Okay, so it was amazing being in Ladakh! I loved every minute of it and the people were amazing, nobody was pushy, there were a lot of people but not to many. And now we go to real India. I can only call it that because I have been so many times before and so many local Indians agree. Ladakh is a whole different world compared to the rest of India as I'm sure the same is true for other parts of India as well. Its like coming from Another country and only visiting the Native American tribal village in South Dakota. Not quite real U.S.A.
We made our way back to Delhi through Manali by road. It was a very bumpy, not comfortable 2 day ride through the most beautiful mountains! We never even dipped below 11,000 ft. during the 2 day journey. We were surfing through the clouds.
Manali was a great place and I would love to have a few weeks in the future to explore that corner of mountain paradise. The hiking, biking, paragliding, and mountaineering looks incredible to tackle if we had more than 1 1/2 days. Sadly we didn't, we had only 1 1/2 days. So we made the most of it and ventured out to start our first half day visiting a temple, having lunch, and going to shops.
The temple was less than impressive. It was beautiful of course but not what we expected after walking 4 kilometers uphill to get there. The lunch though was magnificent! The first thing I saw on the menu that looked so amazing was mostly American and I was excited about it! It was a yak cheese grilled sandwich! Yum!! We had tried the yak cheese in Ladakh and it was very tasty, so when I saw that I was stoked and ordered it right away! "No" is the words I got. So sad, no yak grilled cheese sandwich today (you learn to always have a backup plan for your food order) So we ordered tandoori chicken and other Punjabi food which was of course just as delicious.
After food we ventured out shopping and watched people jump on the river, yeah that sounds weird! They were hooked up with a harness and you could pay to slide across the zip line and the bounce so your feet hit the river. We almost got darja to do it but she decided not to. It was turning into a cold night and nobody wanted to get wet. (This is the last time we will be cold in India) The day ended with a great night and some ice cream while listening to live music. It was nice.
Morning started with yoga at the Russian coffee house (nope, were still in India). It was a great 2 hour session of yoga and something that we needed before we got on yet another 12 hour night bus to Delhi. We also spent a few hours walking around a waterfall.
Ready for yet another bus ride back to Delhi and another visit to the Taj Mahal.
Justin and Kelly met us in Delhi and we were off to the Taj Mahal for the day!
After visiting the Taj Mahal we were off to Varanasi by train.