The snowy jungle 

(28th December, 2020)

 " With courage in your heart and food in your stomach you can climb any mountain" - The Poet's cafe, Manu Temple, Old Manali


A signboard outside the Poet's cafe 

A noticeable chill covered my body that was already beneath layers of wool. I checked the time. 8-15AM. Loki's intermittent barking had me waking up quite a lot overnight, but I was still feeling fresh. But why sudden cold ?

I got up to remove the curtains, and lo & behold ! Snow !!!


Clicked from cafe of Basecamp Nirvana


On the way to Bro's cafe


White is an unusual color. It portrays happiness with the same rigor as it does gloom. I was busy clicking photos from just outside my room, when a fellow backpacker advised me to visit Bro's cafe. He said it's amazing to have some tasty breakfast with a much better view to click.


Cafe area

I'm glad we rolled up our socks and visited Bro's cafe. You need to cross the Manu temple compound to reach there. It's conveniently situated at the 2nd floor and even has a separate balcony which Chaitanya & I occupied happily. Ordering food and clicking pictures kept us occupied as we had nowhere else to roam in snow.

View from Bro's cafe



Manu temple clicked from the cafe



I had visited the cafe earlier than Chaitanya, so when I brought him along I told the man at cafe counter that I've brought a new customer, for which, as a gesture, I got a cup of tea free :) 

Free tea, free, awesome view, what else one wants in life ? Well, a lot more, lol.

After coming back, I asked Ronnie what to do. In his usual nonchalant manner he said " Kahi ghoom to nahi paaoge, peeche jungle chale jaao" (You won't be able to travel far, visit the forest behind).

And hence, without any plan, we just started walking up the nearest mountain. They say unplanned things are best for a reason. We saw two other guys matching our levels of madness coming up the same route, and an unannounced race up the hill in snow started.

We were never in a mood to race, so thought to let those two go ahead of us. After a while, one of them shouted to us "Bhai, aap bhi saath aa jaao, hume thoda dar lag raha hai" (Brothers, please come with us, we are feeling a little scared!)

The village downtown as seen from mountain face


It's quite lonely in the wee hours of morning when it has snowed fresh, and having some company is the ultimate thing one can get. It can be tricky navigating uphill when mountains are snow clad. You never know if you're putting your foot in a pit ! A stick helps in such cases, but we found only one good, usable stick on the way uphill and spent our time fighting over stick ownership.
Chaitanya got his shoes into some animal poo and ended up marking the complete trail for someone to track us in case we got lost !

All 4 of us kept laughing and scaring each other in the name of snow leopard. At around 5PM, my roomie and I got back and yet again had a sumptuous meal at Chill's Lounge, with a chocolate pancake to end the day.

Chocolate pancake



- End of day 3