Originally we planned to go to the very north of india from Dharamsala, to visit the places Srinagar and Leh, both of them said to be beautiful. But then we started counting the days we had until the vipassana course and we decided to take a shortcut instead and go directly to Manali. Or more precisely to the neighboring village called Vashist, because Manali itself is nothing extra, while Vashist is one of the best places in India.
Vashist in a nutshell: cheap accommodation, cheap and very tasty dishes, lots of tourist in a small place but not too many, homely atmosphere, good company, lots of jews (every second person is Israeli). Fast internet but many power cuts (I was happy to have a laptop). Drug turism: many come for the hashish made of the liquids of the locally grown cannabis, which is - being respectful to the customs of peoples living here since ancient times - legal to consume "for religious and meditational purposes". Our friend Zoli told us that when they were here 1-2 years ago they met two Americans in Vashist who were stoned all the time. Then Zoli and his friends went to the mountains for two weeks, and when they got back the two Americans were still sitting there, still completely stoned :) Of course we didn't come here for that, but if I had tried some local speciality I'm sure I'd have started cooking Chinese soup after it ;)
The people we met in Vashist were mainly a PE teacher from the Basque country and a young artist from Britain. We had nice chats and a nice trek with the former, while we had our first beers since Turkey with the latter. Even though it's easy to get by without drinking any beer for months, it was still a wonderful feeling the have a few bottles :)
Another funny thing that happened: we always heard amazingly good (mainly electric) music from the small restaurant/café next to our house. We went over to ask some of the music of the DJ guy, who said OK, gave us his pendrive and asked us to give him some good music if we felt like. So we gave him some good music, among them an unknown track written and song by a friend of mine, a Hungarian medical student girl. I was quite surprised when I heard it the next day. I was like "Hmmmm I know this song...", went closer and then I realized this is the music of my friend Claudia :) So I uploaded it for you in mp3, I think it goes well with our pictures, too:
Balla Bettina Claudia - Butterfly
Also we have written you a little bedtime story too (in Hungarian and English):
