kiwifiddy: Shimla

After exploring Shimla for about 4-5 days we are planning on heading off further North tomorrow towards a little town call Kasol.

Apparently it is Israeli central, so Brock will fit in just fine there, maybe even work on his Hebrew! We will also have you know that we will be on the DELUXE bus.

Shimla, we have decided, is India's equivalent of Queenstown. We are up in the mountains here, 2200m (we blame the altitude for why we are huffing and puffing our way around Shimla). The climate is very similar to New Zealand here, we even had to put on a jacket for the first time here in India! Being up so high the clouds roll in in the afternoon and evenings. The mornings are beautiful and you can actually see the sun shine up here unlike the hazy heat of Dehli.

There are amazing views and plenty of tourists (Indian tourists), this is where wealthy Indians come to holiday. It is a great city all set on the mountainsides, with very strict rules about littering and smoking, making it a very clean and tidy place. The main street is lined with so many different stores, little book stores and stationers next door to Tommy Hilfiger, Puma, Wrangler, Dominos pizza, as we said it is where the wealthy come to holiday. A highlight for us was a visit to "Christ Church", a big church in the main center!

We managed to get on a bus tour of some of the surrounding areas of Shimla, seeing a palace and even a mini zoo with bears leopards (snow leopard) and wolves, very cool up close but a bit sad seeing them all caged up in a very simple, underfunded zoo.

We stopped at an old cafe where a school trip from a Shimla school was visiting. Being white foreigners we very nearly caused a frenzied riot among the teenagers! They came from all directions requesting photographs from us one at a time, all in a group, from afar, up close, we appeared to be the highlight of there day trip to the extend that when we stood up to leave they erupted into applause! Our celebrity status can be very overwhelming! We get a lot of pictures taken by request or sometimes on the sly!