shimla and manali

I left Mussoorie for Shimla last Sunday morning at 8.30am. First I caught a bus down the hillside and on to the nearby city Dehra Dun, and from there I picked up the 10.15am bus to Shimla. Unfortunately there were no seats available on the small bus and initially I had to stand. About an hour in the conductor called to me to come and sit up front with him and the driver in their compartment, which was very kind of him, and this gave me a great view for the rest of the journey as we slowly climbed through the hills and mountains towards Shimla on the ten hour journey.

We arrived in Shimla a little after 7pm, and once away from the bus I began ascending the alleyways and narrow roads up from the bus stand on foot to the centre (which is known as the Ridge) and on to the YMCA, which is where I decided I would stay. On my climb up a group of men asked me if I would stop to be photographed with them and I duly obliged. The YMCA has bags of character and I knew I would stay the minute I walked into the reception. Massive, painted bright fireman red on the outside, and with two wings it had the feel of a Victorian boarding school out of term. I was shown to an enormous room on the top floor and told that an English style breakfast was included in my room cost. It was mid-evening by this stage so once I'd unpacked I nipped out for a quick mutton rogan josh with a side order of anti-malarial tablet and then got off to bed.

Shimla was taken over by the British in 1819 and so popular had it become with the Raj set by 1864 that it was officially made the summer capital of India. Every summer the entire apparatus of Indian government was transferred up to Shimla. Described sometimes as a little bit of Cheltenham in India, Shimla is strung along a 12 kilometre ridge 2205 metres above sea level and has a population today of 144 900 people. It is designed as though an idyllic English village with mock-Tudor buildings attempting to recreate Old England, an illusion somewhat spoiled by the the many monkeys jumping around the rooftops.

Next day I woke refreshed and after my complimentary breakfast I walked several kilometres across the ridge to the Vice-Regal Lodge, which was once the summer home of the Viceroy of India, and from which he ruled one fifth of the world population. It's a delightfully peaceful stately home, which was built in the 1880s in Scottish Baronial style, and is now a university of sorts called the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, or as my friend Nitesh put it: 'the Hogwarts of India,' a place for postgraduate study in the humanities. I was taken on a tour of the interior and saw the actual conference room where Gandhi, Mountbatten and Jinnah discussed (or perhaps failed to discuss) the partition of India, and the actual table on which Mountbatten agreed the partition line between India and the new Pakistan. A significant place where significant history was made. It was sobering being there. I walked back after, visiting on my way Christ Church (the second oldest church in Northern India), and then I climbed up to the Jakhu Temple which at 2455 metres above sea level is the highest point in Shimla. This made my legs hurt so once I got back down to rest and relax I wandered into the Ritz Cineplex to watch the evening showing of 'Ta Ra Rum Pum.' Day two in Shimla saw me take a long walk down to the Glen and the Shimla polo field, and then in the afternoon I walked over to the Himachal State Museum where most of the exhibits bored me with the exceptions of the beautiful Parhari miniature paintings and some fascinating letters sent by Mahatma Gandhi to Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, in essence asking him to calm down and have a re-think on things. It seems Hitler did not respond and history suggests he did not take the advice. That evening I went to the Ritz Discotheque, where I found myself in an empty cavernous room save for a man a woman and their baby and two men sat at the bar drinking whiskey. I saw one of them the next morning as I was walking to the bus station and he shouted at me, 'eh discotheque!' even though we had not actually spoken the night before. I shouted back the same and we gave each other a smile.

I left Shimla at 9.30am on Tuesday morning and sat next to Nitesh from Solan with whom I chatted throughout most of the ten hour journey. He was only 17 but seemed much older than his years. He is on the verge of entering university to study engineering and we talked a lot about the education system in India and about Indian films. We were joined early on in the journey by a small boy from the aisle who came and sat on my lap and periodically vomited out of the open window by which I was sitting. After a while he fell asleep, and after about an hour he and his Mum (who stayed in the aisle) got off to his relief. We arrived in Manali at around 7.30pm but not before being delayed for nearly an hour by a sheep and goat herd making its way along the highway. I arrived to find a town in a power cut, but still managed to grope my way from the bus station to the Hotel Pawan.

Manali sits in the northern end of the Kullu Valley at an elevation of 2050 metres above sea level and has a population 4400 people. The small town is surrounded by mountain peaks (the higher ones snowcapped) and a fast running clean river (Beas River) runs through the middle.

I've been a little less active in Manali than Shimla, partly because I've felt tired, but more because it has rained a fair bit. However, yesterday I did manage to visit the Hadimba Temple above the town, and the Tibetan Gompa to the south. This is a Tibetan monastery. I was allowed to go in to the main hall and watch the monks chanting in unison - which was a wonderful experience. I also walked up to Old Manali and had a quick look around. It's set in a pretty location just outside of town, but like the northern side of Rishikesh it's a ghetto for Western tourists - full of English people talking about their love of India whilst eating cheese omelette or pasta. I soon descended back to the town proper to be with the Indians and have dinner at a Punjabi restaurant. Today, my second here, I've been on a 10 kilometre walk through the Kullu Valley and a bit closer to the snow capped peaks I am able to see at all times on the horizon. My walk took me through the Tibetan Colony, and re-emphasised what I had been thinking in Mussoorie - that the exiled Tibetan communities up here don't exactly seem to be thriving. In fact they seem to be very poor indeed. It's all reminded me of the hill tribes up in Northern Vietnam - women with wizened faces plodding around with babies tied to their backs, the baby looking like it needs a good bath.

Tomorrow I move to Dharamshala and McLeod Ganj which for the last fifty years has been home to the Dalai Lama and the headquarters of the Tibetan Government in exile. It will be 10 more hours of riding through the hill roads of the Himalaya which can be no bad thing. My ticket says the bus leaves at 8.23am which seems very precise.