Planning a 11-day holiday to Shimla and Manali

Combining Shimla and Manali in a great travel idea. Here’s a plan that will make your journey more exciting:
Day 1 and 2 in Chail. Nice place to start off with.
Day 3 and 4 in Shimla. Head from Shimla to Manali taking the Shimla - Narkanda - Manali route. You could also take the normal Shimla - Bilaspur-Manali route without any night stoppage, but that would be a boring six-seven-hour drive!
Day 5 - Stop at Narkanda.
Day 6-7 in Kullu. Travel to Kullu on day 6 and visit Manikaran on day 7.
Depending upon the weather conditions, you can enjoy rafting on the way to Manikaran.

'Indian religion is such an untouchable subject'

India has probably just one Punjabi Scotsman. Writer and historian William Dalrymple lives in eccentric, oddball-style outside Delhi in a rambling bungalow in Mehrauli.

He shares his home with two goats, a few stray dogs, roosters (whose sharp trill punctuates his dialogue), cockatoos, various other exotic birds and on a visit in October a few orange-robed Bauls, Bengali minstrels, were staying too.

An Indian-style tent was anchored in the backyard. His tow-haired troupe of young sons rocketed about the home (he also has a 14-year-old daughter).

Cups of Chai, soft drinks and Indian hospitality flowed as his wife and illustrator Olivia Fraser moved around the home making sure all was well. "Boys, do you need anything?" she asked of the pair of smiling Bauls, who were disappearing into the kitchen to cook either for themselves or for all.

Thomas Cook (India) Ltd. said Friday the local travel market is showing initial signs of a rebound

"We are definitely beginning to see a pickup in the market," Madhavan Menon, managing director for Thomas Cook India, told Dow Jones Newswires by phone.

"However, it is too early to say (if the recovery has begun) since the inbound traffic picks up around October while the outbound season starts from November."

Fall in local hotel tariff will help to boost demand for travel, he said, but declined to give any earnings forecast for its next quarter or the full year ending Dec. 31.

Thomas Cook India, which offers travel and foreign exchange services, saw its consolidated net profit for the half year ended June 30 more than halve to 106.3 million ($2.1 million) rupees from 218.63 million rupees a year earlier.

Shimla registers 100 per cent hotel occupancy

Shimla has been witnessing large number of tourist arrivals resulting in 100 per cent hotel occupancy. The rising mercury and extension of holidays in schools of Delhi and Punjab coupled with power cuts are making people travel to cooler places like Shimla, Manali, Dalhousie or even McLeodganj. Confirming this, Ajit Butail, Chairman of CII Tourism Cell, Himachal Pradesh said that on an average about 50000 plus tourists are coming to Shimla every day, which has a bed capacity of about 35000. A positive sign is that the forest department has given their rest houses on lease and opened Ecotourism camps at various places, as well as the home stay scheme of tourism department, whereby visitors are diverted to rural areas in the vicinity, preventing de-congestion of known tourist destinations.

According to a report in Times of India, lauding the effort of people of Sangla Valley in Kinnaur district who had formed the House Owners Association last year and treated tourists to festival of local cuisine, culture and folklore, he said that it had the desired effect and this year over 5000 tourists visited the tribal destination.