It was soon after arriving in Shimla that the terrible thought struck me. I was standing outside Domino’s Pizza watching the crowds stroll past: youth in Marilyn Manson T-shirts, girls in blue jeans. Then I suddenly had an awful feeling that nothing was right for me. I can’t think how it happened: the road up had been choked with traffic as usual, the hillsides were buzzing with construction work, the population — like everywhere in India — was said to be six times what it ought to be. Everything was absolutely normal, except me. I staggered into the Starbucks-lookalike coffee bar and grabbed a double espresso.
My problem was that Shimla was just not sufficiently hill station-like. Where were those wonderful men in their handlebar moustaches taking tiffin in their far pavilions? And where might be the chowkidars politely muttering, “Tea-toast, Sahib? Or will it be peg of brandy?”
India’s rapid economic progress is certainly playing havoc with some of our beloved misconceptions about the place. And none is more cherished than those glorious mountain retreats of the Raj. Of the many examples in India, Simla (now spelled Shimla) was the most famous, a town that began as a tranquil hilltop hideaway for burned-out army officers.
To get the true experience, it was said, one had to step away, along one of those many forested ridges that stack up on Shimla’s horizons all the way to Tibet. Located on a forested ridge one thousand feet above Shimla town, is the Oberoi hotel group’s sumptuous Wildflower Hall. It is separated from the hurly-burly, but it is necessarily a thoroughly modern hotel. Sitting in front of a log fire one evening, reading about that lost era of the Raj, I decided to step away, take the trail and search for some of that former atmosphere.
Next day, with hotel guide, Kalpa, I stepped out the front door of Wildflower Hall and set off into the trees. Occasionally there were clearings of cow-cropped grass with stunning views across the valleys. We moved on, stumbling across a place called Craignanu where a dilapidated colonial bungalow sat in a sea of marigolds. The aged chowkidar opened up for me. Similar government resthouses exist all over India and Pakistan, and can still be used, if you care to negotiate the local bureaucracy. In the living room I found a cabinet filled with old library books — potboiler novels from the 20s, none of which had been stamped out since 1954.
Joining the road, I could see plenty of the more recent development: concrete shells of buildings going up and the dusty scars where roads cut across deforested hillsides. The village of Naldehra had its own mini-boom going on, too: chalet developments that aspire to be Swiss. I took a room in one, and at sunset watched Indian families up from Chandigarh playing at Bernese Bollywood, pullovers draped around shoulders and après-ski whiskies in hand.
Back in Shimla the following day I accompanied the journalist and writer Raaja Bhasin to the Club. It is right in the centre of town and the Mall. One side of the building houses the dilapidated 1887 Gaiety Theatre; the other is the club, guarded by a strict set of rules, including the somewhat ambiguous, ‘Gentlemen are expected to dress up appropriately. The place was busy: several fine moustaches quivered over the tea and pakoras, a few bejewelled fingers were toying with card games. Kipling would have felt quite at home, teasing a little scandalous gossip from the ladies.
Afterwards we strolled along the Mall, dodging the children riding on yaks and playing impromptu games of cricket. I had given up my simplistic notion of a despoiled Shimla. The walk with Kalpa and now this tour had convinced me that the old hill station still had charm. But, I asked, what about that other side to the hill station, the peace and quiet, the sense of nature, the evening chills that came from jungle mists rather than over-enthusiastic air-conditioning? Was that still available? Raaja thought about that. “If you want a bit of nostalgia, you should go to Kasauli — an old hill station about two hours’ drive from here.”
At 6,335 ft we emerged in Kasauli and abandoned the car to walk. It was exactly as I had hoped: tin-roofed bungalows with names like Waverley and Rosedene sitting in deep lawns fringed with scarlet canna lilies and pots of marigolds. Every house had a chimney — evidence of log fires for chilly evenings — and from the verandas were stunning views of endless misty jungle ridges. At the Ros Common Hotel I took lunch and watched the monkeys playing in the trees below. It occurred to me, as I tucked into curried beans on toast, that for the first time in this trip I could not hear even a distant engine — nothing except birds and insects.
I stopped to look at the view. Below me was a little wooden bungalow, freshly painted in butterscotch and sky blue with deep shady verandas, the balustrades laden with geraniums in rusty old tins. A man was reading a newspaper in a deckchair on the lawn, sipping what looked like a gin and tonic. — The Guardian
Take a flight from Kathmandu to New Delhi and hop on to an hour’s flight to Shimla. You can also start on an eight hour bus journey or drive to Shimla from New Delhi
Source: Travel
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