Slept in until 7 am as I was really enjoying my last night in luxury!

I then packed up the final few things I needed & went downstairs for some another great Indian breakfast.

Checked out and fortunately, the hotel is happy to hold my bag for a few days while I go hiking. They'll also do all the laundry I've accumulated so far while I'm away so I'll be able to come back to some nice clean clothes, at an average price of about $2/item. Gotta love Indian prices!

It was raining already which slowed traffic down through the centre of town so Indrajit picked me up from the hotel at about 9.30am and then we were off! Well, I thought we were off ... really, we just went to the trek leaders' hangout, an old house on the outskirts of Manali. I met some of the other trek leaders and chatted with them for a while about things like Mukti, the apple tree next door, Ricky Ponting, and the weather forecast for the upcoming week: rain, rain and more rain. Great! Hope it doesn't actually pan out that way otherwise, it won't be too much fun!

An hour or 2 later and everything we'd need for the next week had been loaded into a 4WD truck, ready to go up the hill to the start of our track. Why we needed a 4WD truck was about to be revealed as we headed up a dusty trail that had 40 curves (yes, each one was numbered) up to a hydro project in the hills.

I'm actually embellishing to say that it was a dusty trail because the road-building methods of the time were very crude (Tripod reference to "The Lonesome, Gregarious Cowboy" song in case you're wondering).

There were bits of road remaining but essentially, it was mostly rocks that were in the process of being washed away. OK, now I understand why we needed a 4WD truck! the 4WD function was engaged quite a few times just to make it up many of the sections.

Even though it was cloudy and foggy, there were some beautiful views down the valley as the cloud swirled around the tall, evergreen pine trees and drifted slowly off the sides of mountains. Sherry wouldn't like this road however as it is a sheer drop off the side most of the time, going down hundreds of metres to the river in the valley below. I figured they'd probably done this track many times before so the chances of something going wrong today are relatively small.

We finally reached the top and out we all got into the pouring rain. My rain poncho went straight on and off we went, up the track. Indrajit and I went on ahead while the 3 support guys loaded all the stuff onto mules and came up behind us.

It's amazing that I can buy the services of 4 people, plus food, mules and equipment for a week for what it would cost if I just stayed in a reasonable hotel and did activities each day.

We walked upwards through the forest for about 2 hours to reach the meadows where our first campsite would be, next to a "hut" (more embellishment) and a cow "enclosure" (they roam free so I can't see that it really does much but anyway).

It was raining on and off throughout the trek and that has created quite a lot of mud but it's not too bad for day 1.

While we waited for the support guys to arrive, I did a little exploring (not too far, just up in the hills a little around the campsite) and took photos of the cloud-covered trees and mountains. The clouds just gave it more atmosphere, even though we couldn't see the tops of the mountains. It was all very beautiful.

The guys arrived after not too long and set up the camp for us, then cooked dinner. There's a kitchen tent, a dining tent (complete with table and chairs), a toilet tent, and a sleeping tent for Indrajit and I. It's all very civilised!

Very nice Indian food for dinner then since there wasn't much else to do, we turned out the lights and went to bed at about 8.30pm.