From Shimla to Manali

Well let see...there seems to be so much to tell. We spent about a week in Shimla which is a cute little city built on the side of a hill...reminded both Deb and I a little bit of Positano in Italy. We had planned on staying there only for a few days and then going further north to Manali. But a few days turned into over a week when we met some wonderful people. We even ended up checking out of our room and staying at their house. Got to see how an Indian family lives...it was nice. Also had our first home cooked meal in 3 months which was lovely.

It reminded me a lof of when I met my friends in Spain. We were spoiled rotten by Munnir and Aftab...they didn't let us pay for a thing or lift a finger. We had dinner made for us, bought for us, they did our laundry, drive all around the city trying to find us a bottle of wine when we mentioned that we liked it. They hired a car to drive us to Manali so we wouldn't have to take the bus and then we had to fight them to even let us pay for that. It was hard to leave...I am sure they would have kidnapped us if we had allowed it.

We got to Manali yesterday and found a guest house to stay in which cost us about $6/night. But it wasn't quite what we wanted. The room was small, we were tripping over one another, we had to ring a bell in the morning so that someone would bring us a bucket of hot water and we had to have a bucket shower. So today we said screw it. We have been roughing it for 3 months. So we are now safely tucked away in a gorgeous room (still only costing us $45/night but that is loads here in India). It has a sitting room, a huge king size bed, a bathroom that is bigger than the room we were in last night and a TUB. Yahoo. There are towels, shampoo, soap...Ahhh. All the things in life that seem simple but are missed dearly when they are not around. The room even has hardwood floors and I feel like I can walk on it without my shower flip flops. These are gonna be a good few days!