Have your snake and eat it to!

Other possible titles:

Vanilla Manali

Olly Manali/ Manali Olly

Katie fight off hippies, which turns out to be pretty easy (thanks Jamil)

Manalijauna

Katie Snake-lady

Here I am in Manali, haven to hippies. At every corner you will find something amazing to eat, some sort of amazing shop, snake charmers, and Marijauna plants. The plants are all males so everyone smokes hash, and I mean everyone. The fields of marijauna plants fill the air with their smell, and where there are no plants there are groups of hippies creating the smell on their own. Yesterday I went into a papier mache shop and within 5 minutes I was offered opium, hash, Manali cream, MDMA, and LSD. Wow.

This morning, on my walk down to breakfast, I passed the usual set of snake charmers. I never stop because I know they just want to hit me up for money. Today I decided to stop and ask a question. I was told that the snake charmers remove the venom from the cobras so that they are quite safe. The affect is that the snakes don't live more that 3 weeks after that.



Baba-"No miss, my snakes very old, I have long time. Look you take picture"

Me-"No no no, How much are you going to try and charge me for that?"

Baba-"No miss price is no important, here you give my friend your camera."

Then ala Zoolander his friend started snapping pictures of me in various positions with various snakes. He draped me in a Python then took off his Saddhu hat and beads and put them on me. Next he placed his basket of Cobra on my head. Snap snap snap!

Baba-"Ok Miss, now you give for me 1,000 rupees."

Me-"Dude you must be out of your freaking mind, I'm a backpacker. I'll give 50 or none."

Baba-"Miss my baby cobra very poison, he bite you 20 minutes you dead. 500 rupees madam."



Me-"Bring it on Baba, I can't think of a cooler way to die than to be bitten by a cobra in the Himalayas of India. Are you gonna take the 50 or should I just go?"

Baba-"Very poison, 100 only"

At which point I rolled my eyes and walked away until they chased me down the hill for the 50.

I've been spending my evenings in this nice cool town at the shop of a different Baba named "Om Baba". He lives on a commune with Unichs and other Babas where they hand-make purses. His stall is raised off the ground on the main road, which has been quite good for people watching. The bags that he sells take 1 month each to make and are filled with secret pockets. I met one Israeli fellow who bought one the night before. Om Baba told him that there were 14 pockets in the bag. The Israeli found 11 and spent the subsequent week tring to find the last 3.

Manali is really a great place, it's so nice and cool. There is this really great restaurant called "Dylans, Toasted and Roasted". They have a huge painting of Bob Dylan on the wall. Every 1/2 hour or so the waiter comes out with a tray of hot chocolate chip cookies, which is usually emptied within 45 seconds, SO GOOD