After spending most my time in India in the hustle and bustle of the big cities, I decided to spend my last week in the Himalayan foothills. I first went to the little charming town of Shimla, which I later found out, is the honeymoon capital of India. To get there I took the overnight train from Delhi to Kalka, then the Toy train from Kalka to Shimla. It was the coolest little train. When I booked it I knew it was the small gauge railroad but I didn’t know it was a 14 passenger engine and car built together. They have 8 trains that go to Shimla and the Rail Motor I was on is the only train like this. On the train I meet a nice young girl and here mother that were nice enough to share there food with me. The ride is amazing the train covers the distance of 96 km from Kalka through the curving tracks, up to Shimla hills- the summer capital of colonial India. The toy train trek from Kalka to Shimla is adorned with resplendent panorama of the valley and the picturesque stations along the way. The train passes through 103 tunnels, 969 bridges, 919 curves and 20 railway stations in its entire journey. The total ride was about 4 hours.
When I arrived into Shimla, I didn’t have anything booked so I walked to town which is a mile or so, were no cars are allowed in the center area of town. I got a nice room for 300 INR which is about 6 dollars. I spent most of the day walking around and exploring the cool little town, it’s definitely a big summer Indian tourist area. When the plains of India heat up past the 100’s in the summer, the well off people escape the heat by coming up to the cooler weather of Shimla elevation 7200ft. There was a ton of shopping and good restaurants. I decided to book a bus tour for the following day, to check out some of the surrounding towns. The bus was a basic Grey Hound type, but the roads were narrow 1 lane mountain roads with traffic going both ways. It seemed a little sketchy but the driver does it every day so he seemed to be under control. The one crazy part about the drive was there was a car and motorcycle Thunderbolt rally race going on which had cars coming on at top speeds even in the corners which made for a few tense moments. The bus was all Indian tourists but me. The first stop which was Kufri, which the main attraction is a small zoo, but what got all the Indian families excited was it snowed a few inches over night. I living in the snow didn’t care much, but it was cool seeing how happy all the others were, none of the Indian’s on the trip had ever seen snow, I was throwing snowballs at them at they loved it. We then went to Chail which is a 5 star hotel that used to be a palace. It was nice but really just a place they were trying to suck a little money out of you. Our last stop was Kiaright which was another hotel trying to suck more money out of me. The bus trip wasn’t the greatest but it only cost a few bucks and seeing the amazing countryside was what I really wanted to do.
I spent the evening back in Shimla walking around experiencing the town. The next morning I was off to Dharamsala on a 10 hour mountain bus ride so I went to bed early. Overall Shimla was a nice place, I wouldn’t spend more than a few days there, but I do recommend it.
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