Day 40, 41 and 42 – Shimla
Day 40 – Thursday, 5th Dec 2013
Day 41 – Friday, 6th Dec 2013
Day 42 – Saturday, 7th Dec 2013
It’s 4:45 am Thursday morning and our alarm rings. Another early start today. We force ourselves out of bed still feeling half asleep. It’s 5:30 am and after finishing the check out formalities at our hotel, we walk down towards the railway station. We don’t see any milkman, newspaper vendors or rickshaw wallahs on the roads but a sudden noise erupts as we are walking through this dark silence. It’s none other than a rooster crowing. We are a bit shaken, we look around us and continue our walk.
We reach Kalka railway station and the train to Shimla is stationed on Platform 2. This train journey has been accorded the status of a World Heritage site and is filled with scenic views of the valley. The distance from Kalka to Shimla is 96 kms. You can read more about this on Wiki – Kalka Shimla Railway
train route
The train starts on time at 6 am. The max speed this train goes is 15 – 20 km / hr. As the sun rises, we enjoy the morning sunshine and beauty of the valley on the way up. The train makes few stops and passes through a record 108 tunnels.
K in front of toy train
enroute to Shimla
While planning this marathon India trip, Khyati and I had so many unknowns, uncertainties but we have hung in there, had faith in our abilities and things have fallen in place. For all you folks, if you are facing any problems – always remember that there is light at the end of a tunnel.
Ray of hope!
We reach Shimla by 11:30 am. The railway station is quaint and still has British influence.
Shimla rly stn
We hire a porter to take us to the hotel. It’s a nice km walk and we can see buses plying on the busy Cart Road, taxis honking and people walking in the middle of the road. There are two parralel roads in Shimla – Cart Road and Mall Road and there are multiple stairs / lift connecting the two roads. On one such stairway, our hotel was located midway. I wonder if we could have managed to carry our luggage all by ourselves? We thank the efforts of the porter and admire his hard life.
It’s 1:30 pm and we are craving some food. We head to Mall road and grab some local fare. There are many bylanes in Shimla and we walk through them in the later part of the afternoon. Mall Road is crowded and buzzing with activity. Out of the 3 other hill stations we have visited – Mussoorie, Dalhousie and Dharamshala, we find Shimla to be the most sophisticated one. We plan local sight seeing for the next day and book ourselves on the Himachal Pradesh tourism state bus leaving tomorrow at 11 am.
On our way back, we are lucky to find a Jain temple in Shimla. We stop by to visit the temple, it’s over 100 years old and immensely beautiful glass work adorned the temple.
Jain temple – Shimla
It’s 7:30 pm and we head back to the hotel. We catch up on some writing and call it a night around 10 pm.
It’s 9 am Thursday morning and Khyati and I are climbing the stairs towards Mall Road. There are about 100 stairs and we are panting as we climb few stairs. We wonder how the local people live here? Maybe, they are used to this life in the same way as Mumbai folks are used to the hustle bustle and crowdedness of city life.
We eat a heavy brunch at the Jain Bhojnalay and walk towards Himachal Pradesh state tourism office by 10:30 am. Soon, few other people join us and we introduce ourselves and chat around. By 10:45 am, there are around 6 other couples. Soon, a small hefty man joins us and introduces himself as Kishanlal – our guide for the day. We walk with him to Rivoli Bus stand in Shimla and there is a state tourism 2×2 bus waiting for us.
tourist bus
Our first stop is Fagu Valley. This road from Shimla goes all the way to Tibet and as per our guide’s notes, we could see the Himalayan mountain range in the distance. It was quite cold and windy up there. We were shivering but that didn’t deter us from taking lots of pictures and roaming around.
K @ Fagu valley
There are lots of apple orchards in Shimla and we saw a lot of them along the way. Our next stop was Kufri. There is a pretty good zoo here and we visit it. We saw some leopards, mountain bears up close.
The leopard in this picture was continuously walking back and forth at a brisk pace and even looked to pounce if it was left free from the cage. We were happy to be on the other side but hoped that these animals were sent back in their natural habitats.
Leopard
Our next stop was the Chini Bungalow – this is the famous place where Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto signed the Indo Pak Shimla agreement in 1972. We were hoping to see a museum here but instead, this has been converted into a fancy restaurant. Most of us have some lunch here. It’s 3 pm and we head to our last stop for the day – Naldehra. This place has been converted into a members only golf course. In the 90′s – this place was available for film shooting and as per the guide, many Bollywood films have been shot here.
We hike up to the golf course and wah la! we find adventure activities here. There is zip lining and Khyati is itching to do it. It was a first time experience for her and she thoroughly enjoyed it.
MVI 8685 from Paras Mamania on Vimeo.
Imagine Khyati’s excitement post completing this zipline.
excited
It’s 5 pm and we head back to Shimla. We were initially apprehensive about the Himachal Pradesh state tourism bus today but the experience was amazing and we would love to do it again in some other city.
It’s 7 pm and post dinner at the Jain Bhojnalay, we head back to the hotel and call it a night around 10:30 pm.
It’s Saturday morning 8 am and we are spending our last few hours in Shimla. We reach the railway station by 10 am and settle in the Shimla – Kalka toy train. The journey takes 5 hours and we reach Kalka station by 4 pm. We have an onward journey to Delhi leaving Kalka at 5:45 pm. It’s a Shatabdi train and we are looking forward to the train journey. It’s an AC chair car and serves food. The ride was smooth and we were being served continuous food – hot snacks as the train started, an hour into the journey, we were served tomato soup and dinner. Just before we arrived in Delhi, we were offered an ice cream. Wow! burrrp!
It’s 10 pm and we take a prepaid auto rickshaw to our hosts house in East Delhi. We call it a night around 11:30 pm.
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Best wishes,
Paras