Day 23-25: Shimla — IndefinitelyOOO

helens lovely face.jpg — *"Our train, the Himalayan Queen, certainly came round quite a few mountains"*

I think it's true to say we'd been looking forward to Shimla, the hill station at the foothills of the Himalayas. And in a similar way to the Britishers who'd retreated here in the 1800/1900s to escape the heat, we too were hoping for some lungfulls of slightly cleaner air.

With an altitude of 2200m and strung out on a ridge packed with pine trees and cedars, it's the journey up that we'd read most about. Our heads had been turned by the romance of the narrow gauge railway which wends its way, well, for a while. She - our train, the Himalayan Queen - certainly came around quite a few mountains and over 864 bridges and through 107 tunnels, for 5 hours.

During which both of our phone batteries died, meaning we arrived in this sprawling town without access to the exact address of our hotel... The Shimla View Home ("I wonder how many guest houses and hotels might be called that here..." A stop at a roadside cafe for chai and use of a plug socket followed, chauffeured by a helpful taxi driver (safe in the knowledge a decent tip awaited him for rescuing us from frostbite had we been unable to locate our hotel and were forced to sleep in the forest - have I mentioned that it's quite cold here...?) Shimla is high and as we climb higher and higher in our cab we realise our home for the next few days is pretty much at its top. And our room, let's call it a penthouse... also at the top of that. And by god it's cold. My geordie genes have deserted me and I sleep in three layers under two blankets and a hot water bottle brought to us by our too kind for words host. The same people who brought us breakfast in bed and gave us a lift into 'town' the following day.

Shimla is spotless, which undeniably sets it apart from the India we've seen thus far. But as well as bins and recycling bays everywhere it's also had a ban on smoking since 2010. They've also pedestrianised many of the streets so as well as the absence of pollution, there's no noise! So we decide to walk the length and breadth of 'the ridge' on which Shimla sits.

The British architectural influence is of course everywhere - mock Tudor police stations, churches, a theatre where Kipling staged his plays and the amusingly named Scandal Point, where locals still gather to have a chat. But the highlight was something altogether more Indian - in the form of an 108ft high, Orange idol of Hanuman, the monkey god. It sits 2455m up on a hill as part of the Jakhu Temple and of course is also surrounded by actual monkeys - these ones redder faced (and actually angrier) and with much more fur - compliments of the climate.

I write this from our home stay bed (once again with a hot water bottle) at 8pm on a Friday night - largely due to the climb up to that temple and the 6km walk home. Just doing our bit to keep this excellent place just as it is. And I don't mean that in a colonial sense.

Pics: tumble down Arts & Crafts houses ; The Gaiety Theatre where everyone from Kipling to Felicity Kendall has performed

jj alt 3.jpg — *"A market town in the Cotswolds rather than a hill in Northern India"*

Funny little place, Shimla. 6,000 ft above sea level rising to a lung-bursting 7,000 at its highest point, the 80ft bright orange statue of Hanuman that erupts through the fir trees at the top of the ridge, his monkey face grinning down mischievously on the valley.

We're in the Himalayan foothills here, the air is a little thin (and clean!) and it's properly cold; zero degrees at night. The family running the guesthouse we're staying in kindly bring hot water bottles up to our unheated room on the fifth floor - it's not a town for those with vertigo.

The sudden plummet in temperature and the dizzying drops to the bottom of the gorge aren't the most surprising things, though - it's the fact that if you squint, you could be persuaded you're in a market town in the Cotswolds rather than a hill town in Northern India. In 1864, the British declared it the summer capital of India, desperate to get away from the sizzling heat of Calcutta. The Viceroy set up shop and the place gradually filled with Britishers, bringing with the style and architecture of home. It's a tudorbethan model town, all exposed timbers, slate roofs and cast iron lampposts. The cottages and lodges would look more at home in Marlow or Tetbury and the Gaiety Theatre ('The Albert Hall in miniature') and the promenade at Scandal Point make it easy to picture the idle British aristocracy at play. Legend has it that Scandal Point gets its name as the place where the Viceroy's daughter would secretly meet an Indian prince with plans to elope. Today it is where Indian Society meet to read the morning papers in the sun and gossip.

Part of Shimla's appeal is the joy of actually getting here. The Himalayan Queen is known as the Toy Train; it's tiny, the furnishings and interiors are wooden and it chugs uphill at a 1:3 gradient for nearly six hours at a gentle 15 miles an hour and under. The journey takes you through more than 100 tunnels and over 800 bridges and the views are stunning. Climbing into the mountains, the air cools and the forests turn from squat and leafy trees to soaring firs and pines on one side with dramatic ravines dropping away in the other. A note about the construction: Indian history is full of stories like this; the longest tunnel on the route is the Barog tunnel, named for (and haunted by) the British engineer who oversaw the build. Colonel Barog, trying to get ahead of schedule, ordered that the tunnel would be bored from both ends simultaneously, to his own calculations. But his calculations were incorrect and the two digging parties failed to meet in the middle for which, rather than sacking him, the British government fined him the humiliating sum of one rupee. Disgraced, the colonel walked to the unfinished tunnel and shot himself. As a final insult, Barog was buried at the entrance of the tunnel that drove him to suicide and so is said to haunt it to this day.

The pace of life here is slow and stately, the town is spotless, cars are banned and with the distant horizon framed by the white peaks of the Himalayas proper, we we take some well-needed rest and head back to the plains fully recharged.