A Disfunctional Diary of India- Khir Ganga to Manikaran to Chandigarh: Day 40

I only use my mobile phone for it's alarm function now. It was set for 6:30AM. Up with the sun, gone with the wind. We had a long, long day ahead with lots of ground. It began with a fast paced hike out of the deep woods that separated Khir Ganga from everywhere else. We power walked our way through it, jumping streams and hopping over rocks like Fred Penner on a coke binge. We found a path that the village kids used everyday to walk to school in Barshani. They led us into the small town where we had cheap breakfast and waited for the bus back back to Manikaran. It wasn't so crowded this time so we sat inside on seats like normal people do. But I instantly wished I was back on the roof when a large group of gay Indian tourists began singing every lousy pop song they could think of, at top volume.

We arrived back in Manikaran before noon to reclaim our motorcylces and backpacks. Then we made a quick stop in Kasol to purchase chillums. The guy we bought them from, Rahul, was a good salesman, but he would not let us go without hitting his own personal chillum first. So once again we did something I didn't plan on doing but very much enjoyed... riding stoned. It helped us focus gain focus on our mission- to make it to Chandigarh in time for a well deserved meal at Sindy Sweets, the same classy restaurant we had indulged ourselves at the first night on the road. We drove all the way into the darkness of 10:00 night traffic. We had the determination of a waterproof match, but when we finally pulled into the parking lot of Sindy Sweets, the flame got stomped out. It was like a bad movie scene as we ran towards the entrance and the security guard put his hand out to halt us while he flipped the 'open' sign on its ass. Strike one. We kicked dirt and then borrowed a street vendors phone to make a call. We had previously made couch surfing arrangements to stay at someone's house, but the idiot wasn't even in Chandigarh that night. He was miles away in Khir Ganga, where we had just come from. Strike two. No place to stay, no food to eat, no patience left. The first priority was trying to hunt down a place to eat at almost 11:00PM. We were weak with hunger and couldn't think straight. We walked back to the bikes and discovered that Jon's back tire was dead flat. Strike three. On the brink of a public blow-up, we were approached by a little Nepalese dude who seemed to sense our misfortune. After many questions he led us to a local eatery and sat down with us while we ordered. I made a comment about his pen and he gave it to me and then left like a 10 minute angel. Never even got the guy's name.

The next task was finding a mechanic shop, where we would have to sleep on our bikes until it opened in the morning. We found a gas station where we filled Jon's back tire up, which gave us more time and distance to locate a mechanic. It took a frustrating hour of slow rolling all over the city with bad directions from everyone we asked. Eventually two cops pointed us to a gas station with a garage that would open at 8:00AM. There were a few drunken locals there who were very intent on helping, but Jon and I had reached the end of our rope and just wanted to rest. The only sober one in the group was sheepish looking kid named Romy. He invited us to stay at his flat, only 5 minutes away. It was a fairly easy decision, despite the fact that I'd wanted to sleep on my motorcycle the entire trip and this was the last opportunity.

It was obvious when we settled in at Romy's place, that we were the first foreign guests he'd had as company. Romy was freshmen in College and shared a small 2^nd floor flat with his little brother. His two friends, Vikky and Nanu came along too, excitedly offering snacks, taking pictures and asking innocent questions while we sat there trying to keep our eyes open. It was as if they had discovered a U.F.O., and as tired as we were, we did our best to hang out with them. We didn't get to sleep until 3:00AM, but we were grateful to experience the Indian hospitality we had only heard about until now.

Read Day 41 - 46