Streets of old manali ....

Once you breeze through the very busy (overflowing with tourists and visitors ) 'The Mall  road' of manali  , you should head straight to the old manali , towards the manu temple road.

street from mall road to old manali

As you leave the very busy mall road back and arrive at the busy old manali (If you are wondering where peace is ? Vashisht ) , you start entering into a completely different scene. Deodar trees start running parallel to you , on your right . After you cross the bridge , cafes start appearing on your left , right , everywhere. And each of them has something special to offer , each has its own unique aura , its own style , you can't help but to give in to the aroma of the food in the air , from every part of the world . (and here i talk strictly about the food aroma ,nothing else !) ;)

It was friday night, we were starving . As we walked through the somewhat silent , dark , narrow lane ... we could hear to some beautiful music . As we stepped into DRIFTER's , the beautiful girl we saw last night too, was singing 'pehla nasha , pehla khuma.... ' for her lover (he couldn't stop beaming , sitting there in the crowd) 

drifters....

It was the best karaoke night i ever attended. Rupinder sang 'Aae ajnabi...pakhi pakhi pardesi...' . It was a mesmerizing blend of multicultural music and food . Songs from 'its raining men' to '500 miles away from home' to 'we will rock you' to 'gulabi aakhen' filled the air .


The drifters owner , Nishant , wore a tee which said ' I came here for the  beer (and the bitches) ' . Rumor has it that he left his advertising job with vodaphone in Mumbai and came to Manali , thus drifters  . (Ok , i just read it in an article !) 

Just outside drifter's ... 

Also , that day we happened to share our table with  a designer from Delhi, wore red colored shoes and white jacket , which mind you , he himself designed !
 and an Italian (not just Italian but Sicilian ) film maker / writer / anthropologist, who kept on cracking jokes which i never understood .

Still it was a night to remember . the food , the music , the air .... The night ended with 'dooba dooba rehta hoon...' (Imagine i tried to convert this song to english for the italian) .... and we ran from drifter's as fast as we could for reasons that cannot be divulged here ;)