Shimla - a watershed city

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Three things I didn’t know about Shimla a week ago.

It is the administrative capital of Himachal Pradesh and, although originally “devised for an anticipated peak population of 45,000, at the most 60,000”, its metropolitan area now contains nearly 300,000 people. This is no sleepy remnant of a colonial past but a bustling, busy place.

The ridge on which it sits forms a watershed between the Gangetic and Indus river systems. It cleaves the subcontinent in two, one system flowing into the Arabian Sea, and the other into the Bay of Bengal.

Despite recent saturation coverage in the British media about the seventieth anniversary of Indian independence, I had managed to miss that it was in Simla, as it was then known, that the key independence negotiations took place. And, appropriately, given the way in which the city’s location divides the subcontinent’s river systems, this is also where that awful division of the subcontinent’s peoples, what became known as Partition, was first discussed. The guide at the Viceregal Lodge pointed out what is now known as the “Partition table” – and, oddly, whether as a result of poor workmanship or too much banging of the table during negotiations, there is a crack across its diameter.

Going one stage further, while sheltering from the monsoon rains in the Book Café (instantly my favourite place in town – two of my most-loved things under one roof), I read that it could be argued the very fact that the British moved their imperial capital to the isolated mountain resort of Simla in the 1860s could itself have contributed to the nature and shape of Independence, as well as the very fact of Partition. Had the colonial government, first in Calcutta and then in Delhi, remained more closely connected to public opinion, seen its strength, and been more responsive to the nationalists, might they have been more open to the early suggestion that the entirety of British India be granted self-governing status under the British Crown? Might independence in this form have come earlier? Could the bloodbath of Partition have been avoided?

My historian days, such as they ever were, are long ago. I never studied this period, and “alternative history” is always endlessly intriguing. I’ll leave it there. History and politics were my constant companions as I walked around the city; there was no escaping them.

I was cramming an un-Indian amount into this my ninth trip to the country, and the days spent travelling to and from Shimla were going to be particularly susceptible to “India wins again”. The first challenge was to get from Delhi into the mountains. I soon found out that Shimla’s nearest airport, Jubbarhatti, was not currently taking commercial flights: not wildly surprising when you read that the airport was “constructed by cutting down a mountaintop and levelling the area to form a single runway”, and that its apron can only accommodate two small aircraft. Kingfisher Airlines, operating the then sole daily flight from Delhi, could not carry more than 28 passengers on its return journey due to load restrictions resulting from the high altitude, and ceased operations in 2012. Instead I booked a flight to Chandigarh in northern Haryana, working on the basis that I’d then be able to get a taxi from the airport the 45 minutes or so up the road to Kalka where the World Heritage “toy train”, the Himalayan Queen, would begin her tortuous route to 2,200 metres above sea level. While this would involve a very early start and some hanging around, it did at least seem to allow enough contingency in the connections. But then Prateek suggested I consider the Kalka Shatabdi Express. Due to leave New Delhi Railway Station at 7.40 am, this would give me an extra hour in bed (never to be sneezed at!), and, from what we could both discern from both official and unofficial sources online, this train is supposed to be a recognised connection for the 12.10 pm Himalayan Queen. Nothing in this world, let alone Indian transportation, is to be taken for granted. Absolving my host of all liability should this not work out (we had met, after all, all those years’ ago, as law students at university), I opted for an extra hour’s sleep.

Indian railway stations still make me more than a tad apprehensive. I think I’m still scarred from my first experience in January 1994, during my first trip to India. I remember crowds that would make London’s Oxford Street during the sales seem like a walk in the park, and incomprehension on every level: signs entirely in Hindi, unable to make ourselves understood, unable to understand, being directed to counter after counter. We only wanted tickets to Agra a few hours’ away: surely it couldn’t be this hard. It was. We slunk back to Niti’s place and she, taking pity on us, kindly arranged for one of her staff to sort it out.

By 2011, New Delhi station at least had begun to take pity on the poor old firangi. There was a separate booking area upstairs, away from the crowds. While I balked at the segregation, I hoped that we would at least be charged us for the privilege and I had to admit it did make things easier. For logistical reasons, however, I was spared the ticket acquisition process this time around. I was further spoiled: Prateek had found out the platform for me and booked me a cab to the station. All I had to do was follow the signs once I got there.

There are an awful lot of people at Indian train stations. Quite how that happens given the “TICKET HOLDERS ONLY” injunction at the X-ray machine at the entrance, I’m not entirely sure. I certainly don’t know how the sadhu managed to get what looked like an iron railing, complete with impressively pointy end, through security. And, oh India, you’re not at your best in railway stations or near railway lines. The smell of stale and fresh urine on the platform was enough to send me scampering back up the stairs to wait until the train was announced – I had only been back in the country 48 hours, and berated myself for my western sensitivities – and I ached for the people squatting in the open by the railway line as we headed out of Delhi, like some ghastly bowel emptying convention, men and women alike. In a country with pockets of sickening wealth, as well as both space and nuclear programmes, is the provision of basic sanitation and such an elementary level of dignity of no concern at all?

By Chandigarh, I realised that we were running half an hour behind schedule. There were plan Bs if the Himalayan Queen had already left – taking a taxi up the mountain or waiting for the first train the next day – and I tried to get myself into a kind of Zen, que sera sera, state of mind. But curiously we arrived at Kalka only minutes before the Himalayan Queen’s scheduled time of departure, and then she was late leaving. I sunk into my seat – or my replacement seat, one gentleman having already taken mine in order to sit with his friend; he proffered me his instead, a great exchange for me as it gave me a window seat with no-one in front of me – and sent up a brief prayer of gratitude to the travel gods, whosoever they might be. This challenging day might just actually work out.

This was my second of the World Heritage-listed Mountain Railways of India, the first having been the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. My memories of the Darjeeling train involve more space, a shorter distance, the way it shared the main road with regular traffic, and how schoolkids jumped on and off, using it as a free lift back home. This was very different. It’s a scruffier train, and a 5-6 hour journey, times being decidedly approximate. There were multiple stops, not so much for passengers to get on and off, but for the existing passengers to be refuelled. Who needs an on-train service when you can simply walk across the tracks to the chai- or chaat-wallah? I defy anyone to arrive in Shimla hungry. In between times, the scenery was glorious. Travelling in the late monsoon season meant the vegetation was looking luxuriant and everything freshly-washed. Red and green corrugated iron roofs are clearly all the rage, so, coupled with a fair smattering of houses with painted walls, towns and villages had a cheerful appearance. I’d grinned happily at the sudden sight of pointy hills rising from the plains as we approached Kalka on the Delhi train, and now the mountains only got more intense, ridge after ridge like crinkled-up paper, each higher than the one before, as we crossed into Himachal Pradesh. This railway, first completed in 1906, is a staggering feat of engineering. Some of the bridges were gorgeous, row upon row of stone arches, and tunnels that made me wish that the same engineers had also worked on London’s Blackwall Tunnel, all too frequently closed and/or clogged with oversized traffic. The literature talks of 988 bridges, 102 tunnels and 917 curves “many of which are as sharp as 48°” on this 96 km stretch of track: I didn’t count, and simply watched the altitude numbers on the station signs slowly increase.

Unannounced – surely a fanfare would be in order after that journey? – we slipped into Shimla station. Almost anticlimactically, I made my way along the two contiguous platforms and out into the jampacked maelstrom of an Indian taxi rank.

My hotel had known my mode of travel and likely time of arrival and greeted me proudly with “Mam, we have upgraded your room from a deluxe room to a super deluxe room!” Truly the travel gods had overdone themselves today. I don’t know what I wouldn’t have had, as it were, but my “super deluxe” room was stunning, with a glorious view across and down the valley in the dying rays of the sun. I’d been told, apologetically, that they didn’t have a restaurant, but they did have room service. Even more perfect. I took a much-needed shower and settled down to ponder the menu. A truly fabulous day on the road, or should I say rail?

Shimla remains extremely popular with domestic and Bangladeshi tourists seeking relief from the heat of the plains and, at this time of year, the plains’ heat coupled with humidity. I’d left Delhi in 37°C and 70+% humidity. In Shimla, it was an easy-on-the-tourist 21°C during the day, albeit the humidity levels hadn’t dropped.

Hill stations have one huge advantage. While going up- and down-hill is a fantastic workout, you can pretty much be assured that “up” is where it’s at, and so it was in Shimla. Maps in this kind of environment are challenging – how can you illustrate the myriad of steps and paths linking one contour-following road with another? It pays simply to follow your nose, and the gradient. The centre of town is gloriously pedestrianised so, unlike many Indian cities, you’re not actually fighting vehicular traffic every step of the way. I wound my way up, following a likely looking set of steps that debauched onto what I later learnt was Lakkar Bazaar. I headed on up, and found – and instantly fell in love with – the Book Café. I never did work out its relationship with its books. They fairly obviously weren’t for sale, and comprised pretty much everything – in English at any rate; I can’t speak for the Hindi – from histories of India in general and Shimla in particular to modern novels and even “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”. Unlike many such establishments, they don’t cram in the punters. Narrow tables line the walls, and here seem permanently to be seated teenagers and students, all beavering away in silence. I only hoped for the sake of the business’s profits that they bought some sustenance from time to time. It’s run by prisoners currently serving time in the Shimla jail and assists in their rehabilitation process as well as providing a supplementary income. I obviously don’t know anything about the background of the people working when I was there, but they were delightful, cheerful and wonderfully helpful, and I can’t recommend the venture too highly. The coffee was great too!

The Ridge is Shimla’s Trafalgar Square, but a curious elongated triangular version. At the “fat” end is an unexpectedly Tudor-style building that houses the municipal library, as well as a statue of Gandhiji and the invaluable city landmark, Christ Church. While the latter is, in daylight, looking in need of a repaint, it is dramatic by floodlight as I discovered on my last night when I finally prised myself away from the room service menu in search of Shimla-by-night. A massive Indian flag halfway along one side of the Ridge lies limp until the wind picks up with the late afternoon monsoon rains. I haven’t consciously seen huge flags in India before, and this was the third in as many days. To my mind, it seems in line with Narendra Modi’s “India First” mantra, although my Indian friends couldn’t point to any particular edict to this effect, and in fact the prime minister is alleged to have insulted the national flag on several occasions. Nevertheless, the sight was unnerving. My previous experience of large flags – North Korea, Tajikistan and (by reputation) Turkmenistan – is that they are militaristic, often indicative of a dictatorial-type rule that feels the need to proclaim its national fides. With Modi’s government not being without controversy, it made me shiver.

At the far end of the Ridge is the official centre of town, the delightfully named Scandal Point. Frustratingly, the source of its name remains a mystery, one common hypothesis being that it marks the scandal caused by the elopement in 1892 of the Maharaja of Patiala, Bhupinder Singh, with the daughter of the British Viceroy, but recent research suggests that this Maharaja would only have been a baby at the time. If the story relates to his father, who is known to have had an English wife, it’s impossible to confirm because all surrounding detail of that relationship has faded in the mists of time.

Below Scandal Point, the Mall peels away in both directions. Another pedestrianised street, it stretches for 7 km to the Viceregal Lodge, and provides an invaluable point-of-reference for tourists visiting the city. No doubt the prices in its shops are appropriately inflated. While I was happy to lose myself in the densely packed shelves of the Asia Book House on the Mall, I found myself far more at home on the level below, the Lower Bazaar, where “real Shimla” shops for its necessities and frivolities. Here I found fruit and vegetable sellers, specialised purveyors of everything from toiletries to balls of wool and motorbike tyres, and people who could fix anything. An elderly Sikh scissor-sharpener kindly agreed to my request to photograph him as his foot pumped away to turn the huge wheel of his trade. I’d forgotten how India can fix anything. Back on Lakkar Bazaar I later found an elderly lady fixing umbrellas. I meant to get her to sort out an errant spoke on my Poundland special, but by the time I got back there, the rains were falling and she’d packed up her open-air workshop.

Colonial architecture is everywhere around the central spine of the city, in varying degrees of repair and disrepair. The grandly-named Gorton Castle now houses the state accountant-general’s office, though macaque monkeys run amok in its grounds and one upper window still bears the sooty scars of the 2014 fire. Further back along the Mall, I’d found a gloriously Hitchcockian ruin, again now left to the monkeys, with no indication of what it had once been. The Viceregal Lodge, however, is in good shape. Officially renamed Rashtrapati Nivas at Independence, the old name continues to linger. Now home to the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, with the former ballroom and dining room converted into a library, it nevertheless retains the grandeur of the original in the fabulous Burmese teak staircase and panelling, and the gorgeous unpainted Kashmir walnut ceiling of one of the ground floor rooms. A few rooms have been set aside to exhibit photographs of the building’s past, primarily – of course – focussed on the Independence conferences which took place within its walls.

Renovation work is ongoing elsewhere in the city, with the Town Hall currently hidden under scaffolding and plastic. The Gaiety Theatre almost suffered the wrecking ball in the 1990s after lying unused and unloved for years, but it was rescued at the last minute, and is now a pretty reincarnation of the intimate venue originally designed by Henry Irwin, the architect also responsible for the Viceregal Lodge. Upstairs photographs of the earliest productions adorn the walls, though I can’t admit to knowing too many of the plays featured. What, for example, was “The Merry Merchant of Venice”? While great names have trod these boards in the past – notably Rudyard Kipling of whom it was said that acting was not his forte – it continues to host visiting theatre companies and local dramatic societies. I was only sorry that the next performance was the night after I left.

Dominating the mountainside above the city is 33 metre pink-orange statue of the monkey god, Hanuman, first unveiled in 2010 and standing ten feet taller, so I’m told, than Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer. Warnings abound about the audacity of Hanuman’s simian disciples who rule the forest around the Jakhu Temple. Walking sticks, with the added purpose of fending off the macaques, are available to hire for Rs10 but I decided to stand my ground, keeping careful grip of my possessions. The walk up through the forest brought back memories of walking up to the Nikko Tōshōgō Shrine north of Tokyo in April last year. The same heavy mists and eerie atmosphere. But fewer people here, higher temperatures and potentially challenging wildlife. For the most part, the monkeys seemed to behave, though it paid to keep a wary eye out. I was reminded of the adage about sharks: it’s the one you don’t see that gets you. And, sadly, that proved all too true for one man while I was there. A covered walkway takes you from the temple bell up to the main temple grounds, and provides the monkeys with an excellent vantage point for spotting those tourists who peep outside the protection of the roof to take up-the-nose photographs of the statue or scenic snapshots of the distant city peeping through the trees. Sure enough, a Russian stopped to watch his friends trying for the arty shot, and found himself suddenly under attack from a large male macaque. I yelped out a warning, but too late. The monkey had reached up and grabbed the man’s glasses from the top of his cap, and bounded back onto the roof before his victim had time to draw breath. There he sat, the thief, on the ridgeline of the roof, sucking thoughtfully on one end of the spectacles, for all the world like an absent-minded professor. The Russian looked to be in shock. Apart from the inconvenience of losing what were no doubt prescription glasses, being attacked by a large monkey must have been more than a little intimidating.

Such was the first stop on this trip, a combination of history and monkeys, interspersed with rain and great food. I felt elated to be back on the road after several years of largely UK-based and necessary distractions, and to be back on the road on my own. While I’m fond of my erstwhile travelling companions, this is how I really love to travel. Next stop, McLeod Ganj, if transport the next day played ball…

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Photos

well, some of them can be quite cute...
rhesus macaque

a typically understated bit of British colonial architecture
the Viceregal Lodge, Shimla

Shimla hillside
...and one of these (not the posh red-roofed one) is my hotel, but I failed to identify quite which it was

Comments

[Carolyn Russell]

Chufffffed !
That railway journey fair puts the Coatbridge Sunnyside to Glasgow Queen Street new 'blue trains' - circa 1965 - in the shade .... although........!!? Look after yourself and look forward to seeing you back in sunny (?) Perthshire 'ere long. XXOO ???