Visiting Manali: The rest of the trip

Rest of the city was alternately annoying and interesting. One place I visited was the Hidimba Temple. For those that don't know, this is where "Roja" was shot, the scene where Arvind Swamy gets kidnapped. I used to think Mani Ratnam was brave enough to go shoot in Kashmir for that movie, but turned out he chickened out. It gave me an idea for a new ad campaign for Himachal Pradesh - "We're just like Kashmir, and we don't have terrorists". I dunno why anyone would to Kashmir after that! (Except me, I will be going to visit that state sometime.)

Went to see a place called "Naggar" which has this ancient castle, converted to a hotel/restaurant by the tourism department or something. I didn't know they could do that! Next time I have to eat here since I was told that the food here is "authentic" local food.

Another place I went to visit is the Vashist temple. BTW, it was really interesting how Manali has temples for these odd dieties - Manu, Vashisth, Hidimba, Ghatotkacha. The Vashisth temple was famous for its hot springs. The water is reputed to be so hot that you can cook rice in it! Of course, I had to get into the water and I did. Except, I wasn't sure the water I was sitting in was very clean. I just hope it was coming directly from the ground and not after some other people had showered in it upstream.

At various points throughout the trip, I noticed these pipes with water coming out of them, except they didn't have any taps on them! This seemed like a big waste till I realized that the water that was coming out of the pipes was coming directly from the mountains. In some cases, it was fresh stream water travelling down the mountains, they form pockets to collect this stream water and send it out through the pipes. In other cases it was hot water coming out of these springs. People over there use these communal "pipes" for their daily uses.

On Saturday night, I was waiting in a store to buy something when I heard this guy walk up to the owner and ask him if he knew where the "Bob Dylan Cafe" was. Except, he said that as "Bob Die-lun cafe". I was about to turn and correct him when I realized that other people in this area were probably pronouncing it the same way and it would do him no good to go around "mispronouncing" it.