India - Shimla Day 285 (22,234 miles)

Riding in India does wonders for your complexion, the dust and pollution are extreme!

We arrived in the hill station town of Shimla after a very slow days riding, pretty scenery but quite a lot of rain.








The town is now pretty big but has a lot of character it’s a real mix of ramshackle traditional Indian style buildings that look like they could fall of the side of the hill at anytime and some colonial buildings reminiscent of an English market town.


Modelled on Tunbridge Wells!






I will never moan about carrying a few bags of shopping again (well I‘ll try not to.)




We took a ride on the Shimla narrow gauge railway (known as the toy train) we only went along the route for a couple of hours and turned around and came back just to get an flavour of it but it is still a fully working railway linked to national routes so forms part of many locals and tourists journeys. This section was opened in 1903 to transport the government employees from Delhi into the hills for the summer months.






We were told the train back to Shimla left this station at 13.50 and we couldn’t buy our ticket until just before the train arrived (another example of strange rules and bureaucracy here). 13.50 came and went and there was no sign of a train, eventually it arrived at 14.45 and we couldn’t get any explanation as to why. We had been told by others who have used the trains alot that the service was usually pretty reliable so it seemed strange until we read the papers the next day and learnt that a station further back up the line had burnt to the ground about 12 hours previous to our trains scheduled time. So good on the Indians for keeping the line open but strange that they didn’t want to share the information with passengers!

Still we quite enjoyed sitting on this shaded old fashioned platform, it was like set of the Railway Children.

View from the train.

This is the Viceregal Lodge, built by the Brits in Scottish Baronial style (so in keeping with it's surroundings!) in 1888. After independence it remained as the summer home of the Indian President until the 1960's when it became a college and that's what it is today.


Nominee for cutest monkey of the week, they are everywhere!