North from Delhi

In an effort to discover just how many broken-down buses, fascinating diseases, grimy guest houses, and amazing people and places there are in the world, we packed up our comfortable life in Seattle and climbed aboard a one-way flight to Delhi on August 1st. The plan, if it can be called that, is to spend the next year traveling overland from Delhi to the Spanish coast via SE Asia, China, Mongolia, Siberia, Turkey, and anywhere else we happen to wind up. Nobody said we were smart!

Our journey began with a sweltering four days in the bazaars of New Delhi, amid the city's teeming homeless bovine population. When the humidity and touts threatened to overwhelm us, we escaped on an overnight bus to Himachal Pradesh, a province in the Indian Himalaya. Our first stop was Manali, and old British "hill station" cum resort town nestled amid lush apple orchards and towering green hills. There, we bumped into our old, good friend Alex Kaufman and his girlfriend Deepa on the street, up from Bangalore on vacation. We took a terrific hike together through the orchards and spent the day catching up.

The next day, Mike's old friend Freddie Wilkinson arrived in town on his way into the Himalaya on a month-long climbing expedition, with his intrepid partners Pat and Dave. The three of them are professional crazy people (they might prefer the term "alpinist") sponsored by Mountain Hardware. As we dined on a trout large enough to consume Moby Dick in a single sitting, the three adventurers laid out their plans to travel up the remote and seldom visited Miyar Valley, establish a basecamp, and climb the surrounding virgin peaks. They invited us to hike the valley and visit them at basecamp.

Not being smart (see above), we set out two days later equipped with the following:

• Two packs, Michael's large, Susannah's quite small
• One bag of rice (note absence of stove)
  
• One bag of lentils (see above)
  
• Assorted dried fruits, nuts, nutella, and yak cheese
• Two umbrellas
  
• One bright yellow plastic tarp (cost: $5)
  
• Ten shish-kebab skewers for use as tarp stakes (cost: $2)
• One large bottle of single malt scotch (cost: $20)

With our equipment (and priorities) clearly in order, we set off down the narrow cliff-walled valley into a wall of mist...