Manali- Apple Valley

Up the Beas river valley, past hydro schemes and lush valley walls until the town of Kullu, a bus change and a short enjoyable ride to Manali. It is a bustling Indian holiday town, set in fantastic mountain scenery, reminiscent of the Rockies around Banff in Canada, although less glacial, perhaps more like New Zealand, but with pine forests hugging the sides of the valleys high up to the snow line, while lower down it is all apple orchards in late blossom. Here it is 50 km to the Rotang pass and then another 400km onwards to Ladakh, and the Himalayas beckon invitingly for that journey, but it will have to be another time as the road does not open till May. Above Manali, Old Manali used to be a small village but is now a tragic reminder of tourism in India, and off season it is a ghost town, although construction still goes on, most views are now obscured by ugly concrete hotels. Nevertheless it awaits the hordes of Israeli's from Goa next month.

Across the valley is a much more pleasant experience, Vashist village, with superb views both up and down the valley. It has a free volcanic thermal spring bath house, the walls of the mens' bath are decorated with beautiful hindu carvings. My bathing experience is made more funny by the boys asking me to join in for a photo with them lined up across the edge of the baths. I find a cool yoga ashram, the teacher just opened the school after his 5 months in Goa yesterday so i am really on time here. The local houses are mostly granate slate roofed with wooden panels, some with haystacks on the roof, cows in the yard etc.

To my distaste but not really surprise the banks of the Beas river and it tributary rivers are choked with plastic and waste. I have been thinking alot about this ever since going to Chombra- base camp for Chandershila 2 weeks ago, where the alpine stream was also choked, where i spent a half hour collecting a large volume of plastic waste from there, but it is like the indians have no ability to either see it or remove it once it is there. This is the plastic that goes to the Ganges, to the Indian Ocean, to Thailand's beaches, and to Australian beaches, as well as what kills marine life etc.

It is ironic as I am mired a quarter way through Don Delilo's 'Underworld', hailed by many as the greatest American book of the late 20th century, who's central figure is a waste management consultant. In the last few days I have seen the India's problem at first hand, in Palampur with the children, we buy an iceypole, the boy pulls off the wrapper and casts it into the river we are standing next to. I try to explain the sequence of events that occurs after his actions to him, but it is clearly beyond his comprehension, the girl tells me that "every one in India just throws their rubbish away like this, period!". Today i see small children drinking from juice containers on a walk to the wonderful huge waterfall above Vashist, on finishing they just throw it on the path and run off, oblivious.

Perhaps it is a lack of education, and that public education like that occurred for HIV might be required. I am sure the government does not have the money or devotion to the land to make this a priority, unfortunately its problems with infrastructure are clearly highlighted in beautiful places. There is some municipal garbage collection however, the landfill for Manali is passed on the way into town, ironically it is also right in the river bank. Perhaps the cows used to eat all the waste and now with plastic that hasn't changed their centuries old habits. Perhaps they suffer from the weight of mass cultural ignorance, with the land is so congested, so humanised. And there are no native animals left to damage here, they all disappeared with the hunting of the 19th and early 20th centuries and have been finished off by modern environmental damage. Occasionally some folks might scrape together a pile of rubbish and light a small bonfire like the one that is burning outside my guesthouse window right now, or blowing through the restaurant last night!!, in a vague attempt to clear some of the debris. Of course that kind of fire is some of the most atmospherically poisonous, although they have no concept of that either. I don't have any answers for India, just like I can't save our planet from its biodiversity disaster. Just needed to get that off my chest.

I am reminded of a quote from 'The Alchemy of Desire' :
"A once great civilisation, a crucible of science, medicine, literature and philosophy has become an enclave of the ignorant and the wretched. The great progressive impulses of rationality has passed India by. Europe in the last 300 years has made a triple jump of science, enlightenment and individual rights, landing firmly in the happy sandpit of social reforms and rule of law, while India's old feudal lords fed their people on a thin gruel of bullshit mysticism and half-assed religion."

I arrived in Vashist by good luck on the first day of tourist season, and they are having two days of spring festivals here. Icons are carried through the streets, covered in rich fabrics and flowers, offerings of rice and money are made to the priests, accompanied by drumming and trumpets. On the streets, festival gambling games of dice and roulette, children shoot balloons with airguns, throw the hoops over small prizes. The vendors are not like the nightmarish alcoholic emphysematous carni's of my childhood town shows, but still have that certain itinerant look to them.

My adrenal glands are in much better shape these days so in a celebratory mood for my last week in India I head to the adventure shop to see what trouble i can get my self into. Everything from heli-skiing, ski touring, rock climbing and trekking is on offer. I think that i have tried all those before, so I decide to take a 5 day paragliding course up in Solang 10km from here, with what I hear are superb Himalayan views of the last parts of the Pir Panjal range, and a delightfully quiet town. I move there tomorrow so wish me luck. I get to fly solo in the Himalaya's which will be quite something, although you don't go very high like the pro's..I guess its like the rest of my life - 'I should have done it alot sooner', but awareness was never an easy road for this boy. ....and there are masses of trekking routes here that I would love to do, much higher that the 4000 meters I was at, so I will just have to come back now i have proved my fitness.

Speaking of awareness, and the search etc etc, I have read in the last 2 weeks a series of mind opening books, initially the buddhist teacher Pema Chodron really helped get my restless mind to behave...i had been struggling with technique but found this very very successful. Now i am in the middle of the absolute classic Paul Bunton's "The quest for the Overself" originally published in 1937, yet still full of wonderful insight for the common western man or woman. It undoubtedly was a huge influence on Huxley and the generations of writers and artists that followed. He takes us on a prasiac journey into understanding emotion, intellect and the ego mind, and how to obtain stillness to move beyond all this. "The Overself tends to convey an idea that the divine state is something which floats over our heads like a cloud, whereas, although that beautiful reality certainly utterly transcends man's personal state and gives him a consciousness of universality, it is paradoxically, mysteriously and simultaneously existent as a point in the innermost recess of our being". There is a wonderful chapter on artistic inspiration where "scholarship" as he points out " is no substitute for burning transcendence".

So when I get back from flying in the mountains I will post the last India Album, hopefully without a broken ankle!