Monday 29th April - Delhi to Simla

I am now actually writing this on Tuesday, having got somewhat behind.  We had an alarm call at 4:30 to catch the 6am train.  Everything was on-time and we reached the station with 20 minutes to spare.  However Dev then informed us that there was no food on the train and that as it was over 5 hours to our destination we ought to get some before we go.  We therefore went over to a Wimpy’s kiosk which had one small serving hatch and about 6 people waiting to be served.  Dev could see that this was going to put us a little late so he made room for us at the front and we ordered 2 spicy chicken burgers and 2 cups of coffee.  We eventually got these and set off for platform 2, the furthest away.

We had a porter who put our 2 large, heavy suitcases on his head, and carried the other bag, and followed us the considerable distance to the train.  With little time to spare we got there, but found that our reserved seats were apart. There followed some discussion to get people to swap, without success. So we sat in our allotted seats.

The person next to me was wearing an ABS polo shirt, so I introduced my self and told him that I recently worked for Lloyd’s Register (ABS’s UK competitor).  He was an ABS ship surveyor and going on holiday to Simla from the South with his family.  We chatted for a short while until the train departed and it became apparent that some of the seats weren’t going to be taken so he swapped to sit with his family and Pop came and sat next to me.

Now back to my wet trousers! Some short way out of the station the train lurched, and the bag of 2 spicy chicken burgers fell over knocking, domino fashion, my cup of coffee into my lap.  I therefore had to sit most of the way to Simla in wet brown stained trousers!

As we went through the outskirts of Delhi, the poverty really became apparent.  Shanty towns around rubbish tips, with people picking over them for what may be useful or valuable. Open spaces were covered with people performing their morning functions - goodness only knows how they walked to and from their chosen spot. Stagnant dirty pools with rubbish, pipes and sometimes cows wallowing in it, were being used by people to wash in.

We stopped at one station and I saw a man coming down the track outside my window with a hose: “must be to damp down the dust” I suggested naively. On closer inspection - a very brief one - it appears that they don’t have a ‘do not use the toilet whilst in the station’ rule, and I think that very many trains had stopped stopped there.

A general note about India - people do not seem to think twice about dropping rubbish.  Even in quite remote areas there are avalanches of plastic and paper cascading down the mountain side.

The train carriage was air-conditioned (sadly for my damp trousers) and had rows of  plastic padded seats arranged aircraft style. The countryside we passed through was very flat and cultivated mainly with arable crops. The harvest has already taken place so it was difficult to tell what the crop had been.

There were no fruit trees or pasture, but there was the  occasional field of sugar cane. Towards the end of the journey we started to climb and eventually arrived in Kalka, the end of the line and where we had to transfer onto the Toy Train.

On the train from Delhi Dev was proven slightly wrong in that there was food on the train. At every station stop, several men got on with aluminium trays and walked up and down the carriages calling out what they had to sell: crisps, cake, biscuits, mineral water and ‘frruitee’, whatever that may be.  We bought a packet of orange custard creams to accompany our (now cold) spicy chicken burgers.

We waited on Kalka station for about 1/2 hr for the train to Simla to depart.  The Toy Train is well named, it is a narrow gauge, and consists of about 8 carriages each containing 30 people.

As we prepared to depart, about ten Indian army soldiers from the carriages at the front of the train, came back and crowded into ours which meant that all the seats were taken and it was pretty cramped. However an official with a clipboard (he turned out to be the train manager) came to our carriage and started remonstrating (vigorously) with them. The train started, he got it stopped, and eventually all the soldiers got out and went back to their own carriage.

The journey up to Simla was fantastic, we climbed up into the mountains and as we did we went through 103 tunnels. We stopped at several stations where we could get out and stretch our legs or get something to eat from one of the vendors at the very small stations. We got some bread pakora with spicy chutney served in newspaper. It was pretty good.

At Simla we were met, eventually, and taken to the hotel - well nearly. The Hotel (The Cecil) is on the Mall which is closed to traffic, so we were left at what looked like a garage and ushered into a small room with bars on the windows, and the door close behind us.  Not too keen on this we went outside even though our ‘hosts’ seemed to prefer that we stayed in the room.

Soon a hotel car arrived and we went up to the hotel.  The Cecil is an old hotel which has recently been renovated to a good standard.  That evening we ate in the hotel restaurant which was very quiet.  Sadly it was election day and no alcohol could be served, so we had a couple of G&Ts with my duty free gin.