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Mall Road, Simla
At the start of the Mall Road in Simla in late December This belated journal is about
Simla, the capital city of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, nestled among lovely hills covered with firs and deodars.It is in nothern India, and heavy snowfall occurs in the months of February-March.
I went there for a week, in December 2003, in the Christmas week. Simla is abounding with crowds around this time (also in the months of April to June). I love hill-stations when they are at their coldest, and mistakenly thinking that there certainly would be snowfall around Christmas time in Simla, I had planned to go there at that time( anyway, I was not free to go to there in Feb ,being a student).
The Train Ride
First things being first, how I reached there . I took the famous hill-train from Kalka to Simla, and the ride was very enjoyable with deodars all through the route. The train had started late, so instead of reaching there at evening, I reached at night. And Simla was looking stupendous after sunset from the train, all the three hours after sunset it kept poking out of the bends and there was it, all dazzling with lights and the Christ Church beaming as a landmark from so far away.A tip - always sit on the right hand side of the train when going to Simla, and on the left if coming from Simla. For reaching to Kalka, one can take up a train from Delhi or Calcutta or Bombay, or take a flight from Delhi to nearby Chandigarh, and take a train from Chandigarh to Kalka, very short distance.
Charming Old World Simla
The main charm of Simla - the crowds. Simla is divided into tiers, that the city is built naturally at different levels. There is a whole human habitation and markets on an altitude, then there would be another at another altitude level, and so on. There are no gentle slopes between those levels., so those wanting to go to upper Simlas from lower Simlas have three options - take numerous stone stairways,taxing for a well-aged person , or take winding roads, or take steep short-cuts. And wait! there is another option,
the lift. I had never experienced a lift(i.e. an elevator for the Americans) anywhere out of a building. It was for the first time that I was experiencing a lift ride solely meant for taking people from lower Simla to upper Simla(it costs a meagre Rs.5 per person, i.e. one-tenths of an American dollar). It was exciting, and all the lifts have coal-stoves in them to keep the lift-operator warm, since he has to spend the entire day there( the lift stops operating after 8 pm).
The best option, what I decided upon after a day, was to stay in the upper Simla region, preferably on the
Mall Road itself, the main attraction of Simla. I had first stayed on the Circular Road in Lower Simla on reaching there, but finding that all the action was above me, I shifted hotels next day to the hotels on the Mall Road itself.Good,comfortable hotels on it cost around 15 dollars per 24 hours, with a dollar extra per day for a heater.
Luckily , I found a very nice hotel,with wooden rooms and with
even very cheerful , white bed-curtains ( bed-curtains are unheard of and unseen of in India). And the best point was, that that hotel was in the thick of the action, at the Scandal Point, that is where the Mall Road and the Ridge meet ( the Ridge is the uppermost level of the city of Simla, and a very quaint, beautiful, yellow Christ Church on top of the Ridge and crowning the city looks very beautiful). In Simla, what people do ??? Simply keep on roaming in the hustle and bustle of the Mall Road, beautifull decorated shops with some great shopping, popcorns popping all around you, people enjoying the warmth of the crowd in the cold ( it was 1 to 2 degress all throughout the day usually, just peaking to 5-6 degree C around noon), the magnificient buildings built in the heyday of the British Empire, and the benches all throughout. There are no vehicles allowed in all the upper Simla, so its totally a walking leisure. Since my hotel was itself on the Scandal point and my room was looking down upon the Mall Road (with me just on the second floor), whenever I freezed outside, all I had to do was to pop in my room and sense the atmosphere from there. The food's great all over Simla, but most of it is too spicy, even for me, an Indian.
A tier below the Mall Road is the
Lower Bazaar, where one can see the typical Indian market, with everything right from different women's dresses to suitcases and bags available there, and the shopkeepers always open to hard bargaining.( A foreigner should bargain even more, since the shopkeepers quote astronomical prices on seeing that the buyer is not an Indian - they think that they have all the moral rights to milk a foreigner, since they think that a foriegner must be very flush in money).One should walk and walk in Simla, for example to reach the Lower Bazaar, instead of taking a stairway , walk till the near the end of the Mall Road till a branch cuts off to the Lower Bazaar which is a single, long road(running parallel to Mall Road with a concave shape). Go on exploring it till at the end you will only be some distance away from the Mall Road's other end.
I stayed for five days at Simla, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I am not much of a trekking enthusiast, but there are places nearby for trekkers, I cannot tell how good they are or what are their merits. I loved the climate, the bustle of Mall, the wooden feeling of my hotel room and the cheerful look prevalent in it and out of it, the shopping( especially great sweaters for children at a big shop called Dewanchand Atmaram's), and most of all the crowds ( the large number of honeymooners sometimes give you quite a moment of humor too, pitilessly at their expense - many of them come up there simply as they are fulfulling a ritual and even look quite happy about that !).
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