Written at 10:45AM on 27th July 2009. Yeah I was writing that time, and NO, we didn’t get late because of the writing.

Beautiful morning, it rained all night and now everything around is freshly washed and clean. The trees look greener than usual, the spirits feel lighter than usual, there is mild sunlight streaking through the trees, and there is an all round warm feeling. This is hopefully going to be good day. We stayed at this fancy hotel last night and got good sleep. Now it is 10:45 and we still haven’t moved. The usual story 🙂

Manali morning

Manali morning

Today, we’re going to do one crazy ascent, and we will need all our energy for this. The Rohtang pass is around 4000mts and we’re currently at Manali at 2000Mts. This ascent of 2000mts will be covered over a distance of 50Kms. This is going to be a steep elevation, and we will need around 8 hours to cover it. Post that, the “expected” trail is all downhill with the Pir Panjal running all along us. The Pir Panjal range has some stunningly beautiful snow covered peaks, with some of them being around 6000-6500Mts high.

Morale is high this morning, we’re all looking in decent shape, all of us seem to have recovered from being completely battered yesterday, Mike is in his usual spirits, I seem to have caught a mild cold, but it’s all good. I can feel my legs. I can feel that I have worked them well over the last 2 days. The Shimla to Manali was only a warm up. The real challenge lies ahead of us. Mike has been singing ain’t no mountain high enough. That’s a good thing too.

Today, we won’t have much time, it’s already late and by the time we leave it will be 11:30. We have to get to Rohtang by 6, which I think is going to be pretty impossible. After that, it’s a decent, so that won’t be much of a problem (I hope).