Shimla was a place I’d been fascinated with since reading about it being a colonial hill fort but when I saw a video online of the toy train journey through the Himalaya up to the city, my mind was made up. It had to be on my India itinerary.
Tickets were hard to come by and in the end I had to find an agent in Delhi and send international money which was a big obstacle to overcome (thank you Wise!). Even though I tried to book the tickets the first day they became available, we couldn’t get the day we wanted so I quickly snapped up four tickets for the following day. Such was my determination to go that the itinerary had to make adjustments for it.
Logistics determined that we had to go to Kalka a day early and stay overnight – the Grand Lotus Hotel was very close to the railway station which was very handy but also meant that some of us got woken up trains arriving early in the morning. The hotel was pretty grotty but cheap and well located.
The train was waiting for us at 8:30am and as it pulled off, we were happy to be waving goodbye to the chaos of Indian cities and towns and head into the hills. At 30kph it took us about 6 hours to climb slowly at an average of 3% incline through over 90 tunnels and over 80 bends.
We were pleased to be in Shimla and after getting a taxi to our B&B began to get very cold. I had only got a thin fleece so had to tolerate the cold knowing that the following day we would be leaving to warm climes. The hotel – Puri’s B&B – was ok. At least it was freshly done out, clean and the staff and owner were attentive. I decided to pay an extra £5 to have a heater in my room all night – to dry my wet washing and to take the chill out of the air.
It went so slowly that we were very safe hanging out of the doors for photos. It felt like if I dropped my phone, I could have jumped out, picked it up and got back on the train. There was no food on board which was a surprise so we feasted on the Indian sweets I had bought in Kalka. I had thought there would be lots of food vendors on the platforms like the Trans-Siberian but the best we could do was small cups of chai.
Shimla is only really one long shopping road with recognisable brands including McDonalds and Costa Coffee (we took neither) and a lot of narrow lanes full of local stalls and barely passable through being overcrowded. Again the noise from cars and motorbikes and rickshaws and people was almost unbearable.
Having had beer and cake earlier Sally, Renee and I didn’t really need more food but Rachel headed into town and she was hungry so I found a local place where we had the best dhal I’ve ever eaten for a couple of pounds.
Happy and well-fed, we went back to the accommodation, played black mariah (card game) and then crawled under the heavy blankets trying to get warm enough to fall asleep.