Day 112. Shimla - Mandi

We have been humming and haaing a bit about the Spiti Valley - Rohtang pass area. The monsoon season is still here and we are a bit nervous about the road conditions. We have decided to give it a go but our best chance is from Manali end so we are headed that way.

 Just like yesterday a beautiful ride through the valleys and hills in this area, we have lost most of the altitude so we are back to being hot. 

Leaving Shimla took a while, I took a wrong turn coupled with crazy busy traffic. 

Once we left Shimla behind we got going again quite nicely for a while but then we ran into convoy after convoy of smoke belching trucks, the road surface also deteriorated. 

We have done less than 200km today and I think that is about our limit in this part of the world. It is slow and you cannot relax for a second with the traffic.

The hills are a beautiful shade of green and with the mist hugging the tops and the rivers winding their way through the valleys it is incredibly picturesque. 

The driving is very bad here, perhaps not as bad as I imagined but you need to be on your toes at all times. Fortunately it is all fairly low speed stuff but an accident would be trip ending. 

The golden rule is to give local buses a wide berth, the drivers must be on drugs and I would hate to ride on one of them. 

We are in the country in a half finished hotel, we had to ask for towels, sheets, pillowcases and toilet paper, I think we are becoming soft.