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WEDNESDAY, 26 OCTOBER 1977 : 0KMS. - MANALI
The sun shone very brightly this morning,
but the weather was
very cold in the early morning. The
temperature in the van dropped
to 10 degrees C
and we had to make use of the oil burner , that we normally use for cooking as heater to keep us warm. The sky was blue against the white color
of the snow on the peaks that created the view of
indescribable beauty. I saw this as a good weather day to change thermostatt of the radiator,
having been almost out of order since last few days. Because the temperature
went up to a boiling point many times that we had
to stop the motor frequently and tapped and added some water .
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| MANALI Town - Photo : wikipedia.org / Google images search |
After having changed the thermostatt , we headed to the north of the city, intended to drive a hike to the
ROTHANG PASS but as we were about
the middle of our way, when reaching
the bridge to cross the last high mountain of
12,000 ft. we failed in accelerating our van further up. Because
there was snow on the road and it was
frozen and so slippery that our van flowed backward.
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| KULLO-MANALI route - http://munichtomadras1977.blogspot.com |
We were discourage
seeing a deep chasm on one side of the road and
I kept praying. We felt very pity that we could not go beyond
the ROTHANG PASS, as we wanted to take this road on our way to go further to
LADAHK but we finally decided to return ! It
was not easy , before we could turn back
our van we had to lift
and move some big stones . It was also very cold.
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| http://munichtomadras1977.blogspot.com |
However, the road from MANALI
was very beautiful, with streams,
waterfalls, caves, forests and birds all the way. Some parts of the road were in very bad condition, bumpy
and muddy, covered with water as lot of snow falling. The road was very
narrow and dangerous being on very high altitude. Because of its natural beauty , it helped encouraging us to travel along
the road of the high mountain about 10,000 ft. We saw small villages of Tibetan
refugees looking very poor because they were
living in tents in combination with
ashalt tanks and soil. I understood that they were accustomed to cold weather and it would be no problem for them.
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