India has been by far the most unusual and eye opening part of our trip for me. Ally loved Thailand but also has a unique view of India, especially the Northern bits where we find ourselves now. Manali is a hippie village that is half trapped in the future and half in the past. Modern day shops, coffee shops and more pizza restaurants than I have ever seen. Westerners love their pizza. Manali is also a throwback to the 60s,music icons decorate cafe walls, their music piped into the streets trying to lure you into their dens of commerce. Like some misguided Pied Piper. We are lucky enough to find a bed off the beaten track and surrounded by wild cannabis (smells wonderful) which grows like the weed it is, everywhere fields of green. A nearby river sings us to sleep . The mountains in the distance are snow capped and picture postcard beautiful.

We take a diesel van on a 3 day trip into Leh. The scenery is some of the best we have seen. Saphire blue sulfur lakes with black salt crust shores.Canyons that turn into desert mountains that turn into epic peaks. Rivers that cut into the mountain sides and slice through towns. Heart-racingly beautiful. Towns so small they pump their water for daily use out of pumps in the town square. Untouched by technology . No wifi no facebook, no Instagram no telling everyone how you are doing the only people that you?d care to tell would be in the same village or street anyway. People who have never left their home town. People who love their life and find preciousness in tiny things or deeds. Like making bread, raising children for them its enough. What little they have is enough.

Leh is a mountain town. Surrounded by 3 ranges one being the western Himalaya. We stay for a few days and connect with friends we met along the way. We decide to hire a Royal Enfield the road bike everyone takes off road and ride up to the worlds highest motorable road. Its a straight up straight down ride of about 150 km one way. The road looks as if a giant child upended his Lego box in the midst of a large mountain range. Fallen rocks ranging from the size of your head to the size of a car. Landslides every so often and snow on the top.
Its almost a road. Most of it anyway.
At one point though we had to wait over an hour while they were building a new road . Bull dozers and diggers get to work while you wait. Normal for this place. 18000 feet up. We travel for a few days and stay in isolated mountain villages where there is only electricity some times. Mostly they say when someone remembers. We stay overnight with a family who makes us a local treat of fried bread and tea for breakfast all coming out of a kitchen that is over a hundred years old. Copper kettles and pots line the back wall. The 3 foot walls keep the place warm in the summer its cold here. Ice covered mountain tops all year round and in the winter the family moves to the city where they have power in the winter. Their little village becomes unliveable in the winter with temperatures going down to minus 20 degrees celsius and no trucks to supply the small village. The valleys that line the road are a mix bag of colors, greens blues,red pink and browns. Pink dust on the road from landslides that have been cleared.
I never thought I would see such beauty and desolation in one place. You get an idea about a place. You see it in your minds eye. When you ride into it, your pre-thoughts evaporate . Its not a lush green landscape at all. Its dry. Dusty bone dry. With green trees, apricot and apple orchards where people have settled. Rivers of melted ice everywhere, the earth looks like it has experienced a holocaust. Your body and clothes are covered in grey dust. Your lips crack, wet laundry dries overnight. You feel parched all the time. Absolutely wonderful. Unlike any other place, filled with alien beauty. I am in love.

We say goodbye to the north and head to Mumbai. Picture a large city with sky scrapers, a garbage problem, poverty and cows. People so poor that they literally live on the streets. Sheets of plastic up against a wall in the street is the makeshift house. Naked kids pulling large drums into the rain and washing themselves while its raining their the daily shower. Garbage problems so bad that the locals tell you to avoid the beaches. Its a mess. Avoid the big cities.
Avoid local trains its fight club with woman and grannies. Pushing and jostling to get on the train. People getting pushed to the floor .
It is Monsoon season in Mumbai the streets flood easily and it doest pour but gushes for the whole day flooding the whole city, people die, houses washed away, no rescue service to come help out?. India is all the bad you have ever heard, poor, dirty, litter everywhere cities literally built on trash. India is also a zoo . Cats, lots of dogs,monkeys, chipmunk, elephants, camels, goats, sheep, pigs and piglets, donkeys, buffalos and cows everywhere in the cities. But if you aren?t looking at the state of the country and its lack of westernized comforts the Indian Jewel will reveal itself.