Yesterday we left McLeod Ganj and spent seven stomach-churning hours in the car travelling to Shimla. The driver actually had to leave the vehicle to throw up at one point. Nice. We arrived at about 6pm and discovered that most of Shimla is pedestrianised and is also on the world's steepest hill so we were unceremoniously thrown out of the car with the rucksacks to hike our way to civilisation. The Lonely Planet lists the hotel we wanted to stay in in the wrong place (have since checked online and it really is the LP's fault and not our poor map-reading), so we were marching around fruitlessly for hours, getting harrassed by touts and sweating all over the place.
Eventually we decided we were going to have to stay somewhere else so started asking each place we saw if they had a room. Nowhere had vacancies and everywhere was ridiculously expensive. We ended up in a hotel at the bottom of about four hundred steps where we found a mouse in our room. I kid you not. We then had to move room, I had to get them to change the bed three times ("no, I want CLEAN bedding, this is NOT CLEAN"), and we were woken up several times by the world's rowdiest neighbours.
Shimla is a bizarre place. It's a cross between a hill station, a run down English high street, and Benidorm. It has some beautiful buildings and views but feels really touristy, and not in a good way. It is absolutely packed with Indian people on holiday who like to spend their days promenading in the rain, eating candyfloss and bashing into each other. We were going to spend five days here but have decided to move on tomorrow to Chandigarh for the final week in India. In the meantime we will be watching lots of straight-to-TV films in our (hopefully) rodent-free room.
The films are quite heavily edited to remove any swearing or love scenes. Whoever is in charge of programming seems to think it is totally fine to play the world's most violent films at 9am, but that the nation would be corrupted by seeing people kissing. So weird, but what do you expect from a country where you are forbidden to smoke on the street but are allowed to have a bath on the main road?
Eventually we decided we were going to have to stay somewhere else so started asking each place we saw if they had a room. Nowhere had vacancies and everywhere was ridiculously expensive. We ended up in a hotel at the bottom of about four hundred steps where we found a mouse in our room. I kid you not. We then had to move room, I had to get them to change the bed three times ("no, I want CLEAN bedding, this is NOT CLEAN"), and we were woken up several times by the world's rowdiest neighbours.
Shimla is a bizarre place. It's a cross between a hill station, a run down English high street, and Benidorm. It has some beautiful buildings and views but feels really touristy, and not in a good way. It is absolutely packed with Indian people on holiday who like to spend their days promenading in the rain, eating candyfloss and bashing into each other. We were going to spend five days here but have decided to move on tomorrow to Chandigarh for the final week in India. In the meantime we will be watching lots of straight-to-TV films in our (hopefully) rodent-free room.
The films are quite heavily edited to remove any swearing or love scenes. Whoever is in charge of programming seems to think it is totally fine to play the world's most violent films at 9am, but that the nation would be corrupted by seeing people kissing. So weird, but what do you expect from a country where you are forbidden to smoke on the street but are allowed to have a bath on the main road?
Ah, Simla, playground of the Raj.
ReplyDeleteThey didn't have TV then of course, or rodent-free rooms - but they probably made up for it hunting tigers, out in Indiah! Not pc these days of course.
You are, I trust, familiar with the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band's song about this (Tigers, not Simla) [I'm sure you probably sing as you travel around]
It's based on a Raj-era original (but not a lot of people know that).
If your internet cafs can stand do youtube you'll find the Bonzo version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxgK9Hj6Mas
And the Raj era version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xfEuYTJ56c
J
x
I thought you liked mice! Think of them as very small vegetarian philips, it is just a matter of changing your view.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, we saw two tiny philips yesterday and their legs were so short their chests only just cleared the ground.
It was lovely talking to you. I enjoyed the background traffic noise - very atmospheric.
Jonathan - internet connection is terrible and there are lots of power cuts but I shall look forward to listening to the songs when we find a decent computer.
ReplyDeleteMum, you should have stolen the Philips for me.
xx