May 4, 2013 - Trip to Shimla

This weekend’s trip began at 6:30am from Delhi. Five of us + driver piled in the SUV and started north. We soon passed by “Haveli” at Karnal again (locale of our group’s first outing) but stopped to eat further down at a “government-run” restaurant, whatever that means, where I learned of yet another delicious fried flatbread called puri. From Indian restaurants back home, you’d think your bread options consisted of only naan, but there is so much more. Puri is sliced very thin and uber fried. Therefore freakin’ delicious. Slightly smaller than the similar poofy bread served with chole batura. (Brief side rant. Not appreciated: telling me that trying to put on my seat belt is “unnecessary”. The lack of a law and/or skill of the driver are irrelevant to my reasoning.)

The Delhi Road Trip Group

The highway was in good shape; we passed by fields and towns quickly in our air-conditioned vehicle. We crossed the state border of Haryana first, then Punjab, then Himachal Pradesh (two new states today! Seven, all together since I arrived.) The last hour of the seven-or-so-hour journey was spent ascending a vertical mile from Chandigarh at 1150ft to our destination Shimla at 7200ft.

This road was built to induce motion sickness. Tight, twisty turns all the way up the mountain. I kept my eyes firmly out the window and managed to avoid feeling too nauseous. As we climbed in altitude, I noticed something unusual. Trees full of red flowers. Purple flowers. Hillsides full of white flowers. It then occurred to me. Oh right, it’s spring! (Nothing like over-100-degree temps to make one forget that, no, we aren’t anywhere near “summer” in Delhi yet.)

Oh, springtime! Forgot about that.

The view was beautiful. These mountains are not empty hillsides full of trees… quite a few houses and little towns were all along the way. Shimla was the “British summer capital” so the route between it and Delhi got (and still gets) a lot of traffic. But nothing was quite like that first glimpse of a what a city on a mountainside looks like.

Road to Shimla

I’m not sure I can describe why Shimla looked so DIFFERENT to me. So much like nothing like I’d ever seen. And this is me, who has seen plenty of mountain towns in Colorado. I think it was partially because the city was not built in a valley, in a clearing, along the river, or any place that made obvious sense. Also, a good portion of the buildings were tall and close together. Seems like they picked some random mountains and plopped a full city onto the side, multi-story hotels and all.

Houses of Shimla

Parking garages right on the top, there

Fearless monkeys

And at the top, not a temple, but a church.

There are not a lot of roads. The main, twisty road through the middle has just enough room for one vehicle in each direction and a few tributary roads off that. I can not see how you would access the majority of houses. I also don’t know why the main road was not more packed; they told me parking was at an extreme premium which made sense, but it seems like the road should be constantly jammed. I also can not picture this place in winter, though a Google-image search of Shimla will get you all sorts of snow-covered photos. (I also am baffled at how the electricity and plumbing work here, especially the latter.)

View from the top

Took this very close to the above photo
A hidden understreet

Unlike any Indian city I’ve been to, the main spiritual attraction here is not a temple but a church.

(And I still had to take off my shoes inside)

The flat spot atop the hill where the church rested was a popular place for tourists and I saw quite a variety. There were also the requisite tourist activities. You could pay to take a ride on a fancy horse. The most persistant salesperson (besides the one asking if I was interested in any day tours) showed me photos and offered the chance to put on traditional clothing and get my own photograph taken. I declined, partially because the traditional dress of this area would have no cultural context for me but also partially because of the idea of wearing clothes hundreds of people before me have worn was not all that attractive.

Also at the top of the hill were some statues of both Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Gandhi (no actual relation, apparently) who became the prime minister when her father died. The airport is named after her. So is my neighborhood. “Indirapuram” means “Indira-city”.

Lady Gandhi

My favorite part of Shimla was a surprise to me. As we were walking along the steep sidewalk that led up to the church… I turned around to take a photo of the street below, but glanced upward briefly. Then I saw it.

THERE IS A GIANT PINK STATUE ON TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN!

That’s what I said. The others looked at me, bemused. I was just like, “Giant… Pink… Statue… ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE! How cool is that?!” They let my eyes bug out of my head for several minutes. Then we kept walking. If I had more time, I may have considered trying to hike up to it.

Pink statue overlooks the European-influenced town.

Seriously, how was that thing built? Further, the major (who had been stationed here so was familiar with the locale) told me it was all one piece of stone. If this town hadn’t already blown my mind… wow!

Another awesome thing about Shimla:

Sidewalks

The “Mall”

A monkey with expensive taste

Down the stairs to the next level of pedestrian avenue

The lower marketplace; feeling a bit more local

Same ‘fancy’ name as the store in Rishikesh
(but still doesn’t make sense)

Stairs, elevators, and steeply inclined sidewalks. That is how you get around as a pedestrian in Shimla. How does furniture make it up? I saw several men carrying heavy loads including a guy with a refrigerator on his back. Every time I saw one of these men, usually with his whole body – and sometimes forehead too – strapped to thing on his back (and sometimes bent over double to carry it), I let him by. I almost took a photo of one of them, but even if he would not have seen me, it seemed slightly rude, like I was treating his labor-intensive job as tourism. I settled for photographing this monkey momma along the same street instead.

Awwwwwwww

In the middle of the town is something simply called “The Lift” which is what it sounds like: an elevator (a series of two elevators actually) that takes you up from the main street level to the main pedestrian level. We had to take The Lift (10 rupees a ride) to the top, then go another seven stories once we reached our hotel and then up two flights of stairs to reach our room. The elevators were fairly small, and often had a line to get in (though not a long one) but they did the job and did not break down like one sign warned about.

Count ’em, three elevators just to reach our hotel room.

The hotel looked nice from the outside. The interior decoration was lovely and tasteful. But I really wish it were in the average Indian hotel’s better interest to make the sheets and towels look really clean. There should not be any ambiguity; I should not have to wonder if the towels and sheets have gotten washed (and not just folded neatly) after the last guest. I mean, they weren’t really dirty… just not really sparkling white clean. The not-quite-fresh-looking state of the sheets and towels has been consistent in every hotel in India I’ve been to (except the five-star in Jaipur whose sheets and towels were pristine.) I suspect they were just hand washed in cold water with weak detergent, no bleach, and dried outside. That makes the most sense. But I hate wondering.

Looking toward Bridge View Hotel

The toilet paper in the room was too damp to use; in a bathroom where the shower has no barrier to the toilet area, that should be an expected problem with some sort of solution. (Though, the shower did have hot water at least!) I was just glad personally that I brought my own toilet paper and pillowcase. And that my aim was good in killing the three flies that were in my room when I arrived.

Otherwise, the hotel was perfectly serviceable. The food was decent. The staff were nice. The monkeys were content.

Hanging out on the hotel terrace

View from the terrace (day and night)

Church (and statue) at night

The evening was interesting. We met up with a couple (the girl was Sri Lankan, the guy was Nepalese) and later decided to go to a play put on by an acquaintance of the major’s who had traveled from Delhi with his troupe. Although the play was in Hindi, it was extremely visual and so the majority was quite understandable (and very good.) It was called “The Wall of Delhi” and told the story of a young man wooing a woman among the poor and struggling of the city. Things took a turn for the worse when he found some hidden money (in a wall), spent it lavishly to impress the girl, was later questioned and accidentally discovered a political scandal, where his situation rapidly deteriorated. (The play was a statement on corruption.)

After the play, we went back up to the hotel for dinner and wine (provided by, who else, the Frenchman) with the two new members of our group. We chatted while the chilly (!) wind blew, until I was dozing.

Wine on the terrace

The next morning after breakfast (omelette! but I had to ask for “chilled” milk to go with the cereal as they only had hot milk available) we got back up into the car and drove even higher up the twisty road in the mountains above Shimla, up past all the people on horses, to a small little market where you could purchase textiles, cool wooden clocks that would not fit in my suitcase, or you could pay someone to sit on a yak while your friends took photos.

Also, cool views and stuff.

And a “barking deer”
(though I didn’t hear anything)

I was pretty tired today. One of the others asked me “why are you tired?” which I had no answer to since I had gotten enough sleep. I’m not sure what to say to the pronouncement that “I look tired.” If I look hungry, I can eat. If I look sunburnt, I can get out the sunscreen. But I can’t do anything about being tired right in the middle of a trip. I have to keep plowing on, which I will, I just won’t be as energetic about it. It’s probably because I took two very long trips two weekends in a row (with multiple 5am mornings), and it was finally catching up with me. And I think for that long of a road trip, having part of our less-than-24-stay be additional time in the car seemed like not the ideal option. At any rate, we stopped briefly back at Shimla on our way down to pack up our luggage and snap a few more photos.

Hillside Houses

I like that the above sign exists. (There is also a ban on smoking in the whole city, which one of our group found out the hard way, even though we had seen the sign.) I still saw garbage, but less of it and almost none on the streets. I couldn’t tell if that was because it is easy to toss trash down the hill (out of sight) or if people actually litter less. Also, I like that the fine is $100. I’ve seen some fines that are less than $5… which seems like more of an invitation than a deterrent.

Oh, now they tell me
(Also, watch your spectacles!)

With our two new passengers (which we had exactly enough room for), we headed back down from the cool air of the lower Himalayas to the summer of the plains. To be frank, I was a little surprised how trusting the two were… it made me a bit suspicious, even. But all was well. . They told me they had come from Delhi by bus – a twelve-hour journey made longer by frequent passenger-road-sick stops, apparently. Not fun.

We had lunch at a little restaurant (that barely looked open) along the road. Once again, they were out of gulab jamun (it is a difficult dessert to make, I think, and needs to be kept hot which is why so many places do not seem to have it I guess) and once again, the Frenchman had trouble ordering black tea. The waiters during the course of this trip have appeared a little confused, always wanting to put milk and sugar in it. The major confused me, however, by ordering “sugar free” even after he was already given his presumably sugar-free tea. (I realized later that Sugar Free was the name of an artificial sweetener.)

We had listened to classic Bollywood all the way up, so it was a nice, if not surreal, change to hear classic 80s all the way back which the Sri Lankan girl, despite being born as the 80s were ending, appreciated and owned; everything from Manic Monday to Dancing With Myself. Nothing like grooving to the Safety Dance at a gas station in rural India as the sun is setting. We stopped at the Karnal Haveli restaurant on the way back (which was closed last time we were here) for dinner but I was half asleep by then. Enjoyed the lassi, though. Not the waiter touching the bread with his hands. (Seriously, food service industry!)

Shimla was a really cool place, both temperature and atmosphere. I can see why, according to my co-worker, all the richer folk in Delhi escape here as soon as the summer heat hits. (Summer vacation for kids starts at the beginning of May, apparently, so these places get even more crowded.) It almost seemed there were as many hotels as houses. I’m curious to visit other “hill stations” now…