Park Woods Shimla

... of the region.

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 ...

... papers were signed to end British rule, and split India and Pakistan. As we left we saw something even more jarring on a building that looked like it should be in Scotland - a monkey walking across the ramparts of the lodge.

On the subject of monkeys., Shimla has a lot of monkeys, a lot of very confident monkeys. Its main temple is dedicated to the monkey god, so they have the run of the place. We hired sticks to ward off monkeys - they can ...

... 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.

... pictures (which according to one bloke is just for memories!!). the food is so good as well... you dont need meat at all when the vegetarian stuff is this good!!! sorry i havnt put more pictures up.. its taking ages and this computer is just too slow. hopefully when i get to Bangkok the connections will be faster so i will be able to spend less money on getting pictures up onto facebook!! anyway.. i have things to do and places to see will write again soon.. i hope!!! xxx

... change since 5 years ago - no smoking in public. WTF? I thought I was in India? How typical that the first rule ever has to pick on us poor smokers. Anyway, I have a bus ticket for tomorrow evening. Next stop is Rekong Peo, which leads to both Kinnaur and Spiti Valleys. If the word on the street is true, there is no rain in Spiti, plus it's so remote and isolated that I expect to find the peace and serenity I'm looking for there. M

... to get off the train at a random town between Delhi and Jaipur where fortunately there was a train waiting to go back to Delhi. We managed to run onto this and the friendly local people kindly squeezed us in with them without seeming to mind too much. This train was quite a contrast to the sanitised tourist version we had just been on but the locals made us feel pretty welcome (I was made a bit too ...

Found a map of the trek area - Shimla is in the bottom left.

Kinnaur-Spiti trek

The plan is Shimla - Sarahan - Sangla - Chitkul - Sangla - Kalpa - Kafnu [not on map, just to west of Recong Peo] by jeep. Then trek up north to near Mud. The jeep is 5 days, the trek 6 days. From there we make our own way by bus etc, probably to Kaza, Ki, Kibber, then on to Manali in the north-west ...

... 4 1/2 hours (instead of the 8 hours we were expecting), even though we stopped everywhere to pick up and drop off passengers on the way. There weren't even any puking episodes anywhere near us on the bus :-) Shimla is quite the beautiful town in the hills, surrounded by mountains, popular with Indian honeymooners and vacationers. It used to be the summer Capital of the British raj, for ...

... Lal Mata temple, which turned out to be this massive Disneyesque creation with amazing brightly-coloured sculptures and statues of the gods and other random mythical creatures! Inside it was practically a theme park ride, and involved crawling through tiny cave-like tunnels, scrambling over artificial rocks and wading in knee-deep water! There were all these beautiful mirror and mosaic designs with such intricate patterns - Hindus really dont do things by halves! I made a ...

... people," he said in his ponderous way, grimacing, and giving a one rupee coin to her little sister so they would go away. "There is many caste in India. These people are having no education. No money. No house. Government is doing nothing for them. They are living..." and he motioned with his fingers in the gutter. "Like animals?" I said. Mr Nivekitan nodded with a look of disgust. I began to wonder what would happen to this exquisite child, and then later, as the bus ...