D's First Pony Ride This Trip

Soolong Valley is above Manali, and equipped for horseback riding, paragliding and yak skiing (that is an aside - the Lonely Planet has an hysterical description of just what constitutes yak skiing). We drove in a taxi (no speak english) into an unlikely tourist town, shacks by the side of the road, not even selling what we thought wer ubiquitous choices of crackers, biscuits, potato chips, chai, perhaps curry and ramen noodles. We did see paragliders coming in to land, so we knew we were in the right rut. We were approached by a broker of sorts. Negotiations were tough, since we didn't know where we wanted to go, just that we wanted to go. We were taken to a beautiful "temple" a few kilometers away, a waterfall with some construction at the bottom of it it to accommodate pilgrims that we began to pass pilgrims coming down the valley as we were going up.

View from the valley

A proprietor inspecting the concrete pour on her new venture

A Brit motorcycle club after they arrived from Keylong over the Rothang Pass (about 4000 meters, depending on what map you've got). 34 motorcycles, 3 women among them, traveling with 2 first aid jeeps. Their luggage arrived first. They must've just got through before the roadslide we encountered the next day as we headed towards Rothang...

Valley above Manali