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The bottle of Whiskey...

I should probably wait till later to write this, since I'm not at my best right now.  We had our first 'night out' in India last night, and I'm a little worse for wear today.  Still, It had been 2 weeks, so we were owed one!!

Hmm,  Well we arrived in Delhi at 3pm yesterday after a sojourn to Ranikhet.  Ranhiket is a beautiful little town at around 1800M in the Himalayas.

The train to Ramnagar was 'fun' it was an 8 hour overnight train, and we found out on the platform we had 'waiting list' seats, which means that, technically, we were supposed to sit 2 to a bed that is only 5'5" long!  Well I managed to sneak a look at the conductors manifest, and noticed that the beds that everyone were lying in happend to be for people that were supposed to get on the train in Delhi, and didn't - so we were ok after all.

After getting off the train at 5:30am, we took a tuk tuk to the 'bus station'.  This should be called the side of the main road in town however.  We had to wait for an hour for the bus to leave, so I wandered the early morning market, and had a cup of 'chai'.  This is a staple in India, and I am really starting to enjoy hearing the calls of 'Chai, Chai' as the tea salesman walks around with his kettle - it is 3 rupees for a cup (9 cents) and if you are lucky you get a little disposable ceramic cup you get to smash afterwards.

Still, Standing around in the circle (the saleman had glasses, so you had to stick with him until you were done) was a pretty funny experience.  Dave and Keith were both on the bus, so it was me and 9 indian guys, the tallest of which was 1ft shorter!

The bus ride was - well, I'm very very glad Keith bought some Valium in Delhi.  Our rickety ass bus was loaded with a ton of stuff on the roof, further adding to it's huge top heaviness, before it headed out on the road.  Well the road was a winding track, wide enough for one vehicle through the Himalayas for 100km... it took 3 hours.  The bus hurtled along, cranking corners so hard that you had to hang on to stay in the seat.  On the other side of the corners were 1000ft dropoffs (or more) straight down the mountain - no survivors.  Just as I thought I had gotten used to it, we had to break and swerve to avoid a head on with another bus, all framed by a 8ft wide road and fatal dropoffs.  I decided to go to sleep at this point, which was a bad idea, since somE of the bumps were so big my face got driven over and over into my pack, or the wall of the bus.  Well we arrived in Raniket, alive suprisingly, and checked into the Ranikhet Inn... The hotel manager was crazy, but a really nice guy, and would keep barging into our room and talking to us - he did this about 9 times during our two night stay.

Well. after a day off to recover from our various sicknesses, we headed off into the real mountains.

Our guide, minto, was a really funny good guy, and with keiths Itrip we learned him some wastern music over his car stereo the whole 5 hour drive there and back.  He likes cake, and barry white, but is not a fan of house music as such.  oh well.  The final albulm was Black Sunday, so he must have been glad to kick us out of the car after that!

Well, we got there close to sunset, and had a 3km uphill trek to the first guesthouse.  I almost died - speedy gonzalez ran up the mountain, and me, with a very congested chest could barley breath.  By the time we got to the hut, it was wondered if I could even continue.  Fortunately I coughed up a few golfballs of shit from my lungs over the next 12 hours, and that helped a lot!!

Day 2 was 9Km uphill, and 2Km downhill.  Over the course of the 9k, we climbed over 1300 vertical meters, which was a bitch.  Seriously, I'm shocked I made it.  That night we stayed in a stone house, in a meadow, surrounded by 6000M+ mountains.  It was absoultely beautiful.  It is also the first place i have been where the is 100% certifiably NOTHING to do.  Good job we brought cards.  We also went looking for firewood, and brought enough back to sit by a fire and play cards late into the night (11pm!!).  Well after falling asleep, the hut got freezing, and I woke up on my board of wood called a bed, stone cold and sore as hell, and decided to rebuild the fire.  That helped for 30 mins, then the hut got back to freezing again (0C).  Oh well.

Day 3, we climbed 3KM uphill to get to the highest foothill around, and take some photos of the spectacular view.  We then climbed about 11 downhill, back to the car, and drove back to Ranikhet.

The hike was very tiring, and it made getting up at 4:45 am the next day to get back to Delhi very hard...

Our taxi was basically a nissan micra, and it hurtled along the roads faster than the bus.  The train was a chair car, and we spent 7.5 hours on a seat about the same size as the back seat of the sunfire, for 3 of us.

Ahh well, back in Delhi again, and looking forward to Amritsa (if we ever buy the tickets)

Oh yeah, I also had 1 litre of whiskey, weighing 3lbs with the glass bottle.  I carried this fucker for the entire 28kms, and only drank 1 finger because i HAD to drink a bit before we got off the mountain.  That was it... the bottle of whiskey I carried up a mountain, and down again, for no reason.

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