High in the Kanga Valley

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AS usual please excuse all errors inspelling and grammar...thnaks.....B 😊

The India I expected is the India I read about in books. I think I have come 30 years too late.



We are sitting in Shimla in a hairdressers cum internet cafe. The people of Shimla must be part mountain goat because a flat street is almost impossible to find.
The romantic image I had of Shimla, the Hill Station from days past has been flung to the wind and what is left is an overgrown collection of houses that look like so many martin bird houses stuck on to the side of the mountain ... and not just one ridge but repeated ridges as far as one can see. In the night many lights are all around as we look out our window.

The Hotel White has a good view, is in a lousy location that may have been fresh 50 years ago but is now in a somewhat rundown area and is not easily accessible. It lies in an area where the only vehicle that can pass through is the ambulance. Also the toilet will not flush, the red carpet should be trashed, and there is no restaurant. The deluxe room costs Rs825. The Rs660 room was exactly the same except it was 3 floors down a very narrow staircase and had a view of a hovel dwelling. We saw the super deluxe room... again the same but with balcony.....Rs950
We have changed hotels for our last night in Shimla on Monday the 16th Jan. We have a discount at The Peterhoff which looks GREAT from outside but is on the same level as the Hotel White when you get inside the room .
OK maybe the towels are more near to white than grey but basically we looked at a few establishments and the thing that is different is the facade....the beds, the carpets, the toilets are more or less the same .... marble floor, toilet seat, sink, gyser for hot water, towel rack, faucet instead of a bidet, and the whole kit and kaboodle gets wet when you wash yourself. There is a drain for the shower water. Bring flip flops ...your feet will feel better...the marble is cold and I do not want to know whose street shoes were in that space last!.



After two lovely days in Mccloedganj, the hired car ...for Rs2400 ..... took us on a 200km journey that lasted from 09:00 till 16:30.
I recorded as best I could in the lurching vehicle the interesting, appealling, astonishing and ghastly things seen.

The elevation varied from 500m to 2000m and the ride went up and down and round s-curves and hairpin curves and one-lane roads clinging to the sides of the mountain or a human foot distance from the edge. Shimla lies at 2285m above sea level.

At times the side of the road fell down so steeply and deeply the bottom remained unseen.
I sat in the front with the driver and even after 200km I would not survive 1km of driving on this stretch. Andretti could not have done better than the driver we had. It is amazing we made it. We saw one vehicle similar to ours bashed and lying on the side mountain side of the road.

The journey from Mccloedganj to Shimla, Jan. 12, 2006

School begins at 10:00 and ends at 14:00. Many children in different coloured uniforms ....sweaters, leggings, long tunics and shawls for the girls, pants, sweaters and white shirts for the boys...... were seen going to school. The hair was slicked down, the girls had thick beautiful braids with big red or white ribbons and the smallest spit and polish child was accompanied by a mother or grandfather.

A trip to the post office was necessary to send the small packet that was sewn together by a man in a tiny shop. A sewing machine costs Rs1500 to buy, same as a new bicycle.(divide alll numbers by 39.9 to get $CAD. He also made colourful religious banners and wall hangings. For Rs20 he sewed together my things, put a wax seal on his handiwork, provided me with a magic marker and told me what return address to put on the packet. Its on its way now for Rs785 and should be in Canada in 11 days, according to the postmaster.

All along the 200km mountainous road water pumps are available for clean water. How long it remained clean since the installation is questionabl. During the journey I saw people taking baths on the platform above the pump, wash clothes and test leaking tires. Women carrying water from oilcan resevoirs were also observed.

Outside a temple hewn into the side of the mountain a holy man daubed fully in grey powder was walking along the road wearing only a flimsey cloth overhis lower body. He had rastafarian hair and orange markings on his face.

The cement pillars and sometimes small metal cans filled with dirt, about two feet high, along the side of the road designed to keep cars on the road soon became resting spots for hundreds of monkeys. PArents and babies, small and big, four legged and threee legged they made themselves obvious along the "highway'. The driver said that they come down from the mountain because it gets too cold up there.

The rice paddies were sometimes lying dormant with freshly ploughed grooves or they were just full of stubbles or they were growing winter wheat. And the teracces went right up the side of mountains. It was a pure joy to see but what came to mind was also that these are old terraces probably scratched into the side of the mountains by peoples greatgrandfathers.

Every now and again a rich farm became visible with the many well taken care of terraces around a colourfully plastered house. The houses are made of brick and then given a smooth finish with the application of plaster. Well to do people can afford to repaint their houses often. The poor houses stand in bared brick. But these are better than the tarp tents or corrugated metalrusted . In the highest most unlikely places someone erected a three walled corrugated metal structure and was selling something out of it.

Beds can be made out of wood or metal.The wood bed has a platform of slats and the metal frame has broad plastic webbing stung to make it taut. Beds are used for sleeping, for lounging in the sun with the children, for sitting upon to read the newspaper or for reclining near ones shop waitng for a customer, friend or a cup of tea.


Along the way for the first time in travelling on the road three big caterpillar shovels were seen clawing at the side of the mountain to increase the size of the roadbed. Most commonly one or two families can be seen digging with shovels and pick axes and then hauling away the loose dirt in burlap or plastic mesh bags. In one place the crushed rocks were being carried from one side of the road to the other by small chidren. At another a small boy was filling the mesh bag. In a third a baby,1 8 to 26 months, was playing on a rock heap while his mother worked nearby. In all road maintenance machines are non-exixtant. A rope tied to the bottom of a shovel handle allows two men to make easier work of moving a pile of sand, rock chips or earth.
At equal distances along hte stretch of road we were negiotiating piles of crushed rock were seen with a few men nearby. These men had a wheelbarroa and were going to use the pile to fill in the gap between 'pavement' and shoulder, about a two inches difference between the levels.
In one place as ahrd as it may be to be believed I saw three men with pick axe, shovel and wheelbarrow attacking the side of a huge mountain. And they were putting a dent into the surface of the rock that was facing the road.

Along the whole 200kkm. there was none to a lot less garbage. It was a lovely countryside.... a joy to drive through.

All gas stations are absolutley pristine!!! Everyone of them we have stopped at or past has been perfect .... not a blade out of place, no paper to mar the view and growing flowers in well kept beds.

In the curves men werepainting white lines to warn of the proximity of tghe wall of stone and in other places the road was being swept clean of tiny rubble with a grass broom.

On the highway coming towards us and us passing them, were many decorated goods carrier trucks and stuffed full of people busses. At one small village there were more than 200 trucks and busses stopped, waiting, getting repaired or forlornly left behind because parts of them were missing. The men in their repair shops were coverd from head to foot in axel grease. The whole strip village smelled of gas, diesel and motor oil.

The best kept and most beautifully appointed housing is for the military. Even the cabins for th enlisted men are surrounded by lawn and kept in order.

The bridges we crossed spanned river beds that were almost dry. Wagons with horses pulling them were used to collect the rocks in the river bed. These rocks were taken to the rock crusher which stands on the sid eof the road. This was the second rock crusher I have seen. Not as fancy as the one used outside of Parry Sound but a very very very basic operation...rock in one end crushed stuff out the other!

Marble is for sale in big slabs from collections on the side of the road.

Bambooo and sugar cane grows even at 1000 meters.

A tarp town sits near the road work. By the looks of it only the poorest families do this gruelling work. I have yet to find out how much they get paid.

The slate rooves on the houses are a lovely pattern of deep tgrey to black. Advertising murals are drwan on the side of the houses for cars, coleges, and computer classes.

Four recycled bike wheels are used to make a cart that can transport goodsor serve as a platform for selling vegetables, fruit, nuts, or old clothes. The carts can be drawn by a donkey, horse, buffallo or pulled by man.

Outside the Hotel Hamir, where we made a rest stop, a rubber tree (that which in Canada grows in the house) was growing to the hight of a two story building.

We saw sheeets drying in the sun outside the big hospital in Hamirpur.


Too many sights... too little time..... to hard to read my scribbled notes.....

We arrived safely and were let out near the lift. It took two elevators to get up to the point where we could proceed to the hotel. Of course a porter was at the ready. I held out. Wendy let the man carry her bag. Half way up I admitted defeat and the man strapped the rolling suitcase and my backpack together with a rope and carried the two up up and away. We paid him Rs50 for bringing us tothe hotel.


Today we saw men with two huge propane gas tanks....twice asbig as the ones you get filled at HomeHardware ....... toiling up the steep walkways of this town. We also walked high up to go to the museum only to find that it cost Rs50 and there was no electricity.

Saturday we drive to Sarahan .... another hair raising journry through the mountains on very skinny roads. I had enough adrenalin flowing throough my veins yesterday to last me at least a year!!

This is the great part of the trip ... seeing more wonders than can be registered, encountering things never before imagined and never to be forgotten.

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