Day 4 and 5

Day 4 was the Shimla-Manali journey. It wasn't great; we sat in the unfriendly bus all day, lunch at a dhaba was horrible. But we managed to find delicious apples and carrots, bought lots of them for the rest of the journey and found these two cute little puppies on the way:

Inee cute!!

We also got some audio casettes to keep us sane through the rest of the journey, and the only other thing worth remembering was a 3 k.m. long tunnel, where, we were told, the shooting of a bollywood movie called Dhoom 2 took place. We girls were bored enough to think aloud: "Hrithik Roshan was here..".
Anyhow, we did reach Manali, not in time, of course. After dinner, it was time to celebrate, as it was one of the boys' birthday. Chetan's classmates had arranged a surprise for him: a nice huge cake was waiting for 00:00, accompanied by some hungry and constipated people :P. "How sweet.." I thought, a moment too soon. I will never understand birthday bumps. Why do people have to get kicked on their special day. It's so Ouch, and heck, you cant sit anywhere without regretting not having worn pillows instead of pants.

Day 5.
We visited one Hadimba Temple, a little place surrounded by lots of tall trees. Pine trees, I guess. We goofed around there for a bit, climbed a really high and unclimbable-looking rock, got ushered out of the place because it was "getting late", only to wait for everyone to finish shopping for the silliest stuff. I must've spent about an hour screaming Boredom and getting reduced to watching people bungee jump, wait for some wood keychains to be done, throw a ball at a pile of rubbish, yeah ok, it was a game a really smart local made up, and he was doing good business. That's one big turn-off of travelling in groups. It made me want to go off alone and look at shawls and sweaters all by myself.
Finally when seemed like my kids would arrive on their honeymoon any moment, we headed back down to the town, had some lunch, and goofed up a good plan to go river rafting. I seem to be using too many finally's but that's how the day was. Then a Tibetan monastery and some shopping later, we headed back to the hotel.
Some photos:
The temple, with Shruti sitting on the steps:

These are us goofing around. Boy how I wish I had a camera of my own..


At the end of the day, I had a pack of dry figs, a wool dress for Vedant, a sweater for Dad and a cap for me, and a lighter purse. Shopping bites.