Naggar Castle and the Rohtang Pass

Hi all! I am back in the USA, being swept right up in the fast life once again, but I can't let this blog go without speaking about Naggar and the Rohtang.

The next day, we drove up a little south of Manali up to a hill-town called Naggar, which was the old seat of the rulers of the Kullu Valley. The gov't of HP converted the stone and woodcarved castle complete with temple into a hotel...and this is where we stayed. We paid $60 for the first night, which was an astronomical cost to Navjot, but, .....it was a castle, and that price bought us a GREAT view off our balcony, in addition to the high ceilings, stone-walled bathrooms, fireplace, and dinner included.
Luckily, the next night, they put us in another room for half the price....it helped ease the tensions a little..

After taking pics of the castle, we walked up to the Roerich Museum---for Nikolai Roerich, a Russian artist who came to live in Naggar after befriending the ubiquitous, the awesome, R. Tagore. He painted many landscape portraits that reminded me so much of the Canadian Impressionist Art found in the McMichael Gallery near Toronto. Sadly, we missed the museum of the ACTUAL paintings and saw a smaller museum of his PRINTS.....that was a maddening miscommunication, coz they were closed the next day....GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

From the art museum, we wanted to walk a little more among the hills....and there was a rocky footpath leading to the place we wanted to go.....just inches away!!!!...but it was blocked by a very flimsy, unsafe, pokey 5-foot fence. Navjot made it over, but it did not look pretty at all, and since the actual path was about a 6 ft drop on a slant, I was worried about injury. I got myself all riled up in a very American, yet anti-Indian, way, as I tried to figure out a way to go over this fence. Finally, I found a workable way to hold onto a nearby pine tree as a stood on top of the fence....then I lowered myself as gracefully as possible, but tumbled sloppily on the slanted ground, but there were no injuries! YAY! GP! Then we lowered Cailin down.

On this walk we walked through apple orchards, and saw typical Himachali houses: above-ground basements used for storing hay and wood, and then the living area sat above that. The roofs were made of thick, dark blue-gray slate. Across the valley, we saw the sun set behind the tall hills, casting a blue haze over the hills, blurring all edges just a little. The path ended back on the road to the castle, and shortly after we were back on the road, we saw a real volleyball game taking place on a dirt court beneath us, on an area that used to be some kind of bus or train stand?? The players had skills too, playing 6 on 6....I had fun watching them for a few minutes.

We ate dinner at a hippie-restaurant where they played lounge music...that was kinda cool.

The next day we drove up to 13,000 ft to the Rohtang Pass. The "original" plan was to continue beyond the Rohtang and journey to Leh, a Buddhist city in eastern Kashmir.

Navjot's Guruji summed up his take on this plan: "Insanity."

At the time, I had to reassure him that we weren't doing that (though I just said we were, hahahahahahaha). Anyhow, I knew that if the opportunity was there, we would do it.

Sadly, the pass opened late, May 17th--and we needed it opened on the 14th to make it work for our entourage. THEN, the military closed one of the cities, Keylong, that we absolutely HAD to pass through to make it to Leh, so we just took a day trip to the Pass. Hm.

My guidebook stressed how important it was to leave early, because it gets really busy up there. So, off we went at 6:30am.

I think my meter is out of money. DARN..so gotta finish later. BOO!