On the road again..and by myself again.
I was tired of Goa's way of life: one week on crowded beaches between streets vendors and drunken Russians was enough.
I took a first train to Mumbai (only 12 hours) where I changed to another one to Kalka: 30 hours journey! I decided to buy a 2nd class ticket because of the long travel and the temperatures which I excepted to drop dramatically! I arrived in Kalka with only 2 hours delay, and immediately felt that mountains were no longer far.

Being a mountains lover, I decided to spend new Year in world's largest mountain chain: Himalaya.

First night in Kalka gave me a first taste about what I was about to experience: hotel room was like a refrigerator, no heating at all, and hot water was more an opinion than a certitude.
So I started to learn how to deal with those situations: blankets, clothes and hot tea!
The day after I went to Shimla, one of Indian's most popular mountain destination. The journey to Shimla's 2500m was spectacular: 50 years old bus, with no windows, no dampers, no room for luggage and more important: no rules on the road, and only one lane for a very dense two ways traffic of course! We started the ascent and I started to see the first Himalayan peaks in the background: felt like heading towards a big wall. Fortunately no altitude or road sickness for me, despite we were climbing pretty fast. Unfortunately some other passenger were not that lucky, so bus had to stop from time to time... And when bus was unable to stop...well...you guessed it!

4 hours later we reached Shimla and I soon discovered that nearly all accommodations were full...and Market Law's wind was flowing over the town. So I had to adapt my budget for the night, and to change my plans: staying in Shimla for longer than one night was way above my budget.

After another hard night, I decided to head towards Manali. 180 km, 4 buses, and 12 hours later I reached (by 9pm)

Here I finally found a good place to meet 2014: Manali is another very popular holiday spot for Indians, located few kilometers from skiing slopes and surrounded by small Tibetan looking villages. Sometimes it really felt like being in some Switzerland's hill station, because of temperature of course, but also because of light(s), smells, roads, bars, landscapes (pines covered with snow) and many other reasons that led me to decide to spend at least one week here. Main difference is that hotel rooms and restaurants are not heated at all. Only way to beat the cold are hot showers and fires started by freezing people on the street. Hot water is normally included in every hotel room, by boiler, but electricity is dropping every 20 minutes...for 20 minutes. So having real hot shower, like I mean it by negative temperatures, requires good timing.

On my first Himalayan day, I decided to go skiing. Because of some mafia, only taxis and private cars are allowed to drive to ski slopes and rope-ways, buses can't.
So I simply hitchhiked for a few minutes, and two young men drove me to Solang, India's most popular ski area. The two guys started to smoke what I first thought to be normal cigarettes, but I quickly realized it was something...a bit stronger...So they were very happy..and so was I, but for another reason: I was about to ski in India!!

As I now start to know (and take with philosophy), in India things goes only very rarely as planned. I arrived to ski resort after another 30 minutes walking, the road being virtually blocked by hundreds of cars trying to find their way to the top, and I quickly realized that skiing was an activity among many others, and it was certainly not the most popular. In the same area, as big as a football field, thousands of people driving quads, snowmobiles, taking pictures with yaks, rolling in snow, throwing snowballs, making snowmen, landing with parachutes but only a few ones trying to ski.
A ski lesson in India consists in being pushed by a guy on a flat land and trying not to fall down every 50 cm! Only a few succeeded.

This big recreation area was actually a pretty dangerous place to be: while walking risk was high to be hit by a drunken snowmobile driver crossing the crowd at about 50km/h or by a beginner parachutist falling from the sky. I decided to try anyways, but it seems that to rent ski equipment one has to go though a travel agency located lower in the valley, after asking all the booth around, I had to surrender...

I decided to walk back to Manali, as the road looked even more crowded than in the morning: literally 10km of stopped cars with engine turned on and waiting for another 1m step to reach their hotel located somewhere in the valley. I took some small secondary path and walked for 4 hours across beautiful, peaceful and very colorful Indian mountain villages.

I finally reached Manali at dusk, chose a nice restaurant for my 2013's last meal, had a good shower and went to bed at 10.20pm!

Happy new Year to all for you that have the patience and curiosity to follow this blog!