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.