Wednesday, November 08, 2006

The trek, Khajjiar, and Chamba Valley

We started the trek early morning from a spot called Lakarmandi. Basically we walked down one mountain, had lunch by a river, and then hiked up another one. It took us about 6hrs to go about 20km. Pretty decent pace. The area is part of the southern himalayan belt of mountains.

Some photos from the hike:







Khajjiar is billed as the Indian Switzerland. It's another spot in India that you would not expect to see. Very scenic and very green a cool. Rob and I went zorbing...the slope wasn't very steep and the balls weren't that inflated. We had two guys helping to roll us along so it wasn't that extreme of an experience, but it was cool.



The hotel had a ping pong table. We got a mini tournament happenning with Rob, Pravin (the tour leader), and I. Pravin turned out to be a pretty good player...I'd say we were pretty even in wins/losses. Rob put up a good fight and got his fair share. Rob and I ended up playing for about 4hrs until past midnight...I was teaching the finer points of the game and he started getting pretty good. If the ball hadn't flown out the window, we probably would have been there for another couple of hours.

The next morning we set out down the mountain into the Chamba Valley area. The downhill was mostly on paved roads...I found it harder than the previous day's hiking, mainly because it was tough on my knees. I managed to survive though. We stopped for a quick lunch and headed off to catch the local bus.

Chaos ensued:
Rob decided to stop and pet some puppies. Dave somehow got roped into taking a picture of someone's wife who was very shy and didn't come out. I was watching what both of them were doing. Meanwhile, the rest of the group had got on the local bus...more light packed into the local bus. The two guides stayed behind to see what the three of us were doing. Long story short, we arrived at our destination by means of a commandeered car, 2 very packed buses, some timely phonecalls, and a ton of very close and touching interaction with the local people...especially the bus conductor.



We hiked up the side of yet another mountain to finally arrive at Orchard Hut. The dinner that night was filled with a lot of laughter as we recollected the chaos of the day.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Are you Ramzi Asfour?? Weren't you a teen age pro ping pong player in Jordan???