I’m sitting now in the village of Kalgha, writing the first page of the blog. My girlfriend is sitting by my talking with a friend she met today. That’s the thing about India, you meet every day new people, and about Israelis, they always know a few common people. We arrived here from Kasol, the capital of the Parvati valley, Himachal Paradesh, India. We arrived in a local bus to Birisiani, and had a 40 minutes' walk from Birisiani to here. The ride in the bus was one of the terrifying rides I had. The road is a one-way road most of the way, if it’s even paved. Every jump the bus made felt like we are going to fall to the great depth.
We are residing in the Blue Star guest house. It’s managed by a small family, they have a building which is the guest house with their house, and a small restaurant on the side. There is no road to here, but somehow they have everything here. Two huge speakers, a computer, a stove, electricity. We were wondering how they brought it and other stuff to here.
It’s interesting to see how these people live, there’s a big clash between civilizations here, not only between the tourists and the locals, but also between the locals themselves. Most of them are used to living without any electricity or any other technology, but now they have electricity and smartphones and 4G internet.
My girlfriend, Renana, and I are travelling for one month now, and I was traveling about 3 weeks before. I worked in a small start-up in Herzliya, Israel and studied Math in Ben-Gurion University in the Negev; I finished my degree and left my job to travel. We landed in Madrid and took a train south to Cadiz, we rented a car and rode to Idaha Nova in Portugal for the Boom festival. It’s a seven days' festival of psychedelic trance (we also enjoyed the after party of 3 days in the north of Portugal). I met my girlfriend in Amsterdam after the festival and afterwards we took a flight to Delhi, India through Moscow.
Before Kasol we were in Leh for 2 weeks, and Manali for a week. We also were in Delhi for 4 days, but there is not so much to mention about it. We slept in Pahar-Ganj (Main Bazar in tourist lingo) and what I mostly remember is the smell, I am not really sure whether it’s just a memory or if my clothes are still smelling from it. My suggestion for future travellers is to spend a bit more money in Delhi and sleep somewhere else. There are no words to express my disgust of this place. It can be an experience to walk there for a few hours, but nothing more.
Leh is a different thing, Leh is a city that is placed in Jammu and Kashmir state in the north, in the Ladakh district. Its height is about 3.5 km above sea level, and the residents are less Indians and more Tibetans. Everyone is smiling and the air is clean. It can be very cold in the nights, but very beautiful and very very chill.
I can tell a lot about Leh and Ladakh, but that’s for a different time.
Tomorrow we’re going to Khir ganga, it’s a village higher in the mountains, about 4-5 hours walk from here. The main reason to go there (other than the beauty) is the hot springs. I’m not really sure what’s going to be out there, but I’ll wait and see...
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