It was raining when we set off down
the hill towards the main bus station in the middle of town, luckily
the sky was clearing and we hardly got wet on our early morning
trudge. Once we found the station we needed to find the bus, before
we got far an English guy called Alistair made himself known to us
asking if we were heading to Shimla. Alistair was of the opinion that
the bus we needed to get was not the bus we needed as the driver was
'lying' to him (he did not much trust the natives) in the end we got
on the bus and waited to depart. The journey was long and confusing;
after thirty minutes we stopped for about half an hour and eventually
were told we had to switch buses which I did in a very groggy fashion
as I had just managed to get to sleep. I think because the bookings
were slim our service turned into a slow one and we stopped a lot
along the way. We stopped for breakfast which for me essentially
consisted of a potato naan and that was my food for the day until
dinner, since arriving in India I’ve not been hungry during the
day so I have been forgoing lunch. The change in scenery over the
duration of our voyage was not as impressive as previous bus journeys
though the vistas were just as stunning. The rest of the trip was a
blur of amazing views, stops and 'A dance of dragons' and in no time
we had arrived in Shimla.
The afternoon was waxing upon our
arrival so, accompanied now with Alistair too, we decided to try and
walk into town. We had not got far when a local man offered a lift in
his car, we gracefully accepted and promptly piled into his Clio
sized car with huge bags on lap. After a short trip along, through
and up the ridge that Shimla is located upon he dropped us at the
central bus stand with directions on how to reach the town centre. We
made the final ascent, laden with heavy bags, through a busy Tibetan
market and upon reaching the top of the ridge were all stood agog, we
had suddenly stepped into a classic British town from 1900. In the
days of British occupation Shimla had served as a summer retreat for
the Raj and as a consequence the architecture was bizarrely out of
place for an Indian town. After our initial shock had subsided we
quickly found a place to stay, an old YMCA, and set out in a hurry to
find the toy train station to book tickets for the next day as we had
been told we needed to get there before 6. after walking a long way
down the ridge we eventually found the station only to find that the
ticket booth had closed 15 minutes before at five, balls. We made our
way up to the town centre to find some food and after a long search
for somewhere good we found a cheap chai house where we had a really
good (and cheap) dinner before heading back to the hostel for a read
and another early night.
The next morning we had an earlyish
breakfasts at the hostel before rushing down to get to the station in
order to try and get tickets for the earliest train possible to
Kalka, as we had organised to meet Dave in Jaipur the next day.
Luckily this turned out to be simple and unbelievably cheap and soon
we were sat with a cabin to ourselves trundling at a leisurely pace
through the foothills of the Himalayas in a half sized train. For the
first hour or two most of the views were obscured by the clouds that
descend on the valleys in the nights, however as the sun slowly drew
the clouds up with invisible strings the astounding views that we had
been told of were clear to see. The distance the train covered around
one hundred kilometres but took around six hours as there were
extended stops at stations in order to let other trains past. The
time was well spent catching up on my blog, reading and gazing out
the window watching the green landscape slip past only to be replaced
with fresh scenery as the train passed though countless long tunnels
bored through the hills. As the terrain slowly flattened out we
arrived at Kalka where we braved the throng molesting the ticket
booth in order to book travel to Delhi. It took a while but we
emerged from the ordeal with tickets, we had a cup of tea and found
our seats on the train to await departure. As far as a first
encounter with India's train system is concerned we were eased in
gently with seats on an air conditioned express service that took
only four hours. Our tickets included complementary food the
highlights of which were; half a coleslaw sandwich and what can only
be described as sweet almond fibre glass. The trip passed by
comfortably as our seats had a power point and I had a large library
of TV on my laptop to complement it. Once we arrived in Delhi we
found a place to stay with the addition of a girl called Alice who
tagged along from the station. That night we met up with Dave and roy
for a few drinks before turning in for the night...
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