Into the hills, and it's about time!!!!

We rode from Amritsar to Dharamsala...or more exact - McLeod Ganj. It is a beautiful hill station...



with smiling people :)



and you can even get a beer there! We met up with another Brit, Simon, also on an Enfield and he was fresh from the Manali-Leh road....and 6 months of riding around India on his bike. He even took the Enfield on the ferry to the Andeman Islands! No picture of Simon, but I snapped this when both he and A popped off to their respective loos :)


There are some FABULOUS roads in Himachal Pradesh - some of the best roads I have ridden on a motorbike. These photos don't even begin to do it justice, but we were having such a good time riding we didn't want to stop to take photos :)

See, here is A telling me to get a move on :)


Check out these roads!






You know this place was made for A to ride because they even have a town named after her :)


The Enfield had been giving me problems as soon as we left the flat roads for the hills, and the morning we left McLeod Ganj it was *really* giving me problems. When it stalled on a hill and refused to start I got fed up (even though the roads havd been brilliant!) so we stopped at the next Enfield mechanic that we saw...it just happened to be Rana's shop. (you can read more about Rana in the Enfield post :). When it looked like Rana wasn't coming back with my engine anytime soon Arun, his cousin, appeared like magic and not only offered us dinner, but a bed for the night as well.

This is Arun, and his lovely daughter Chikoo, on his Enfield (same model as mine, just a couple of years older)...


This is Arun's wife and giggling daughter...


This is Arun's wife cooking us some fabulous food!!!! She has a propane ring and a wood fire in her massive kitchen.

Arun's country house - he lives in Chandigarh and he is a basketball coach at a school there, his wife is a lecturer in Sanskrit. It is school holidays and they were heading back on July 2nd.


The path to the house....no, I didn't get a shot of the steep hill we had to ride up, but it looks the same, just on an angle :)


Once Rana has sorted the Enfield we continued on to the town of Mandi (where he had ridden to get the parts and do the machining for the bike). This town is another of HP's tourist towns to escape the summer heat. We rode on by and made it to Manali that night, but we planned to come back later (and we did).


These are some of the roads north of Mandi, towards Manali



and this is the terrible tunnel!!! It's betwen Mandi and Manali and it's about 3kms long, has few lights, dodgy reflective markers on the few corners (where they were sure to have no lights)...and no ventilation, it was like fog in there at times!


Manali photos on the way, but first the Enfield story :)