Tuesday 11 February

Chandigarh – Shimla

Breakfast in the Hyatt Centric in Chandigarh is lovely – and they definitely, and by a long way, have the best coffee we’ve drunk so far in India!

Our taxi to the station in Chandigarh arrived at 0930 to take us to get our train to Kalka where we changed to the narrow-gauge Kalka – Shimla train. 

The Kalka – Shimla railway opened in 1903 and the route goes up into the Himalayan foothills with many twists and turns for 100km / 60 miles. There are 103 tunnels and 864 bridges. The track climb from 656 meters / 2,152 ft to a peak elevation of 2,076 meters / 6,811 ft at Shimla.

Shimla is the state capital and the largest city of the state of Himachal Pradesh – it’s also the furthest north in India that we’ll get. In 1864, Shimla was made the British summer capital in India because of its cool temperatures in the high forested hills. After independence, Shimla became the state capital of East Punjab. During the British Raj Shimla was famous for summer parties, balls and sports. There are still lots of recognisably British buildings in the city.

The ride on the train was brilliant – beautiful views; but something that makes me very sad about India was also really evident today – there’s rubbish strewn everywhere and here we were in a beautiful precious landscape and everywhere we looked there were discarded cartons, cans, plastic bags, foil trays … it’s horrendous. Most of the cities we’ve been to have been the same (with a couple of good exceptions). People were chucking stuff out of the train windows and it’s maddening. 

There were a couple from near Perth, Australia behind us and Matthew overhead that they were staying in the same hotel as us. When we arrived in Shimla the Australian couple took a cab to the hotel, we walked and arrived before them – we all laughed about that.

The Oberoi is quite high end – a beautiful hotel in an old building.

we didn’t check-in at reception as would normally be expected, instead we were offered drinks and escorted to our room (actually three rooms – bed-sitting room, bathroom and walk-in wardrobe). Our bags were carried in and after a short questionnaire on an iPad we were handed the keycards. While this was going on, a monkey climbed down onto our balcony and stared through the window!

I’ve been feeling a bit unwell for a few days, with a developing cough (that at first I put down to pollution) and now o think that I have a cold. I needed to rest while Matthew went swimming and had dinner on his own.

Hopefully I’ll be much better tomorrow.