Shimla

The British oasis in the foothills of the Himalayas turns out to be a pretty cool place, and the weather is as well. Although India has been running about 10 degrees cooler than normal, it nevertheless provided the opportunity for tee shirts and light pants. Coming to Shimla I knew I’d need to buy a jacket/sweatshirt of some flavor and I was right. We had timed our trip to go to the south before it boiled and then head to the hills at the end of the trip when it had a chance to warm up. But, it’s still chilly. It snowed yesterday in Manali, our next destination. Our room was more than chilly and with the hot water running lukewarm, we asked for and got a heater for the room and an extra blanket while we went out on a search for something warm for Jim to wear before he froze his skinny buns off. No problem, easy find here. What was surprising was that although this is a tourist town as such, it doesn’t have the usual tourist traps, not 50 stores selling the same cheap baubles, bangles and beads. Rather it provides for the locals. Nary a “Shimla, heart of the Himalayas,” type tee or sweatshirt. Just stuff that the locals wear. The vertical nature of the town, if you can call a place with a population of 142,000 a town, provides streets which gradually climb, then an intersecting street which switchbacks the other direction to reach the upper reaches of the town. It just doesn’t feel like a “city.” There are stairs which go straight up or down depending on your direction for a more direct route and they intersect with smaller alleys with more shops for locals. The place is urban sprawl in spades as the twon winds for miles outside the core area.

The streets are alive with people, but at a leisurely pace. No frantic tuk-tuks, taxis blowing horns, or people in a hurry to get somewhere….this is the first place that goes against what I said in the last letter…this could not be Indore or Mumbai or any other city we’ve been in. This is Shimla.

There is a gleaming church tower on an upper level of town and so this afternoon we went out to find what looked very much like an Anglican Church, and upon weaving our way there, in fact it was. Except that it is a very flat plateau that the Brits either found like this and built their enclave there or blasted the top of the mountain flat to put their church, fancy hotels, town halls, dramatic theatres (founded in 1836) and other necessities of British life. They always took their life with them, it’s just that the locals looked different from Cornwall. On top of this plateau thousands of Shimlites (?) gather to put their children on ponies and walk around the large plaza the size of a football field, school boys and girls all in their spiffy uniforms of blazers, white shirts, ties, and pants ( girls have the option of pants or skirts), all looking very proper English public school types.. People laze on the many benches made available for the Ladies of the Raj who would stroll the area to meet those of the same class and status. It’s a historical town with Kipling living here for years and using Shimla as a model in his stories. Once they connected a rail line it became a hot spot for wealthy Brits. Elizabethan style buildings and a Jolly old England type of architecture dot the hills. The town just took off and hasn’t stopped. The locals are an interesting mix, descendants of the community that grew to service the needs of the Brits from lowlands and a Tibetan population that has settled across Northern India as they fled the Chinese takeover of Tibet with the Dalai Lama in 1959 and those who followed. The Tibetans are easily distinguished from the Indians. They have that ruddy wind-swept feature to their faces that living in that harsh environment has developed. Anoop took us to an area 15 miles from Shimla for a closer look at the Himalayas. It was an hour drive over a road that was, at best one lane each direction around hairpin turns where buses, trucks, cars and the ever present Honda Hero motorcycle plied their way across the mountain. There is a tremendous amount of building going on along the way and with the going ever so slow as it is, Carol remarked “What a nightmare it’s going to be when all this brings more people onto this road.” It isn’t a pleasant thought. A truck broke down along the way which meant that the traffic was single file and that means that whoever gets first to that spot, all others following will continue in a long line with nobody saying: “Okay, it’s your turn.” In fact that would be disaster, because then the opposite line would flow unceasingly. After about 20-30 minutes of not moving, they got the truck moving and traffic now flowed, albeit at its regular snail pace. Along the way out Carol had the cliff side and thought it best not to look down because that might be a cause for some real angst. Steel barriers on the side of the road, a rarity, and only occasionally does one find an old oil drum filled with rock to provide a semblance of safety, although from the crushed hulks of cars pulled up from below, they obviously wouldn’t stop a car from going airborne over the edge with only the trees to pinball off of from one to another on the way to the bottom which was about 500 feet in a near vertical drop. In fact this morning a car went over the edge and five people died. (We didn’t see it. We just read it in the paper.) On the other side of the road, the hillside, ladies with paint brushes whitewashed the protruding rocks which jutted out closer to the road so that the driver at night time could at least see what he/she was about to hit and day workers dig ditches for new lines of water or electricity, all by hand of course.

Down below there were little enclaves with about 10 houses all neatly arranged in a little cluster with neat lawns and pristine houses. I like to use the word pristine here because nowhere else in India could I use that word with the trash piles, huge garbage pits and litter strewn everywhere and anywhere. So, pristine, it is. There were also some huge developments which will make the already horrendous traffic a problem of apocalyptic proportions… So Shimla is our introduction to the “hill stations.” Tomorrow we we’re off to Manali, (not to be confused with Manila), it’s 150 miles away and is a 10 hour journey…sounds like more stalled trucks in the road ahead.   Upon reaching our destination we took a horseback ride over the top of the hill to see the grand mountains to our north. This is what we came to see and it was as much a delight from this side as it was from the other side on our trip to Nepal and Tibet. What glorious sights they are. A long ribbon of white jutting into the sky with peaks that from this distance one can only imagine their height. Let it be said that they are high regardless. After an hour’s ride it was time for some chi (sweetened tea with milk) the Indian standard and we headed back on the slow, tortuous road back to Shimla. Although there are the usual piles of trash in any washed out area or stream bed which is always very discouraging because it could be “Pristine,” but isn’t, one thing they have done in the entire state of Himachal is to ban plastic bags. When purchasing something, you receive a paper bag or a cloth one which is durable and can be reused. People take their bags with them to save on the litter. Headline of the day: “Foul stench from broken Mumbai sewer line to last four more days.”. Oh joy, that’ll be fun.