We're looking to be dumbfounded, astonished and wonderstruck.

First serve yourself courage & daring execution to venturesome plan

MANALI is a smoker's paradise, it is a biker's plan of action and a poet's angst. Lovers come here with wishes to love beneath the vast open mountains, near that waterfall there, where they spoke to a free man in a sleeveless jacket about I do not what, but Kant and Dante were somewhere in the airy region of the consciousness -- by the river Jhelum when the light fades or along that garden path where every hyacinth that the gardens wear has fallen from its once lovely head.

When I went to Ladakh and stood there behind the monastery at Alchin, with my camera and my dear mother, looking at the muddy clean river kissing the grand mountain façade (for the north Indian traveller and wannabe motorcyclist, this river connects to Manali). I realised that Manali is the soul of the king, or it is the craving of adventure, which is closing in -- except for a crack in the wall. Ladakh made its own place, but it always a roundtrip open for those who want to be free and are going to have fun.

The cool Manali is not the main town, certainly not, that is avoidable and overbearing with tourists. I once saw a movie in which the protagonist (John Malkovich) says the difference between a traveller and a tourist is, a tourist thinks of going back when he reaches a place, and a traveller has no plan. I wish to be a traveller some day.

Little Manali is full of travellers and many idyllic cottages to live in. I have seen the most cracking Israeli nymphet there that one evening. She was leaving and her life took her where it had to.

This place is violent let me categorically warn you, and the locals are linked up with foreign travellers. Do not be fooled, it can be a lonely planet, at the outset with the countless little cottages and chic and terrific Italian places to eat. We are possibly walking into a fairyland village or a hamlet made of soul some twilight evening, or a nightmare depending on the trip and station you are at.

Manali trip can be cutting edge, and if you are smoking. it aggravates anxiety. Good luck to you. Ideally, you should be the type who can drive around the blind curves and rough roads, and then you are generally well set for the adventure. But if not, then you should have planned better, and because you were a fool, suffer, and if you do not want to suffer, stay away, and let the others play.

Lots of guitar evenings of jamming, love and smoking. The forest is a big dream. Manali can be the happiness, if you are ready.

How so? This piece is a manual -- it will tell you `yes' or `never'.

Are you on this side of the escapade or the one doomed for lack of adrenalin?

Some guys have all the luck, some guys have all the pain. This place has everything. Wish you could say come I will show you a good time, Manali Raison and the little places we haven't yet discovered -- it is a retro joint.

Then you got Vashist, the other cool side of Manali, on the other hill. That one evening they went out to hang and smoke, they got blasted. The thing about smoking is this, the guys who have all the luck, it suits mostly or does not, and if does not, it does not matter.

Those controlled by emotion are not made for such evenings and days and all that which comes with its joys. For them it's pain or, in some cases, it don't matter if you are moonstruck.

Then Vashist offers this also -where the boys went to experience the Sulphur springs, and some boys did not, they just stayed in the guest house overlooking the mountains on the verandah and got wasted with pot and ate paranthas and onion for the cash had run out. Now they would not do it, no never, and if they do it, it is the special one off thing, and one off things don't count, and one of things are not natural, and what is not natural is not charming, even the excessive pain and headaches were charming in the frills of nostalgia.

There was that damp afternoon that they spent walking through the monkey forest. It was a deep experience, with a hundred thousand monkeys all around you, once you were there you wanted to get out, there was no walking back. I recommend it for those who fancy adventure. In fact, Kullu-Manali is the abode for this priceless privileged class of person, my mother went up with her friends about the same time to Lahaul and Spiti, very exotic peaks around this place. Go there to these mountains and picnic in the northern sunshine, where luxury and leisure are truly defined.

My friends go there all the time. They have parities there. In the days and in the nights, they camp by the fire and drive family station wagons. Feel the cold breeze on your face, drink beer from mountains rooftops or hot piping soup and laugh away with the ones who are near.

Stroll languidly in the orchids of apples and in the idyllic country home of a homeward bound family, drinking tea and smoking as the evening falls with brotherhood and some idyllic babble. This family and the archaic temples and stupas of these hill towns are brimming with cherubic nicety and laughter that we could perhaps find ourselves in one fine day. Then here we go; an overwhelming sense of the fairyland of disbelief and become characters from a fable, crisscrossed with rapt amazement that dreams are made of.

Here the dinners would be by a fire, can you imagine -- happy being normal and normal being happy? Going higher and higher.

Breakfast would be fried eggs with sunshine -- sunny side up. Our children would play in the orchids or give us plentitude of grief sputtering up and down the house, playing lost and found, we are poets of the dammed. We write dreams and live apprehension. We are class apart. Do not try and come close to us. We are chosen by God.

We are this side of the orchids and far away from that very green meadow like the one the three idiots sat by, enviously. Looking out at that late afternoon while locals were making pot and thinking what if we had more money, we could stay. Soon before leaving Manali back to the arid heat of Delhi in that time long ago period in our sparrow fucked lives, we have to proceed beyond gratitude to God and hit the mountains sooner than later. Go back to then and them, when we were closer to what we want now.