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.