East Bourne Resort & Spa Shimla

... of the region.<br><br>The drainage systems of Himachal Pradesh are Sutlej, Ravi, Chenab, Beas and Yamuna. This Hill Station experience three seasons hot weather season, cold weather season and rainy season. It is considered as a fruit bowl of the country. Himachal Pradesh is a well known habitat to a variety of animals. There are around 1200 bird and 359 animal species in the state. Himachal Pradesh is divided into 12 districts ...

... aggressive - and climbed to the monkey temple. Queued to be blessed by the holy man in the shrine - a saffron dot placed on our foreheads. The holyman paused in doing this only to take a call on his mobile - new India v old India cliche. <br><br>Leaving the temple we nearly were nearly caught in the cross fire of a turf war between a troop of monkeys and the local stray dogs. Much baring of teeth, shreaks and barks. It was unclear as to who won. <br>

... diesel engine pulling us up hills no train should be able to manage, crossing hundreds of bridges and passing through dozes of tunnels. All built to take the British to Shimla, which during the summer months was used as the British Raj's capital. Each small quaint station enroute has two signs, one telling you how high you've climbed, the other a quote promoting religious harmony. <br>

... to Shimla itself is a feat. So we left Chandigarh in the morning for the interstate bus station to catch a bus to Kalka. Kalka has the railway station where the infamous "toy train" takes you to Shimla. The toy train is a smaller engine and locomotive with smaller cabin cars (only 5) that can maneuver through the small tunnels and corkscrew slowly up through the mountains. The journey from Kalka to Shimla by toy ...

... apple groves enveloped in peaceful countryside sound just the ticket as I hear the festival PA blaring out across the Valley at full whack at 22:30 at full whack. Like most other places in the world apart from England, India knows how to through a great public festival. I was also delighted and charmed to meet Purdy in a coffee house where I had my evening meal this evening, a former anthropologist who taught at an Indian University and a retired civil ...

... in bloom everywhere and it was really beautiful. There are a few villages around built on the side of the mountain or in the valley following the river and it was really nice and peaceful to walk everywhere. I went to a beautiful buddhist temple where about 50 ladies were cooking the whole day. They told me they were getting ready for a festival? I went back later. They had finished cooking and were all sitting around. Most of them were ...

We caught an early morning train from the New Delhi Railway Station, just accross the street, to Kalka at the base of the Himalayas, where we connected to the narrow guage Kalka-Shimla railway; a.k.a "the toy train". The toy train was one of the highlights of the trip for me. It represents the huge British aversion to the summertime heat of Delhi. Shimla was the summer capital of ...

... I settled for a Kingfisher beer and a big ol' plate of comfort food (pasta!). I could tell immediately that my luck was not going to run as Keefe's had, as the "she has a friend" that he'd lured me there with was a pretentious Canadian teenager, barely legal and even less tolerable. Instead I consoled myself with more Kingfishers and a dip in the sulphurous hot springs that give Tattapaani its name.

... kick them out! And there's a TB hospital which I'm not allowed to enter for obvious reasons! So thats Raphael anyway! On my first day of work, I went round observing whichever classes I liked; all the children I met were so sweet and funny - one severely disabled boy told me off for chewing gum in class, which was quite amusing! I was also taken to meet the residents of the leper colony, which was a bit bewildering - I found the best thing was to paste a huge grin on ...

... the best routes to take in what we wanted to see. Eventually we settled on a 10 day tour of the Himalaya which would see us driving over some of the highest motorable roads in the world and camping in remote valleys some of which were only opened up to foreigners in 1991. We agreed to set off the following morning for Sarahan a small village in the Kinnaur valley region....little did we know that a few days later we would have to be rescued by helicopter! Post again soon, Love Aubrey and Jane.