2/26 – All day Shimla tour

Today is our all day tour of Shimla with whoever comes to pick us up! The Desk clerk last night asked us if we were going on tour today, and we told him yes, but we don’t know with whom. He said something like it was arranged, so after our morning coffee and breakfast in the restaurant, while enjoying the gorgeous view across the Himalayas, we dutifully took ourselves down to the lobby to wait for our tour guide.

9am comes and 9am goes, no tour guide. The desk guys then tell us our driver is here – but we don’t know who that is! There is some random taxi out in front of the hotel, but we are unsure if that is the driver or what. Finally we figure out it is the same guy who came to pick us up at the train station, just pulling the Zion car out of the parking area. Cool. He’s sweet and a good driver so far. Our guide, as it turns out, will meet us in town somewhere. Here we go again! Off on our AMT “trust” tour!

Out of the hotel, down the mountains and back toward the train station our driver goes, stopping for some random dude on the side of the road. It’s our guide, of course. He hops in the car, apologizing for the confusion and the pickup. It is easier for him to be picked up there than to come all the way up to the hotel – he tells us later that he had already taken 2 buses to get just to where we picked him up, leaving his home/farm at 6am – bless his heart! And then we were even later picking him up because of the driver confusion. Sigh.

But now we are on the road, heading to our first stop, the oldest golf course in the country, Naldehra Golf Club. Built in 1905 by the British, at the time it was the highest golf course in India, with an all natural course – hills, valleys, mountains – the course is just set up in and around the entire terrain. Our guide – who we will call Shankar (which means Ganesh or Lord Shiva or something and is a popular male name because we don’t know if we ever even got the guide’s name!) – plays golf here and tell us it is very hard to play because of the terrain. We can imagine, and don’t play golf at all. But just looking at the 18^th hole, it looks pretty difficult to us.

It is a beautiful setting though, and we enjoy looking out over the hills and the course – as well as exploring the old clubhouse building. And marveling at how cheap it is to play here! Only 1000 INR for greens fee, which is about $11 USD. Nuts.

After our photo shoot and explorations, we head back out into the mountains on our way to the 173 year old Summer house of the President outside of Kufri, an alpine ski area started by the British during colonization. The views are magnificent, unfortunately, the house was closed for the Maha Shivaratri holiday – which is a Hindu festival celebrating Shiva, and my birthday is the last day and most important of the celebration. I’m so special. Or not – because everything seems to be closed!

Eh, nothing we can do, so off we go again, through more incredible mountain scenery and windy roads. Past celebrants of the Maha Shivaratri walking along the street with their traditional signs and offerings, past Yaks awaiting tourists to ride them in rented traditional garb (nope, not us, no way) stopping along the way at an overlook for some photos of the gorgeous scenery that truly reminds us of the Blue Ridge Parkway overlooks from home! (There are vendors here selling cotton candy, which Shankar tells us is called old lady hair by the children here. Makes perfect sense!)

Along the way, Shankar gives us little tid-bits about India and the area we are driving through, explaining all the adventure experiences available here in Kufri, such as horseback riding, river rafting, even an amusement park that has activities both winter and fall. He tells us that this region of India produces the most apples after Kashmir and there are 100’s of different varieties of apples (which is really strange, because we’ve not seen a single apple or apple dish on any menu. Odd.). Shankar also explains that this region is the #1 region in Higher Education and places a huge emphasis on schools and learning. All fun facts as we drive through the beautiful scenery on our way to town where we can see how much development there is – building after building built into the slopes going up the mountains. Many of these large buildings are all apartments, mostly for village people who come into town to go to school or work. The commute is too much to handle on a daily basis, so they rent an apartment here. One individual typically owns the whole building but rents out the apartments to others.

Our next stop is Jakhu Mandir Park – the temple with the 108 foot statue of Lord Hanuman. Legend has it that Lord Hanuman stopped at Jakhu Hill during Ramayana while searching for the herb to save Lord Laksman’s life, making it a very important site for Hindus. We pay to ride up the brand new escalator (inaugurated barely one year ago to help visitors get from the parking lot to the temple and an example of the Smart City iniaitive here in Shimla, to improve the city with road works, elevators, escalators, tunnels and more), and at this altitude? Oh absolutely we are riding, arriving at the statue and temple site with our lungs intact. There are more amazing views from up here – including the huge statue that is terribly hard to get into one photo – as well as monkeys playing on the rooftop that covers the stairs.

We wander through the grounds, visiting the small temple at the top of the hill, stopping for more photos of Hanuman and the scenery as we depart and enjoying the murals of Hanuman and Ramayana on the walls of the elevator building as we descend.

Back down at the parking lot, our driver is there waiting and we descend further on the windy, narrow little lanes that lead us back down to Shimla proper. Here we are visiting Mall Road – the main commercial area of the town. Our driver lets us off at the entrance to 1 of the 2 elevators we will use to rise up to Mall road (everything here is on a mountain side!) and we begin our exploration of the shops and restaurants that line the pedestrian only “mall.” We are getting hungry by now, so Shankar choses a restaurant for our lunch – the Hideout Café, owned by friends of his who have immigrated to Australia. They have also opened a Hideout Café in Australia now as well. Works for us – we have a great table looking out over the road and finally got to try MoMos – a dumpling you can order fried or steamed with various stuffings. We chose the chicken, which were fried to perfection, but of course, we also decided we’d need more than just MoMos and made the tactical error of ordering Chicken Toast. We had no clue the MoMos would be so big, and the Chicken Toast? That’s a full meal for both of us in and of itself. Yikes. We are stuffed by the time we are done.

Shankar meets us at the café and continues our tour on the Mall. Up past the Town Hall, originally constructed in 1860, and encompassing the Gaiety theatre – which we will see next – this version of the larger, more grand town hall was constructed in 1910 to handle the summer government influx during British Rule. The Gaiety theatre, built in 1887 in Gothic Revival style, still stands on the Ridge – a popular place for people to walk and to watch the sunset and view the nighttime lights across Shimla. Originally a 5-story building with the theatre, various offices and galleries, after 20 years it was declared structurally unsafe, and partially demolished, leaving only the Theatre with the capacity for more than 300 people.

Then its onto the main event up here on the Ridge, the Christ Church, a neo-Gothic style church built in 1857 for the Anglican British community. It is a famous landmark for everyone in Shimla – as you can see it from just about everywhere around town (and our sweet train friends told us we had to go up to The Ridge to see it). The church has survived the partition and other political upheavals and continues to be maintained. We didn’t go inside, but one of the stained-glass windows as designed by Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard’s father, and the pipe-organ, installed in 1899, is the largest on the Indian continent. One of the things we loved up there is that you can see the church steeple as well as Lord Hanuman up on the hill – two cultures juxtaposed.

Heading back to the car, we asked Shankar if we could try a Siddu (the treat our train friend said she loved) – he found this great little stand right on the plaza by the church which had them. True to what train wife said, they are big baked/boiled bread things – but this one was stuffed with something spicy, not sweet like she said. And it was monstrous! Definitely something we did not need after that huge carb-laden lunch. Particularly when it wasn’t the sweet thing we expected. Ah well, we only halfway finished it with Shankar giving the rest back to the guy in the stall, telling him to feed the animals with it. That worked for us, but have to tell you the guy in the stall looked at Shankar like he was crazy.

On our way back down to the elevators, we made a couple of pit stops – a bottle shop for wine (MUCH more reasonably priced then the hotel) and an ATM since we were all out of cash. Unfortunately, the first 2 ATMs wouldn’t accept our card. Bummer. So, Shankar and I traipsed back up the hill to the Bank of India ATM and finally had success. Phew. Hate not having local cash, especially for tips.

Reversing course, we ride down the 2 elevators, find our driver and head out to the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, which seemed really weird to us. Why would we want to go to a college? The road to the college is actually blocked by some construction, meaning we have to abandon our driver and walk up, up, up to the actual facility. Oy. Altitude! We made it though, with some pretty views across the valleys. At the ticket office, we have a little discussion over whether to take the tour. We were still unsure as to why we were even there.

We finally decided to take the tour – after the ticket guy convinced us it was worthwhile – and boy was he right (he was also our guide and was fabulous!). As it turns out – which was not really explained up front – or we missed it, very possible – the building, built in 1884 and originally housing the Viceroy of India (at the time, called the Viceregal Lodge) was the site of the Simla Conference in 1945, where decisions were made about the partition and Indian Independence. After the Conference, the building was handed over to India and became the summer residence of the President of India. 20 years later it became the Indian Institute of Advanced Study which hosts only 4 fellows each year, with studies and research themes that must be approved by the institute. Really wild.

And the building is gorgeous. Unfortunately, there are no photos allowed inside, but the furnishings are mostly from the originally period, we visit the room where the Simla Conference was held, another room with works from the fellows who have studied there – none of whom we remember now, but there were some pretty famous ones. All the rooms are accessed by a wide, soaring 4-story hall with a gigantic fireplace, 2 stories of dark wood paneling and 2 stories above that of balustrades and walkways where the fellows have their residences. Definitely a must see – and we were very happy we decided to partake in the tour.

Meeting Shankar outside, we decided to walk back down to where the car was parked, passing a monkey eating something a visitor must have provided. Then once again down the little narrow, windy roads on our way to the Army Heritage Museum, focused on the national Army history – as Shimla is the Western Command of the Indian Army (remember our train friend?). Unfortunately, the museum is closed today because of the holiday. Oh well – no cannons or weapons for us. The guard at the gate is really sweet – he apologizes to Shankar and asks him to tell us to please come back tomorrow when they are open. Sweet.

And that was our Shimla tour day. Another very successful experience on the AMT tour. Shankar and the driver bring us back to the hotel, where we now have a few hours to kill before dinner. Tonight we decide to eat in the lounge as we don’t feel like waiting another 30 minutes for the restaurant to open. Ed goes whole hog and orders the “Jumbo Burger” – chicken of course – and Holy Guacamole, is it every Jumbo! Absolutely monstrous! And very good -but oh so big! I have the delicious chicken spring rolls – why mess with a good thing?