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Published: November 8th 2006
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A View From The Train
This is from the New Dehli - Kalka train Woke up at 5.00 am after a pitiful 4 hours sleep. Caught a cycle rickshaw to the train station as were too tired to walk the distance w/bags.
Got on the train and Chloe began to feel ill...
She kept feeling as if she was going to throw up, then going to the toilet and not being able to, then feeling better, proclaiming recovery, before it returned in a more vicious wave than before.
The sickness finally passed, and in an attempt to reassure a shaken Jesse, she jollily told him how great she felt. Little did she know that Jesse felt rather hellish himself!
However, both of these passed with the arrival of our friend Bobby, at about ten o'clock! A very cheerful and camp young Indian student who succeeded in making the entire student population of the train descend on us! They all asked us questions and chatted extremely jollily while blasting Bhangra music into our ears from various mobile phones, very loudly. Chloe was given a bracelet by the group!
All this occured under the amused eyes of another western couple sitting near us. After the students left, we discussed travelling with the other couple,
who were using a year to slowly travel to Australia.
We were then accosted again by a cheerful Nepali army cadet, wearing an England football shirt who was en route to Jammu. He asked to take our picture and him and his friends offered us walnuts, which we struggled to open sucessfully, to their amusement.
We arrived at Kalka station at about midday, the other english couple were also going up to Shimla, and none of us knew where to catch the next train! Chloe identified it, as in the guide book it was called a toy-train and that's exactly what it looked like!
We were joined in our carriage by a large tour group of middle-aged/old english people! They had obviously only just arrived in India recently, it made us feel like experienced travellers!
The journey was spectacular! The little train winds its way slowly up through the mountains- the views were fantastic. It took five and a half hours and went through 103 tunnels, some going straight through the mountain!
Chloe wanted to finish her book, and kept reading despite the sick feeling rising in her stomach....
The second half of thee journey was spent
An Interesting Suicide Attempt
We didn't have the heart to tell him its more traditional to jump in front of the train (actually he was about to cool the engine with a hose) with Chloe leaning out of the window for fresh air. Jesse was fine! About ten minutes before arriving in Shimla, with the sun setting behind the mountains, Chloe was violently (yet neatly) sick into a plastic bag. Jesse didnt notice, until she turned round completely ashen faced!
We got a taxi up a hill, all the taxis here are landrovers as the town is build on a series of ridges on the mountains. Its extremly scenic, and a popular spot for indian honeymooners apparently. There are also loads of monkeys, befitting of a place with a temple to Hanuman, the monkey god, so we have to keep our windows shut, not that we'd want them open as its probably about the same temperature as England here! We ate in our room, first meal of the day! Had our first hot showers- it was fantastic! We slept with two heavy blankets, as there is no central heating.
We will try and get photos on, but this is a very slow internet cafe and we've just spent two hours blogging, so you'd better enjoy!
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Frances
non-member comment
monkey
dont get bitten!