Day 80 Delhi

10:22 am. Cafe Barista. Lavazza coffee - what a treat to get good quality coffee; chicken calzone (with cheese), almond muffin. Good service too (unlike Cafe Day across the road).

8:29 pm. All packed - spent most of the day trying to buy a new bag for all my junk. Some last postcards. The one I got in Manali failed - zip broke. Problem is in Delhi either the bags are far too cheap or far too expensive. Went for the latter. Taxi booked to IGI airport at 9 pm - but I'll believe that when I see it actually turn up at the hotel.

10:30 pm. Indira Gandhi International airport- after much hassle extricating myself from the hotel. Based on a sample of five hotels, the Indian hotels seem pretty disorganised. Subway sandwich, coke, crisps with my final rupees. A lot of hanging around until my flight. A comic moment when some USA dude puts ketchup on his chocolate cake, thinking the former was some sort of chocolate sauce (despite red colour!). Will be glad to get rid of the bags. Usual airport dilemma: do I go through security and find there's no food the other side, or stay here where at least there's a Subway? Apart from a few English signs, could be anywhere in the world. And a squashed grasshopper thing on the floor.

On the plane: 4186 miles to LHR. BA0142 departing 2:10 am. 8 hours and 32 minutes to go. Seems funny to have got here by road from Istanbul...

Day 79 Delhi

1:55 pm. Barista cafe, New Delhi (Connaught Place); difficult to find by myself. Basically walked around at random. Finding India a bit annoying: typified thus: 6:50 am and someone was trying to get into my hotel room, then buzzed the door buzzer on the room - why? Later today the rickshaw driver wants to take me to his brother's shop - I go along, not too much else to do - but the place is predictably expensive - I mean silly expensive like $40 for some Earl Grey tea - more expensive than Fortnum and Masons. I tell the truth and eventually get to where I wanted to go (Connaught Place).

Day 78 Delhi

10:40 pm. Text this morning at 10:30 am from T saying she's at the Turtle Cafe having coffee with Mel; quick shower then went across in a rickshaw - cafe is in the Khan Market district, and is really nice. Good cakes and good coffee in a bookshop on three floors. Spent the rest of the day shopping for jeans(!). Interspersed with coffee and tea stops etc. The thing about buying jeans here is that they are all sold in a long size - labour is cheap enough here to have the jeans tailored to fit one's leg length. Tut tut back to the hotel; said my goodbyes and goodlucks to T and Mel. Now back in the Mohan International hotel.

Day 77 Delhi

Hotel lobby - it's 6:31 am, after a (pointless) night spent on the Hot Rock bus. Mosquito net deployed last night. Delhi station is as busy at 2 am as it is at 2 pm - just no difference in the number of people or what they seem to be doing. But there's no truck security during the day. Anyway, I'm here in the lobby, waiting with the keen newbies. The plan is to go climbing at the Old / New rocks here in Delhi. Hopefully might get some breakfast at some point too.

11 am. Bouldering at New Rocks, located in the Garden of the Five Senses at Said-ul-Ajaib. Still not much of a fan of bouldering - just did a couple of problems.

6:50 pm. Moved to my new hotel, the imposingly named Mohan International; in reality a bit crappy but better than the last place. Good climbing to day - New Rocks bouldering - okay but not my cup of tea; thence (after ice cream and Pepsi - whoops there goes my food budget!) we went to Old Rocks at Lado Sarai in Delhi. Very short sandstone cliffs - the sort of thing which looks a lot better in the guidebook than it perhaps is in real life. But it's climbing nonetheless. Climbed the arete - a couple of nice moves near the top. Owen led the arete further right at an impressive E4 6a or so - run out to the first friends (small) at 15 feet. Then the monsoon rains started at 3 pm. I had to scramble back up to retrieve the gear I'd left for a top rope problem. Scary enough trying to scramble back up - but even worse trying to get down - slippery sandstone covered in a flood of hot running water.

Hope to go out tonight to a good food place - called the Big Chill, with T, Mel and a few of the other nice people.

Day 76 Delhi

My last day on Hot Rock today - hooray! Sadly decided to forego the climbing this morning - too ill, although now (it's 9:50 am) don't feel quite so fragile / revoluted. I think that's the first day's climbing I've ever missed due to illness. On truck security tonight - interestingly I am told that it starts at midnight - but my time on Hot Rock ends at midnight.

9 pm and back at the hotel. A good day doing a dot to dot thing in Delhi (the nice bit); where for 'dot' read coffee / tea / cake shop. Avoided the coffee though. Bought some T shirts and cheap shoes. Truck duty awaits - needless to say the idea of spending my last night with Hot Rock sleeping on a bus in Delhi train station lacks appeal. At least it is my last night with Hot Rock.

Day 75 Delhi

Friday I think. 11:20 am. Found a great coffee shop in Delhi - in Connaught place, called Barista - one of a chain I think. Serves proper Lavazza; almond muffins. Very happy now. Especially after yesterday's climbing.

6 pm. Back at the hotel - after a great day with T, Mel, and Geoff; but should keep off the coffee - cannot handle it - I guess since (amongst other things) is probably 3 or 4 weeks since my last (strong) coffee. Saw a lot of kite flying near India Gate. There's talk of climbing tomorrow - at the Old / New Rocks in Delhi (not far away this time, also called Lado Sarai I think). Would be awesome - if the weather is good - it was okay today.

8:10 pm and we are at the Maa Bhagwat resturant. Urine smelling large cupboard would be a more accurate description of the place. T has made further comments about the food quality on Hot Rock - she has explained to Duncan that the budget is not enough. People who are sick (and there are 4 or 5 now in the group), need rice, chicken, clean water: one simply cannot buy this for the allotted 50 rupees a day. Those of us who can / want to, supplement our diets. To put the money in perspective, 50 rupees will get about 2 litres of bottled water. If I survive tonight's meal, I'll be up at 6:30 am for climbing at Old / New Rocks.

Day 74 Delhi

7:20 am. Hotel lobby. Good night's sleep, though not enough. Have ordered breakfast: two poached eggs, buttered toast, and tea no sugar. I guess today is Thursday - one week until I fly out. I like Delhi - not nearly as 'busy' as I imagined it would be. But then I've not seen that much of the place as yet. The sport's plan for today is to go by bus to Dhauj crags, two hours' drive south of Delhi, in a region called Haryana, at least according to the little photo-copied map I've got. From the guidebook, looks like an excellent crag. 9:40 am and we are sat on a bus (not Hot Rock one). And we are not going anywhere. Apparently, the driver will not go out of Delhi, unless we give him an extra 8000 rps. Trouble with this extortion is that it is a daily occurence. They won't get the extra money and we won't get to the crag. 12:50 pm. At last we have made some progress - as far as I can tell we've gone about fifteen miles if that - and now we need more petrol: we have stopped at services - massive queues for fuel; meanwhile we are in a Subway sandwich shop. The bus originally supplied has been replaced with two Bedford Rascals or somesuch. One of those journeys in which it is pointless getting stressed - clearly at this rate we are unlikely to get to the crag until it's dark.

8:35 pm and we're back at the hotel. (We are now staying in the no-star Peace Point hotel - across the road from the Stay Well and not nearly as good - unless you like the study of insects of the order of Blattaria - i.e. roaches). I assume that this hotel is simply cheaper than the Stay Well. Anyway, in the event we did get to the crag, at 3 pm. Climbed two really good routes with Sophie; she led the first on the Prow - called Aries, 5.6, a good route, and at this point no rain - but skies obviously fully laden and ready to go. I quickly got on to and led up Gemini, 5.6 again. The book said something like follow the prominent gully, over overhangs, over chockstone and up. Last twenty feet and the heavens opened. Just finished the route before I couldn't get any wetter: like climbing with a (hot) fire hose on you. Sophie did the complete thing in the monsoon rain. The rock is some sort of quartzite - very solid and very good gear placements. Everything totally soaked. Since we couldn't get any wetter I argued we should stay (Sophie was keen) and do some more climbing - but the others wanted to get back to Delhi. Pity - it was real fun to climb at Dhauj - memorable.

Day 73 Delhi

2:40 am, hotel Stay Well, New Delhi. Very late. The usual thing finding someplace to stay, but for once, we have shipped up someplace quite nice. With air conditioning. Delhi smells pretty bad - that was my first impression when we got off the bus at the train station carpark a few hours ago. After getting to the hotel a few of us thought it'd be a fine idea to go off and find a pizza place - but we found nothing much except some scary dogs roaming the streets at night.

9:44 am. Hotel lobby. A few people actually want to go climbing! But will have to suffer some faffing first - breakfast (I've had two already - not much else to do whilst waiting); seems impossible to get drinkable coffee here at all: even if I state NO SUGAR they kindly add about a pound of the stuff. Need to get my kit off the truck. The plan is to go climbing in central Delhi, a place called Ramjas rocks - sandstone outcrop about fifty feet high, we think.

11:55 pm. An awesome day's climbing, at Ramjas rocks. Began by getting my kit off the bus at the train station; torrential rain and pedal powered rickshaw back to hotel. Difficult to find in rickshaw, but worth it, despite the monsoon rains. Because of the rain we had to hang about in a local street food place - had lunch. Rain stopped after about an hour, but rock wet and slippery. Began by soloing up a couple of easy routes, K8 was one I recall on the lower set of slabs. As the day went on, things dried up quite reasonably. Led an old peg route up the back slabs (14), damp. About 6a French, one lovely, lovely move...Sophie led sloping slab number 21, then I led R14, easy but worth doing. All these numbers etc were painted on the rocks. Led right hand variant of 14 (arete), got stung by something - maybe an ant? or possibly the leaves of the bush growing out of the corner on the route. Got rickshaw back. Celebrated at TGI's Friday - burger, chips etc for supper - having managed to escape some of the other Hot Rockers...

Day 72 en route to Delhi

8:30 am and we've stopped at a roadside 'diner' - well a shack plus guy who is cooking some sort of Indian flatbreads. We have already driven past numerous places which looked good; then wound up here - sadly no eggs on the menu here. Still on the crazy cook duty thing; totally bugging me. Pointless. Plus I'll end up [and did end up] paying for a load of other people's breakfasts...

Day 71 en route to Mandi

8:16 am and definitely feel a lot better. The others came back from their camping trip yesterday - mixed reports - glad I didn't go up there. By the way, yesterday I went down to the Aleo region, a twenty minute (downhill so easy, even in my current state) walk from here; did a tiny bit of bouldering, but too scared to climb up anything significant - some good slabs...would like to go back today - I'll see if I can get a belayer - probably not given the overall lack of keenness!

Interestingly - or maybe not surprisingly, some Hot Rockers have come back from the camping quite disillusioned. A bit of discussion last night - mainly about the general lack of professionalism; one Hot Rocker walked out in a defensive huff.

2:40 pm. We were to depart at 2 pm precisely, so of course we are still here. Not sure exactly what we are waiting for. 3:05 pm and still here. This bus is totally disgusting - cold box full of some stinking water / Kingfisher beer / juice cartons - all rotting away.

5:40 pm and we are en route to Mandi, at last. Actually at the moment we are stopped because 'something doesn't feel right with the bus'. Something of an understatement. This is Hot Rock. Lots of fiddling of wheel nuts.

8:50 pm arrived at Hotel Moon in Mandi, just off the Manali highway, near a place called Pandoh; and I've just completed another total waste of time cook duty a la Hot Rock. No actual cooking: I take everybody's order, after determining from the waiter what is available. Then I give the order to the waiter. Why? A pointless layer of bureaucracy. After the meal I have to collect all the monies and field the change. I hate this. Also we only covered about 70 km today. Haven't even made it to Mandi. We travel about 25 km every hour, with still about 400 km to Delhi. Also, while I am moaning about Hot Rock, why do they insist on putting three people into a two-bed room? - of course to save money, but this is India for goodness sake, not central London.

At least my headache has gone. For the time being anyhow. Also, decided that I am getting very bored with most of the people on the bus, with of course a few exceptions.

Day 70 Vashisht

9:10 am. On balcony at Basho restaurant (breakfast); better weather today, plus - I think - I definitely feel better. Slept okay for once, but woke with bad headache (front right still); continuing with the metronidazole and two paracetamol. Funny, I'd hoped to do more climbing and less self-medicating: text from Elisa - she's doing more darn climbing than me - so jealous - I mean I should have stayed in the UK or spent a few weeks in Switzerland! Still hopeful about climbing in Delhi.

A pleasant walk down the road to Manali, following the river Beas some of the way. Nice to get out of the hotel and move about a bit.

Day 69 Vashisht

11:59 am. Flagyl 250 mg at 3 am this morning.

Day 68 Vashisht

9:40 am. Feel better but still bad headache; sort of moved about in my head and now it's behind my right eye - or at least right side of my head. A damp day outside. I am at the moment sat on the balcony of the Basho restaurant - at about the same level as the cloud base; lots of green; drip-drip from white painted wooden rails of the balcony. Roar of river in background. Awaiting toast and cheese omlette and hot chocolate. 70 rupees. Miss climbing. Wondering why travelling people travel. What's the purpose of travelling? Do they travel around Surrey? Do they travel to Greenland / Scandanavian type places?

4:23 pm. After breakfast returned to bed; spent half the time asleep. Bad headache right handside - Ibruprofin 200 mg helped a bit; drinking bottled mango juice and water; damn noise of chopping from the kitchen. Sounds like enough onions or whatever to feed several thousand.

Day 67 Vashisht

It's 7:49 am and I have quite an appalling headache - sort of dominating the lower half of my head, about below the eye line. Think that my chest infection seems to be heading up through my head.

Day 66 Vashisht

7:30 am. Been awake about an hour. Appalling cough, wheezing, realy tired. Just lying here. View of greeness through the window; apple trees. Bed very hard - like a bit of board. Will try and get up and buy some mango juice perhaps. Just ten days left of Hot Rock trip.

1:20 pm. In bed, reading Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. Trying to make some notes.

Wendy has turned up unexpectedly - she's had enough and she's going to Delhi by bus this afternoon, en route to Glasgow...think Carolyn will abandon Hot Rock today also. From what Wendy says it sounds like the climbing's a bit crap up in Chattru - glad I didn't attempt the trip.

2:50 pm. Sat on hotel sun terrace / balcony; sunshine and lemon tea. Spoilt by electro music - I'd prefer the river sounds from a few hundred feet below in the valley. Things I can see:

• women about 40ish, with very white rabbit - she sits with the rabbit on various walls here in Vashisht; not sure why


• gap-year budhist monk types, complete with sunglasses and smoking


• piles of logs - not sure purpose, but very neatly done


• tut tut taxis bringing yet more kids from someplace like Godalming, most with flight-tags still attached to brand new rucksacks


• lots and lots of beautiful green trees - pines etc; the occasional one poking well above its neighbours


• prayer flags - spanning the river down towards Manali


• blue sky and clouds

I suspect Vashisht is the first point of call for the gap year kids - since they look pretty clean; I think it takes some time to get dreadlocks going. Cannot help wondering if they are dissapointed being so not alone here!

Day 65 Vashisht

5 pm. I seem to have reached some sort of zero-energy point. All I can manage to do is to lie down on the bed in the hotel. A real trial to get up off the bed, and out to go and eat. No lunch, but managed revoluted eggs for breakfast and toast.

Day 64 Vashisht

8:32 am. Think I feel better a bit - still big cough and very tired. Task today is to find another hotel to stay in for the next week, until the 11th. Been fidling about with the little shortwave radio - mostly Chinese station (in English), about the Olympics. Heard that eleven climbers died on K2.

9:25 am. That was easy: found a room in Hotel Valley View for 250 rupees a night (about six dollars) - told them I'd stay for about eight nights. A nice room - apple trees outside the window, complete with apples.

Day 63 Vashisht

9:30 am. Here at Lhasa Food Corner, at the top end of Vashisht; hot chocolate and lemon and sugar pancake ordered. This place is full of Brits - feels very fake to me. Reinhold Messner lookalikes; students straight out of Covent Garden in London, do not understand why they are all here - for that matter, I don't understand why I am here. Feel crap again - did not sleep at all well last night - perhaps because of the coffee I had at yesterday's breakfast. My fault. Stubbon cough, overriding lack of energy, headache, fed up etc. I'd be happy as anything if I had a crag to climb on. Miss climbing with ole partner.

8:50 pm. Feel quite ill - I had to abanodon that breakfast I was describing above! Sudden nausea and had to leave some rupees on the table and go back to the hotel, before any food arrived. Went to bed. Felt better around noon and went down to Manali with T and Carolyn - probably should have stayed in bed. But did have a couple of banana lassis to drink. Back here around 2 pm and slept for the remainder of the day. Managed to eat an omlette just now: had to eat something else my antimalarials would make me sick, I am quite sure. Have decided to stay here for a week until the others are back down from the mountains; I want to try and make sure I am well enough for Delhi.

Day 62 Vashisht

Saturday. 7:40 am and 22 degrees. Misty and damp outside - almost foggy. Nineteen days to go until I fly out of Delhi. Getting very stressed to do with anything about Hot Rock; I think I'd be fine if there was a little more rock climbing. Apparently the truck is out of the paddy field - thanks to two 'huge' army cranes. They lifted the thing out yesterday and so it should be down to Manali today. T and I will go down to the truck if and when it gets here and retrieve all our stuff, so we can then head up north, maybe tomorrow, to Chattru in the Kullu valley.

7:20 pm and I have retrieved my stuff from the truck. A lot of my stuff is in a bit of a mess - it's all damp or actually wet - thanks to rice paddy water. A lot of it is pretty much written off. Spent much of the afternoon washing stuff and trying to dry it out on the hotel balcony. We cannot reasonably travel to Chattru tomorrow. Will have to wait until the day after. Had a long chat with Carolyn: she's totally fed up with Hot Rock and is thinking of abandoning the trip here and going to Delhi direct by bus. I am tempted to follow suit - I have obtained a rock-climbing guide for Delhi - looks good. Carolyn pointed out an interesting (yet obvious) fact that Lianna likes / wants us to trek and camp - because that's cheap. The last thing Lianna wants is for us to have to stay in hotels, even cheap hotels. (She has said on at least three occasions that she'd be happy for us to sleep in the gutter.) Yet they can afford a couple of thousand dollars to extricate the truck from a paddy field. Apparently Lianna wants to talk to T and myself 'over a couple of beers' - scary huh! We will see.

10:19 pm and back in the hotel room. Nice food for supper. Lianna did turn up at supper for her chat with T and I - but I couldn't here a thing she was saying because we were in the restaurant with the big TV and were watching Forrest Gump. Sort of restaurant where one sits on large cushions on the floor - uncomfortable, but I think the gap year kids like this sort of thing. Now it appears that we go up north on Monday - but I am very dubious about the quality of climbing there. Mainly because Lianna goes on and on about how awesome it is, and how it's just like Yosemite. I've heard all this before: Ultar Meadows for example. Would rather cook up a scheme to go to Delhi and climb there.

Day 61 Vashisht

Up as requested for breakfast meeting with Lianna - but of course half the people were not there in any case. Morale is very low in the group. My problem is that the main issues - issues which are important to me - are not being addressed by the leaders; there's a lot of head in the sand going on. A pity since it wouldn't be difficult to sort stuff out better. Looks like T and I will wait here in Vashisht 'till the truck turns up (maybe Monday), then we can get gear off the truck and head up north in a taxi. Others going sooner than this, but (a) I am ill and (b) all my gear (boots, tent, mat etc) is still on the truck. Lianna seems not to recognise this latter fact which is a bit annoying; she thinks it'd be acceptable to nip down to Manali and buy new gear.

5:17 pm. Well it turned out to be a great day, despite the pointless breakfast meeting. Now back at the hotel. I got to the meeting at 7:30 am (as requested); most of the rest arrived at 7:50 am and then we had to wait two hours to get any breakfast at all! It's much better to go off by oneself - or maybe with one or two like-minded people...

T and I got a rickshaw down to the Indian Mountaineering Federation office in Manali - a strange complex of mostly deserted buildings - rather unoccupied buildings; we could wander about - e.g. into the director's office. Walked across the road to a crag called Aleo. Led an awesome route called The First 6a; very spaced bolts and a nice long pitch, same sort of rock as yesterday. Reminiscent of British gritstone climbing. Difficult start. Sounds silly, but really pleased to have done a second climb in India. Interestingly, unlike so many bolted routes, this one is memorable - perhaps because of the long run outs.

Still ill - headache and a lot of lethargy. I guess a result of lots of factors - stress, poor food (in the past - I am eating considerably better here: this is a good thing about these 'gap year' towns - you can get plenty of basic foods like revoluted eggs on toast and so on - good if you are ill), lack of sleep, poor hygiene (Pakistan) etc. Have decided to wait here in Vashisht until Monday - or whenever the truck makes it to Manali, then I might head up north for some supposedly better climbing opportunities. By the way, weather has been good today. Started misty, but this cleared up and now it's quite warm. T and I found another good coffee shop in Manali - called the German Cafe; lassi (yogurt drink) and plate of fries.