Manali Third Time

So as I was saying, after we got our luggage we took a room in Vashisht, a small village located about 10 k from Manali on a hill overlooking the river. We were lucky to get a corner room with large windows and an amazing view. Anastia had only two days left before departing for Delhi, from where she was to take a plane back to Israel on September 2. My flight back was two weeks after on Sept. 18.

I found Olik back in Manali, angry that I had flaked on our plans for Nepal, but admitted that the fault was mainly his as he hadn't arrived from Leh on time for departure. Anastia and I had grown quite close during our trip and spent our last days together wandering around Vashisht, lounging in random hippie cafes serving all kinds of Israeli food like shakshuka, sabich, and malawah, as well as meeting up with Adrien who had fallen ill with a fever, probably his body's reaction to the shock of coming so close to serious injury or even death. My bike needed tending to, but I decided to wait until Anastia had left. I saw her off at the bus station in Manali where she caught a sleeper bus to Delhi, a 14 hour bus ride.

After she left I moved my stuff back to Manali and took a room in the Mount Diew guesthouse where Olik was staying with new friends. I spent another five days in Manali, mostly with him, and some other quite ordinary folks from Israel, recuperating from the demanding Spiti-Kinnaur adventure, fixing my bike and preparing it for the trip back to Delhi, and reading. Olik had decided that he wanted to get a bike on which to continue the journey, and that the perfect idea would be take up my lease since my trip was over in two weeks. I said this was fine with me but that he'd have to wait two weeks. He said he couldnt wait and decided to buy a bike instead along with his friend who was continuing with him on another bike to Nepal. Suffice it say that they bought horrible bikes and definitely got ripped off, and whats worse they bought it from a mechanic with a reputation for swapping original parts for generic ones. Because they were impatient and wanted to leave within a few days, they decided to risk it, something I urged them not to do. I told them to find a better bike from a mechanic who'd been recommended to me, but they wouldnt listen. I just hope they didnt get stuck somewhere on the extremely long journey to Nepal.

The mechanic who's been recommended to me was in Vashisht, by the name of Anu, and I needed to fix the oil leak as well as the other problems, which he, after a quick look, attributed to a manufacturing defect in this model of Enfield that no one but an expert in the Thunderbird model could know about. They fixed this defect within an hour, and after lubing up some other parts and tightening other ones, the bike was running perfectly. If only I could have fixed this problem before Spiti-Kinnaur I would have saved myself and anastia a lot of headache, but of course things never happen that way and lessons must be learned. While I was at the mechanic we all witnessed the horrible scene of a cat getting run over by a car and writhing in the street for at least 45 seconds before succumbing.

What else happened in Manali? Nothing of serious note, just relaxing, getting a massage, buying some gifts, eating well, smoking a lot, coming to terms with going home, and figuring out how I was going to spend the next two weeks. I was being urged to go with Olik and his new group to Rishikish, but since I had already been there I declined. I met a guy named Avi who I also spend some time with, we visited some waterfalls near Vashisht together where a very crazy baba smoked a tiny chillum under the falls and coughed grotesquely. He had also bought a bike from the same corrupted mechanic, and we decided to head down to Kasol together, before I'd continue on to Pushkar for a week. We even made plans with some other friends but I ended up traveling alone to Kasol because we realized that Avi, though he had recieved the bike, did not actually know how to ride it, being that the gears were on the wrong side and he was having difficulty starting it. He needed a few days to get used to the Enfield and I couldnt wait. We agreed to meet in Parvati.