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.