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A short walk in the Himalayas - day 3 - Manikaran



Passing traffic and the Sikh temple complex - the steam you can see is from a hot spring that is channeled into the building and used for heating, cooking as well as ritual bathing. The Parvati valley is highly geo-thermally active.



Local collecting hot water in the morning where the hot spring empties into the river. The presence of the springs gives the place it's name. The Hindu version has several variants but generally go along the lines of - When Shiva and Parvati were enjoying their sojourn here - Parvati dropped her precious jewels - mani - into a spring and they disappeared. Lord Shiva commanded an attendant to recover them but they could not be found. This angered Shiva - generally a thing best avoided as his anger worked on a cosmic scale. An appeal was made to the snake deity - Sheshnag - in the bowels of the earth. He hissed and the noise opened up channels allowing the hot water to rise to the surface. Also Parvati's jewels and indeed many others were washed back up. Shiva was no longer angry. Job done. So - precious stones - Mani - hence Manikaran.




The restaurant on the right - the Holy Palace - was probably the best place in town to eat. It always struck me that most places had signs advertising that they sold European food. I'm in India - why would I want European food? India has one of the finest cuisines in the world - also they know how to cook it properly, they've been doing it for millennia. I guess for some the heat of the food is an issue but I find within 2 or 3 days my palate adjusts and it's no problem. Breakfast could be a bit trying though - I normally just have some bread and yogurt - is it strictly necessary to throw a handful of chopped fresh green chillis - seeds in - on top? So - the Holy Palace restaurant - we go in for dinner one night and think to try the full chicken butter masala. Generally I stay vegetarian in India - it's safer but this place had an excellent reputation. So we give our order to the owner and he says no problem but it's going to take about 2 hours to prepare. He'd bring us some stuff to snack on. Great - we're not in a hurry, we'll read a book or write letters. The guy disappears out the door and comes back 5 minutes later with a live chicken and heads into the kitchen. Squawk, squawk - thwack - no more squawks. It was one of the finest things I have ever eaten, anywhere. I'm not squeamish about food.



Woman in pink hanging up her washing - terraced housing in the old town. I love Himalayan villages - there is a barely a straight line in sight. It generally looks like someone has scattered a random selection of bricks, wood and slates on the hill side. Planning consent - what's that then? It's not uncommon to have to pass through a neighbor's house to gain access to yours higher up. The irony is though - that when an earthquake hits - and they do regularly - it's these places that stay standing and not the modern buildings.



Thank you for looking and reading. Tomorrow we shall go for a trek much higher up the valley to the hot springs at Khirganga. It ought to have taken 2 days to get there but took three - for reasons that shall become apparent.

Cheers - I.

@Barry Giddens @PickledNorthern @Wayne Pritchard @Helveticum
 
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This is marvellous stuff Iain. Keep it coming. I really fancy a chicken butter masala now.
 
A short walk in the Himalayas - day 4 - going up the valley.



Heading up the valley - from Manikaran - on our trek to the hot springs in Khirganga at Alpine altitude. A two day walk or so we thought. Ha ha - f**king ha.



As we climbed higher and higher it just got more impressive.



In fairness - it must be said - that other than the hot springs - the Parvati valley is famous for is - it's a major centre of cannabis production. Specifically hashish. Like the near-by Menali. The light green plants in the foreground of this picture are cannabis. Late in the season. The plants are literally weeds. A local explained to me that they had a good relationship with the police - every Tuesday they would come to raid the farms but - mysteriously - there was no one there. They knew where to find the large bung of rupees and bugger off again. Everyone else went back to work shortly afterwards.



As I say - it's a weed. It's everywhere. As a tourist you don't f**k with this sort of thing but the locals royally enjoy it. Particularly the wandering Sadhus. More of which later.



So - first day of the trek successful - we wake up in the hamlet of Pulga. Things are about to go badly awry.

Thank you for reading and looking

Cheers - I

@Barry Giddens @Wayne Pritchard @Rufus @PickledNorthern @Helveticum @patw
 
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Looking forward to the next instalment , very good indeed, nice looking weed too
 

 
A recent trip to Belgium saw me take a number of photos. I took these but missed out on a lot more, I hate being 'that guy' who's in the way, seeing life through a smartphone. Had I remembered to bring my camera, I'm sure there'd be a lot more on offer. I do really need to use it more...
We'll start at Tyne Cot memorial;

It was somewhat harrowing hearing the continuous streaming of names and ages of those who'd fallen in the war. It was a constant reminder that those who fell were (a) so much younger than we focus on and (b) so many were unknown having being truly disfigured, or even obliterated, during 'The Great War'. Seeing love-letters and notification of death letters to and from families gave a stark reminder of what many were facing at the time. 28,000 names peppered the memorial and headstones in all directions gave a strong visual representation. You could not help but notice the stones labelled only 'A soldier from the war. Known unto God', those who were not accounted for upon death. Of all the headstones, there were only two for German soldiers.

Onto the Passchendaele museum - I was fortunate enough to see a commemorative exhibit of the dugout beneath the church. It will be closed later this year and unlikely to ever be reopened. Dank, dreary, dark...yet comfort. It lay under the ruins of the church in WWI after extensive bombing in Ypres, where none could be found. It often flooded, the walls and floor were thick with a sludgy, clay-and-rust slurry which sticks to anything it touches. We were warned of German detonation devices which are commonly found in the dugout, as it had been untouched for the last 100 years prior to the opening of the exhibit. No photos here.
Within the museum there was a vast array of war memorabilia. Exhibits of drawings, cans of Fray Bentos corned beef, replica smells of chemical warfare, guns, armour, pocket periscopes to name but a few. I was lucky on the busy day to have an uninterrupted panoramic shot of some shells used during the war, some restored. Showing my mam the below photo she said 'Christ, I thought it was a perfume shop'.

For scale, a person would stand to about midway up the 3rd row from the bottom.

After a trip around the cloth hall in Ypres, as below;

Which was followed by some food, I caught the last post at the Menin gate. It was my first, first-hand, experience of the last post and I managed to get a snap coming up to the gate, as the sun started setting and the warm glow cast against its front. It was busy, very busy. My other half's family were telling me that even 5 years ago there would be very few people there. They've told me of times when it was just them and maybe one or two others present. I'd say 20% of people there were filming on smartphones. Of course, given recent atrocities in Belgium, armed police were present. The Menin gate hosts circa 55,000 names of those fallen up the walls.


Outside of Ypres, there is a Welsh Memorial to those who had fallen in the First World War.

Welcomed initially with a Welsh welcome, this small memorial shows that all walks of life were expected to play their part. This has, apparently, been developed in recent years with the introduction of the 'welcome', a tribute to the Welsh who'd fallen, a stone with some of the national anthem, 'Mae hen wlad fy nhadau', and a red dragon atop the memorial, as below;



To me, this highlights the scale of global change as a result of WWI and II, in that those who had died could never become fathers. People from all over the world played a part - Sikh's, Australians, Welsh, Scottish, German, Belgians; you name it.

A very informative journey through time for me. I always used to groan when my family tried taking me through historical sites as a child but I could not have enjoyed this insight more. Very interesting and very harrowing. I would wholeheartedly recommend it as a trip away, regardless of whether you take a keen interest in wars/history etc.

All photos were taken on an iPhone 7 with stock camera app or Musecam for RAW photos. Most photos were altered in Snapseed.
 
Stunning scenery Iain. Thanks once again for taking the time to put this together.
 
Good stuff Ben. I visited these sites many years ago, so your words and photos brought back many memories. Cheers.
 

Thank you for taking the time to post this - interesting and eloquent. The picture from the museum is strangely beautiful but at the same time horrific - when you contemplate the sole purpose they were created to perform. My other-half when she worked in a secondary school used to take students on tours of the WW1 battlefields. Tyne Cot was the first stop on the itinerary - they'd get off the bus - the kids being excited, jabbering away to each other but when presented with the sheer scale of the memorial - silence. Slack jaws. Not a peep. She defies anyone to listen to the Last Post without a tear in their eye. 'lions led by donkeys.' - yours - I.
 
@Barry Giddens @Digimonkey thanks for the kind words both. It was definitely a touching visit all up.
I would love to go again. My other half's family are knowledgeable in the area and history but they've done the rounds a number of times so I felt a little hurried at times. Fortunately it can be a relatively inexpensive trip so hopefully I'll be back there before long.
A lot of information to digest, like you said Iain, seeing either side of the coin, the beauty of the technology versus the underlying purposes of them.
 
A short walk in the Himalayas - day 5 - how to get lost, then un-lost and then spent the night out.

So we leave Pulga in good spirits - initially it was a beautiful morning but the weather started to set in and it rained in a truly biblical fashion. We knew that we had to find a fork in the path about 5 miles upstream and take a right. We missed it - for reasons that will be illustrated shortly. We kept going for too long on the wrong side of the river - I think both of us knew something was wrong but neither of us voiced it. Our hoods were up and the path was getting steeper and steeper - so you tend just to get your head down and get on with it. The trail we were following was at first a shepherd's track then it narrowed further. The problem was that we were in dense scrub and had no view of our surroundings greater than a couple of feet. Then we got to a clearing and our mistake was confirmed.



This is what separated us from the path we ought to have been on -



So - no way but back the 4 or 5 miles we had come up the wrong side of the gorge. Granted it was downhill this time but small recompense.



This is why we missed the fork in the path - an illegal logging camp that had been established right at the junction, obliterating something that had before been obvious. Even having worked this out it took us half an hour to pick up the path in the right direction. We worked our way around the perimeter in widening circles until we found it.

Things were getting a bit serious by now - due to our 10 mile detour there was no way we were going to get to Khirganga that day. It was another 10 miles - all of which were uphill. We were wet, cold and hadn't eaten properly. We had no sleeping bags as we had planned on moving between mountain huts where you could hire bedding. We had my trusty Afghan shawl - never leave home without one - and a silver survival blanket. The sort they give to marathon runners when they finish. The light was starting to disappear quickly - in steep sided valleys there is no gradual decline - once it drops below the ridge it's dark suddenly. We took stock and decided to walk on for another half an hour - at least we would warm up a bit. There was some trail food left and we wouldn't run short of water so it looked like a miserable night but we weren't going to die. What really concerned us was the cold - it was September and we were at 13,000 feet. We plodded on until the light was about to vanish and........

For the next bit of the narrative to make sense - you need to know what a sahdu is, I'm sure most of you do but in case you don't. A sahdu is an itinerant Hindu holy man - I think Jains can qualify under the description too. An ascetic - a mendicant. They renounce worldly goods and survive on charity and generally do a lot of pilgrimages. Mostly in their pants. It's a bit weird if you are used to European notions of religious expression - it not unusual for a bank manager or a civil servant to have a 'spiritual' gap year. Universally in my experience - they are truly prodigious users of cannabis. This guy is typical of the genre - check his eyeballs! Piss holes in the snow.



So - at the last gasp we decide we at least had to find some level ground to kip on. We noticed a well worn path leading off the main trail and without speaking we follow it. It led to a cave! Providence. With head torches we gathered wood - in plentiful supply at least and got a fire going.



We were wondering what to do - should we stay up in shifts to keep the fire going? It was getting really cold by now when three figures emerge out the night. Sahdus. It put the shits up us both - they were bare foot - we didn't hear them coming. A pirate captain on the Spanish Main would have said - I'm sorry you guys are a bit wild looking for even my crew. We had no common language but by hand gestures it was understood - can we join you around your fire? Sure - no problem. So me and my mate are close to physical collapse at this point and again through hand gestures - they say - you go to sleep and we will keep the fire going. Don't worry. Callum and I took one look at each other - and without speaking - knew we trusted them. We took our boots off, put the foil blanket on the ground and the Afghan shawl over us and slept hugging each other to preserve as much body heat as we could. It wasn't the most comfortable night I have ever spent but we didn't die. They kept their word and the fire was still going at first light. We were gently nudged awake at dawn and offered a chillum - an Indian hash pipe - which we declined without causing offense. We still had to walk uphill for 10 miles. A memorable night. Trust people as you find them.



Our cave seen in daylight the next morning.

Thank you for reading and looking. Last post tomorrow - we finally make it to Khirganga.

Yours - I.

@Barry Giddens @Rufus @William Dobson @Benz3ne @udrako @PickledNorthern @AnthH @Blademonkey @patw @Helveticum
 
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