India round up part three - Shimla

On 7th January, we left Amritsar very early for Kalka, 5.30am, so that we could catch the toy train up to Shimla, which is the capital of the Himalayas. For all you railway enthusiasts out there, the train runs on a narrow gauge line for 95.5km and was built in 1903. It goes through 102 tunnels, 881 bridges and 919 curves. It only runs at 25kph and should have taken 5 hours to get to Shimla. However, because of leaves on the line, no because of the late arrival of another train that contained passengers who had reservations on our train, we had to wait for them. For 2 hours and 25 minutes. But a man did poke his head through the window and offer to bring us lunch for R30 each and it was delicious. Each carriage held 30 people and we were able to jump off at various stations on the way for tea and snacks.

The views on the way up were beautiful, although it got colder as we ascended. We finally reached Shimla after 8pm. Morari our driver was waiting at the station for us and said that he'd made it up by road in two hours. A likely story. Once again, roadblocks meant he couldn't drive us right up to the hotel so we put on the backpacks and made our way up to the Himani .The road was so steep and carrying the backpack at altitude, I was having trouble breathing. The hotel was pretty much what we'd come to expect in India; labelled duluxe but usually tired but generally clean. It was freezing though. We woke (still cold) to clear blue skies. After breakfast in our room, we checked out and went to meet Morari. Cliff turned his ankle on a broken step as we came down the hill and it was very painful and only now is the sprain healing. Morari drove us up further from Shimla so we could go horseriding and catch a glimpse of some snow on the Himalayas. The poor horses really are worked up there and there are 100's of them. The scenery from the viewpoint is spectacular. And you can have your photo taken with a bison (and a shotgun) or a large snake. Someone offered to buy my camera from me.We declined all offers. We then started to descend the mountains on our long way back to Delhli. Our flight to Bangkok was scheduled for 4am the following morning and Morari got us there right on time, even making sure we ate on the journey at what amounted to a motorway cafe that served really good (Indian) food.