Surprise -surprise
Yesterday (8/3) evening I red “10 walks through Shimla”, provided by our host. Basically, there are 3 roads at 3 different altitudes, connected by a lot of foot paths and steps. At some points, ways let out of town, into nature or towards points of interests on a distance. Not much of an orientation challenge. We choose the Heritage path for us today.
Starting at our homestay, just across the street we went up to Viceregal Lodge, the main house for British ruler’s summer seat, build in the 1880’s. The guide of the lodge put attention – beside the photographs and information about several important political conferences – at two special designs: a Kashmir sealing in the dining hall and a advanced fire fighting system in the roof. Because of the wooden construction they were such afraid of a fire that they builded water tanks at the roof combined with a system of wax-sealed sprinklers, nitrogen gas and glas which would set itself off in case of a fire.
Nowadays, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study is located in the lodge.
From there, we walked along the Yarrows, Oberoi, Sanatorium, Knockdrin, Vidhan Sabha and Gorton. All buildings from the British period. Before the British decided to choose Shimla as summer residence, Shimla was just a handfull houses. Near Kali Bari Temple we choose the path to the middle and the lower bazar. Here we’ve got surprised. Really! With rain and sun and snow and hail and finally a thunderstorm. The whole program within half an hour. But we came prepared. In the first place our host provided us with umbrellas to keep monkeys at a distance. But in the bazar, they came in much as handy.
Working our way up to the Mall again, we started to look for a place to have an drink and a bite. We ended up in Shimla’s Time. Quit a fancy place, serving all you can wish for. Also with an amazing view over town.
For our way back we decided to take the easy, actually the lazy, way: with the lift down to the Cart Road (the middle once of the three) and from there taking a taxi back to our place. We hardly closed the doors of the cab of it started raining, again. Made the right choice!
Back at the homestay it was time for a hot shower. But we had to find out the hard way that we unintentionally had switched off the boiler, thus had to wait for an other half hour. At 7:30pm another delicious home-cooked dinner was ready for us. Asking our host about a trip tomorrow for a hike in the woods ended in discussing (British) politics. Meanwhile, electricity went off twice. Internet is still off and the next thunderstorm is coming up the hills. Curious what it will be tomorrow.