The Destination 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 ...

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 ...

... 3 hours due to the windy roads and the wall to wall (or is that bumper to bumper) Tata trucks. They are fab the way they are decorated but after 2 or so hours it was get off the road, I want to get to Shimla. The views did compensate somewhat. I was by this time really looking forward to a beer. what with all the heat and especially the dust and the fact that I had been sat on a bus for 9 hours! Think of the closing scene in Ice Cold in Alex and you ...

... in de tempel gratis eten en een slaapplaats krijgen en het maakt niet uit welke religie je aanhangt. Wij wilden ook in deze tempel slapen maar er was geen plek meer. We hebben er wel een keer gegeten en dit was een speciale aangelegeheid. We kregen borden aangegeven en zijn toen maar achter de andere mensen aangelopen omdat we niet wisten hoe alles er werkte. We moesten nog een tijdje in een rij wachten omdat de eetzaal schoon gemaakt werd en toen mochten we met zijn allen ...

... However, the whole thing seemed a bit too smooth, obviously this was a common occurrence, was it some sort of scam? Trained monkeys perhaps... Either way, we weren't done with these criminals yet. As we were admiring the amazing views from the temple, a giant pac of monkeys went running by us and one of the largest came and smashed right into Jeff's legs again. We were clearly having some sort of bad monkey experience so we armed ourselves with big sticks and ...

... and made arrangements for a guided tour for the next 4 days. I usually also avoid guided tours, preferring to wander around by myself and do whatever sightseeing and activities I feel like at the time. However, Navin and Ankush wanted to pack as much in as possible, so I tightened my wallet straps and joined in. The first day we were driven to a nearby mountain to do some horseback riding. We got some horses at the bottom and were trotted ...

... that stops to pick anyone up on the road. It only picked people up at the stations in each town. And there was only a 2 to 3 hour period where people standing loomed over Drew's head. We thankfully had gotten the bus at the first stop and so we had a seat. This was the third day of travel in a row (just to cover less than 600km), so although the seat was truly a blessing, I did have to convince the pain in my cheeks that it wasn't a curse.

... looked very clean and well kept with nice blue and white paint. I found the correct platform for the train to Shimla (known as the Himalayan Queen) thanks to a big sign saying "Trains to Shimla". There were some carriages lined up along the platform and as I had a couple of hours to kill before the train left, I took some photo's from inside them. There's 2 classes: what looked like bone hard wooden seats and more comfy looking foam padded ones. I was ...

12 hours on 2 trains and we're out of delhi and in the relative tranquility of the himalayas in shimla. We packed our bags up and went out for our only night out in delhi last night knowing we weren't in for much sleep as we had to be at the train station for 5.30am. We wandered round connaught place looking for 1 of the bars from our guide after our 1st insane tuk-tuk ride of the trip. (or helicopter ride as the drivers insist on saying, this is becoming a theme of india ...