started to walk back but were soon picked up by an Indian family on holiday in Manali, on a day trip with a driver. The road was still closed but both buses and cars were getting through. We stopped long enough to witness the attempt to pressure fit a new drive shaft connection using the weight of a huge boulder lever over the joint by crowbars, they had obviously done something similar before.
Manali
We walked to the bus station and almost immediately caught a bus to Manali, which incredibly was only half full - to begin with - and put our rucksacks on the back seat. We ended up in the Sawan Hotel looking for a pee. In fact it was an excellent vegetarian restaurant and they found us a nice room for 150Rp. Fine cloth was available everywhere Kullu (woven) and Kashmiri embroidered. We got on well with the two young Kashmiri salesmen, who invited us to come and talk at any time and so we learned of their story. They were both Hindu exiled from their country,, their family house had been burned down in the ethnic cleansing and and their father sent to Jammu to suffer 47 degree heat as compared with the delightful cool of Kashmir. One was an M Sc in Maths and a Brahmin who had hoped to work in a Defence Organisation but failed in his own appraisal by being too complacent, too interested perhaps in making the grade as a professional cricketer. He was now continuing his father's shawl business.
They told us of the Hindu caste system, which he wanted to see the end and thought would go in the next 10 years - I hadn't realised it was a fundamental of the Hindu system, nor of the fact that you could only be born as a Hindu, there was no entry for converts. The caste system had originally been related to occupations. He thought the top three Teachers, Military, Business were converging then they descended right down to the lowest caste which was still above the untouchables. The major problem was the huge population growth particularly in the lowest castes, population was only 300 million in 1947 on independence, but was now 800 million in 1996 of whom 300 million were considered middle class and the middle class cut across caste boundaries. He felt that Indians were basically intelligent and that rung true as they and the Chinese seem to have dominated business in much of Asia and the NHS is dependent on the skills of Indian trained medics. As I write in 2014 the population is well over a billion, perhaps exceeding even that of China. We were learning fast, fascinated and welcomed, now proud possessors of three shawls, two Kullu and one Kashmiri, as Christmas presents.
Old Manali, 17-19 October
Manali is a thriving town but Old Manali belongs to a much earlier rural world, except for modern accommodation like the Splendor hotel in which we stayed, guests of another would be cricketer. The owner's normal style was to encourage treks into the mountains but felt it was just too late in the season for the cold and snow were due. We breakfasted on fine brown bread and eggs but went to the Shiva for dinner where there was a small inner room always full of travelers and longer stay types smoking pot. The food was good and so was the company, German, French Canadian, Japanese, American, Israeli, British, Italian and French - as cosmopolitan as it gets.
We had met the owner of the cafe before and soon made good friends. He expressed pleasure in having an established couple and obviously didn't think too highly of most of his clients. Not surprising because he was a Botany professor in the university of Jaisalmer and a Brahmin. He was on extended leave for bad cataracts and read with the use of a magnifying glass. The last night he offered to cook us a special meal because I kept asking for real Indian food not that tempered to westerners tastes. It was superb, Dum Aloo, Zuccini, Mutter Paneer, followed by Kheer - our rice pudding again.
 |
| Sharma Botany Professor and Shiva Owner |
The following morning we went back for a lesson in Indian spices and herbs, on one plate were the ten spices of Garamasala and plates of herbs. Joan took notes of the proportions, the various uses and the time of addition - tomato and the powder from unripe mango were very late.
 |
| Display of spices and herbs, spoiled by Joan's head |
He gave us his address and telephone numbers in Jaisalmer and asked us to contact him after his return on 14 November. This cafe was the money spinner, for although a professor he earned only 12,000Rp/month with a take home pay of only 7,000Rp/month and was sad that he could never afford to visit the western world whilst we found it cheap to live in India. The sign outside the restaurant said 'Food is our hobby, Fun is our business' a good summary of Shiva.
The middle day we walked to Vashisht where there were hot springs and small shops. The last day we walked up the mountain following the river. The locals were sawing tree trunks stranded on the rocks in the stream to make logs for use as firewood which were taken back to Old Manali a 90 minute walk away. On the return we stayed high on the mountain with superb views of the valley before descending to the temple.
But it was the old wooden houses of Old Manali which were of most interest, they were deeply carved and said to be between 100 and 400 years old. The rooftops viewed fom on high were made picturesque by the golden corn and hay drying on the flat roofs. The villagers seemed welcoming although they must have endured a steady stream of backpackers viewing and taking photographs.
We talked to a girl 35ish from Edinburgh now on holiday from Hong Kong who thoroughly recommended Spiti from which she had just returned. Obviously the Spiti region, 50km north across the 4000m Rohtang Pass into Tibetan ancestry, half Buddhist half Hindu, is as yet relatively untouched by tourists.
 |
| Our introduction to Old Manali |
 |
| Old woman with child sitting in open air and wintery sun |
 |
| Notice corn drying on roof |
 |
| Woman winnowing corn with electric fan |
 | |
| Old Manali |
KULLU for IT'S UNIQUE DUSSEHRA FESTIVAL
We arrived towards evening to a rapidly changing scene. The road south and the Maidan (meadow) was now covered by tents, tent material shops and restaurants. Along the road they were building imported clay into ovens, long ridges of clay to contain log fires serving also as support for large cooking pots. People were starting to gather but it was nothing compared to the 100,00 people expected for Dussehra.
 |
| First God Arrives |
 |
| God Arrives |
 |
| God Arrives |
 |
| Another village bring their God |
 |
| All the fun of the Fair |
 |
| Cows to provide milk |
 |
| And Coaches bring People to the Fair |
 |
| The Travelling Grinder/Sharpener on his bike |
 |
| Simon Jenkins displayed this in his surgery for years |
Elsewhere were impressive areas concentrating on cooking and water carrying pots, often in brass, the biggest being huge. Other shops sold cheap jewelry, glass bracelets. worn by the dozen on each wrist, and necklaces. We nearly bought some glass bracelets for Rachel 10rp for 12, they are very commonly worn in mass.
 |
| A Market Too |
 |
| Home for Christmas displaying hat purchases |
 |
| Buy your pots here |
 |
| Toy Dog Maker |
 |
| Kullu Hat Seller |
 | ||||
| Hat Seller with some Customers |
 |
| A few of the more elegant |
 |
| Agricultural crop display stall |
 |
| Snake Charmer |
 |
| Boy Charmer, I don't think so |
 |
| Tea and Cakes at our Chai Shop |
 |
| Dignatories Open Kullu Festival |
One god elaborately surrounded by a material fence with a large clear area of grass was perhaps the focal point for the gods entering the town paid their respects in turn. Maybe this was the powerful god from Manali. On the other side of the river there was a single god by the main bus station.
That first evening there was an opening ceremony in the ampitheatre followed by dancing,singing and the appearances of a famous Indian film star with a troupe of 24 women dancers (Manisha?). The theatre was arranged in three sections, the first chairs seat for performers, then two further sections for VIPs plus the one at the back with an entrance fee of 10rp. Originally thinking it only a ceremony we did not pay but later stumped up and joined the large throng at the back sitting on the hillside. We stood next to three Indians who could speak some English who kindly gave us their tickets which would give us entrance to the second row for future evenings, providing there was space. We took advantage of this for the following two evenings and thus had a good view of the folk dancing troupes from Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, the singing, acrobatics and fire dancing. Every evening they selected lottery winners from a tombola. Most acts were accompanied by bands with drums and pipes but the Gugarati dancers, who were excellent performed to taped music.
 |
| Tibetan Food Restaurant |
The various gods were each kept in the tents close by, again there were definite areas, not spread out indiscriminately. Each morning the drumming started, then the gods were paraded around town, possibly prompted by the need to keep warm. In the evening the crowd large all day would swell to capacity.
 |
| Parading Round Town |
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