Yay, we escaped Delhi and the bus trip turned out to be great, well as great as 20 hours on a bus can be... and we did get the Volvo airconditioned bus as promised. When we weren't sleeping the views from the bus in the morning were spectacular climbing slowly up to the hillstation of Manali, sometimes looking down the valleys with a 200m drop below us.

We are now staying in the sleepy village of Vashisht, our guidebook says that there are sometimes raves in the woods but this place couldn't be quieter. There isn't much to do here (unless you want to trek) but sit back and take in the beautiful scenery, the backdrop from the balcony of our room is amazing - snow capped mountains, pine forests and a raging river below - all this for a mere 5 pounds/night. We've caught up on sleep (well Ant has been watching the Ashes and I think I may have been sleeping from boredom of watchin the cricket).

We've also spent the last couple of days trying to acclimatise ourselves, the village is at 2,000 metres and we are finding it difficult to walk up hills. You'd think trekking 300km would have made us fitter... we are putting it down to being so high up.

We've decided to chill out here for a few days before the next mammoth journey. We are contemplating heading to Leh, but this will involve either 2 days by bus (staying one night at a camp in the mountains) or 17 hours in a jeep/mini bus... this may not sound too bad, but we will travel on the worlds second highest road, part of this being the Rhotang Pass (which translated into English means piles of dead bodies) and ascend at one point to 5,000 metres. Other travellers we've spoken to have said to break up the journey, but we are thinking we might just do the whole bit at once... hmm, I think we'll just sleep on it and see how we feel tomorrow!!