Shivering in Shimla

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I'm back in the Himalayas - in Shimla. The weather here has changed dramatically since I was last in the mountains in Nepal. It's absolutely freezing! Daytime is no higher than 10 degrees and at night it's sub-zero, not too good when you've spent the last four months at no less than 30 degrees. Also, there is no heating in any of the buildings here at all so it's like being back in the dark ages and you can never seem to get warm. Altitude is 2,200 metres and after the spectacular six hour narrow gauge train journey to get here, I went straight to the market to stock up on warm clothes. The whole town here is like middle England in an alpine like setting. Before independence, this used to be the summer retreat for the British who moved the whole of the government from Calcutta (and later from Delhi) up into the cool of the mountains every year. As such, the centre of the town is dominated by Christ Church and many mock Tudor houses - a surreal experience. Even stranger is the huge old viceroy's lodge at the other end of the ridge. It's like a national trust property, complete with gardens, that been beamed down straight from somewhere in Hampshire.

Just to make things even more odd, I'm staying with a completely eccentric family in a large old English house/hotel in the room that used to belong to Hamid Karzai (current president of Afghanistan) when he was studying in Shimla as a young man. The room is huge, dark, dirty, ice cold and has a novel feature in the bathroom - there is a water heater for the tap that has bare wires protruding from it. These wires have to inserted into the socket, the correct way round!, in order to ensure I get a warm bucket of water rather than an electric shock. Oh well, the novelty of the place makes up for all that.

Tomorrow morning I head off on the bus for a 10 hour trip to Dharamsala - home of the Dalai Lama. Would then love to continue along the legendary road to Leh, one of the highest roads in the world, but have heard that it might be snowed over now.

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