Farewell India

Our last few days in India were highlighted by more driving – this time up into the Himalayas.  Firstly to the British hill station Shimla, which is built onto the side of the mountain.

The drive up was absolutely terrifying – made our previous mountain drive in Vietnam look postively tame.  Apparently Indian drivers don’t make allowances for one lane mountain roads with no barriers (ie a sheer drop 100’s of feet over the side) and still drive just as fast and crazily as they do in Delhi.  They overtake on blind bends, drive around the crashed trucks (we saw a few) and generally drive like maniacs. 

We prayed… and begged Singh to drive slowly and carefully.  I think he thought we were nuts and also was very concerned we would never get there because we were making him drive so slowly and asking him not to overtake.

Paul was so shocked by the trip up that he immediately went to the travel agent to find out if there was another way down other than driving!

Shimla is very pretty and extremely touristy, so we had a nice strolling around the shops before facing the drive down.

The hotel we had been allocated was on the 3rd level of the mountain.  There is no parking so we had to walk up the mountain from the car.  It was  not fun!  We quickly christened the hotel Fawlty Towers.  The TV didn’t work, the toilet didn’t flush and the shower was either boiling or freezing but nothing in between.  They had the guy behind the reception desk who smiled so hard his teeth could be used as a flashlight and another guy who did everything else – he met us at the car; took us to our room; fixed the TV and the toilet and brought the breakfast – he was the Indian Manuel!!

We had a little balcony off the room which we quickly hung our washing out on and left the door open to get the beautiful clean mountain breeze (it was a refreshing 25C).  This turned out to be a mistake! 

The kids were laughing and pointing out the door at the monkeys running up and down the balconies on neighbouring rooms.  We could hear our Indian neighbours having a fit about their washing that the monkey was sitting on.  He was quite small so we didn’t think anything of it – but then a much bigger monkey jumped seemingly out of nowhere and looked straight into our room.  I looked at the Iphone sitting on the bed and had visions of it being up in the highest tree and quickly grabbed it, while the kids all bunched behind me.  He looked straight at me and must’ve decided we didn’t have anything he wanted and off he went to terrorise the neighbours, who by this time were screaming.

I nipped out onto the balcony to grab the shirt that was still hanging there and close the door so they couldn’t come back in.  As I grabbed the shirt, he turned and then lunged straight for me and the open door.  I ran backwards, fell over the bed and landed on my butt on the floor, with the kids screaming, the lady next door screaming and the monkey sitting on a chair in our room!  Manuel arrived with a big stick in time to see the monkey high tailing it up a drain pipe.  It all happened in seconds and I guess was scary at the time but immediately afterwards we all burst out laughing.

The next day we left for Rishikesh, which is also in the Himalayas but straddles the Ganges.  The road was equally scary but also in terrible condition and it took about 10 hours to travel about 200 kms. 

Luckily it was worthwhile – the town was just beautiful and we crossed a pedestrian suspension bridge (complete with cows) to the main street. 

Being on the Ganges, it is a very spiritual place and there are many sadus (men who have devoted their lives to Hinduism) and yogis and yoga centres.  You can meditate to your heart’s content here for a specified price. 

We found a fantastic cafe (Little Buddha Cafe) overlooking the river and had an extremely cheap ($10 including drinks) dinner while we watched sunset.  It really was the perfect end to our Indian tour.