Jandev Castle Shimla

... for anybody who wanted to cool their mind and senses off the heat and sultry of Indian summers. Himachal Pradesh has been bestowed with picturesque beauty that is incorporated in the various hill stations. You can experience peace and serenity by visiting various pilgrimage destinations like temples and monastery in Himachal Pradesh that are really stupendous. There are many colonial monuments that form the monumental ...

... Victorian mock-alpine fancies, theme park gothic, and modern concrete Indian all fighting for space on the cliffs.

The main attraction is the old Vice-Regal lodge - a very grand building built in Scottish Baronial style, with a neatly manicured lawn and tidy flower beds in really looks out of place in India. Build in the late 1800s - with ducting ready for electricity long before it came to India. The brief tour takes you to the room where ...

Headed out of Delhi on the fast train to Kalka - in class AC Seater 2nd (Indian railways have numerous, complicated classes). Neatly uniformed staff bringing a seemingly endless number of things a newspaper, bottles of water, tea (naturally), food. All very comfortable and efficient, whizzing across the plains of Northern India. You do however see some horrible shanty towns clustered by ...

... with fantastic view.

Just on the corner of the Ridge there is a Christ Church (with nice wooden ceiling & fine stained glasses windows). In India people take their shoes off not only when entering temples and gurudwars but also churches. From the church the trails lead uphill towards the Jakhu Temple (Hanuman Temple, the monkey god – with lots of monkeys on the way). If you get bored with going up and ...

... in the hot pool I decided to brave the freezing cold dip into the river. It was a very strange feeling on the sand as I walked in because I could feel my feet burning from hot water, having to lift them into the cold river to stop them from getting really hot. There was not much else to see but a nice place to break up the journey and spend the afternoon.

... alone and unlocked, thanks to someone forgetting to attach a luggage van to the narrow guage train to Shimla. After a nervewracking night without bicycles we were reunited with them this morning. Thanks to Mr Aman Gupta. Both slightly nervous at the scale of the hills around (it took our train 6 hours to climb 1300m over 97km), but in good ...

... steeply and rapidly) from the ridge itself, on either side, you are in narrow bazaars with dogs eating trash and homeless old dudes peeing and/or bathing themselves next to cows and piles of ****. Somehow, neatly at the top of a hill, England managed to create a piece of their beloved decorum that has been preserved a half century after they left. On my second stay in Shimla I decided to give myself a treat after a horrible bus ride back from the mountains (next post). I ate a Domino ...

... residents, although I'm definitely ready to leave here and move on to my next adventure! Lets just hope I have some friends to enjoy it with this time! For anyone who isnt really following, my 'next adventure' will involve looking after old and disabled elephants in a Sri Lankan elephant orphanage, as well as teaching English to kids - not special needs ones this time. Am hoping the elephant part doesnt ooonly involve ****-shovelling, although I suspect that might ...

... tour allowed us access to a limited portion of the lodge, but enough to realize that much of its original grandeur has been maintained. 20-foot Burmese teak wall panels, original chandeliers and furniture and gleaming intricately carved walnut ceilings (as old as the building and never once polished) are among the lodge's many attributes. Most notably, the original electrical wiring, plumbing and sprinkler system are still in place and functional today. We were allowed to ...

... between the varying degrees of grief, but this particular journey is worthy of a few words. Leaving Rishikesh mid-morning last Sunday, after the long sweating walk over the bridge in Laxman Jhulla and up the hill and winding steps marked by begging sadhu's, it seemed portentous to find a large rickshaw, a vikraam, going all the way to Haridwar for 25 rupees only. The kindly driver even gave me the front seat, hauled my rucksack onto the roof, and showed me into a second ...