An Indian Heritage Walk through the British Raj. Review on Shimla

Imagine arriving in a quaint little hillside town by a toy train where places resonate with British names like Annandale, Ellerslie, Gorton Castle, Gaiety Theatre, Wood Ville and Snowdon, and the mountain air is crisp and full of promise of a perfect holiday. The British would come away from the heat of the plains into this magical world, and for the same reason crowds swarm here from heated Chandigarh & Delhi making it one of the most popular hill stations in the country - Simla is saturated with holidaying crowds on weekends.

The Mall is Simla's preserved heritage no-vehicle zone, a 2.5 km stretch which has been designated as pedestrian area - a relaxed and prosperous thoroughfare, and with a peculiar Anglo-Indian flavour. It is as well, for Simla is best explored on foot. HTDC gives out brochures that suggest heritage walking circuits to uncover its past secrtes, and walks begin from The Ridge, The Mall, The Lakkar Bazaar / Lower Bazaars - which are the three places where the holiday makers gravitate for walking / talking, window shopping and shopping respectively.

Simla's claim to fame, its Mall Road and The Ridge fulfill most people's idea of vacation - while mamma poses in a pseudo-Kashmiri suit for a memento snap, the kids enjoy in a number of ways from horse and pony rides to video games and ice-creams, and everybody watches the soothing glorious beauty of the place. Shimla's focal point is The Ridgewith its crown, the Christ Church, which is a yellow Cotswold church that seems magically transported here from somewhere in Europe.

Thus it seems strange then that I, a Pune-ite, would fly 4,000 miles (to-and-fro) to seek a elusive "restful vacation" in this jostling holiday-makers and honeymooners paradise - to put this straight, I come here thanks to the colonial era or rather what's left of it. Nowhere in India does the British presence permeate so deep, and my involvement with Rudyard Kipling's writings who immortalized this place haunts me and draws me to this old queen of hills.

"The ambience of this place might have been created to slake the appetite of a young writer hungry for material," wrote Lord Birkenhead, and this was precisely how the Nobel Prize winning writer Rudyard Kipling imbibed Simla into much of his seventy plus books. Many of the places that Kipling described in his books still exist in today's Shimla- the Combermere bridge of the phantom rickshaw, Boileauganj, Mrs Hauksbee's Longwood Hotel, Annadale, The US Club, The Gaiety Theatre - all have frozen and thawed over many times since Kipling, but many stand almost intact.

The Scandal Corneris still a popular place where people come together for lively gossip - everybody is on a ramp walk or watching the population flow by - this British street with mock-Tudor houses seems to demand eloquent manners and still keeps you awed with young India dressing up to create a show matching upto conjure modern versions of the men in dinner-jackets, memsahibs in ball-gowns & million-pound necklaces and bejewelled Maharajahs. Even today the no-vehicle law has billionaires jostling for space among the evening crowds.

The Lower Bazaar still holds true to Kipling's amusing description - ''a rabbit-warren at an angle of forty-five.'' This maze-like bazaar descends the lower hillsides of Shimla and in his novel Kim, Kipling says "…a man who knows his way there can defy all the police of India's summer capital".

As I mingled with the crowds I made use of the passing opportunity to see how little some things have changed in the past half century - it can be interesting to shed your garb of a tourist and note that Ellerslie is now the Himachal Pradesh Secretariat, the grand Viceregal Lodge now housing the IIAS and can be visited at specific times, Gorton Castle is the office of the Accountant General, Wood Ville is now the Snowdon Hospital, and the Lover's Lane of Shimla is now simply the backyard of the great rolling pines from where a road passes the Raj Bhavan which was formerly Barnes Court.

Simla is not just a memory of moustachioed gents and swirling memsahibs oblivious to anything other than balls, tea parties, polo, races and gossip laced with scandals. There are places worth seeing and walking which include Jakhu Hill Hanuman temple, the highest point around, complete with its own bold monkeys gives a good view over Shimla. Watch out for the mischievous monkeys who snatch food packets right from your hands - and who are quite capable of snatching the glasses off your face! Visit the Vicelregal Lodge, the Museum for good miniature paintings and the Tara Devi temple if you have time.

For the palate, The Indian Coffee House on the Mall deserves a mention as it serves great coffee and south Indian snacks. On my recent visit I had found a really old-world place to stay two-minutes from the Christ Church on the Jakhu Temple Road called the Prospect Lodge- a dilapidated British holiday-home (sadly due to lack of funds) but still with the amazing charm of a fireplace, old British Board Games, an old-world library, kitchen for do-it-yourself meals (good for folks like me with babies who can do the milk-and-bottle jugglery between site-seeings!) and even a grand piano! It is a steal for Rs.100 a day, and I mention it here so that folks might spend their vacation here and thus they can get enough funds for it to stay standing, otherwise which it will be pulled down, which is rather a shame for this cosy place.

For the pleasure-seekers, Simla has a okayish roller skating rink- perhaps if you have watched the 70s and 80s Hindi movies of Shammi Kappor et al you may already be on familiar terms with this place! And if you are visiting in winter it is fairyland with snowflakes sweeping down through the fir-trees and bending their branches to the ground. If roller skating is not your cup of tea an invigorating walk through the crisp mountains with walks loaded with history make it up! Take packed lunches to Annadaleand The Glen, popular picnic spots, and simply walk through the rhododendron, deodar and pine forests where sunshine plays at your feet.

The journey to Simla is itself a beautiful experience - via a 'toy train'which passes through 103 tunnels and beautiful wooden stations. The train journey takes six hours and lifts your soul higher with every view - don't miss it for the world. Visit Shimla anytime during the year - each season brings a new aspect to this "Queen of the Hills". Nowhere else on earth has beauty, fun and history been so closely packed into so tiny a place - something like this always endures and endears you to life. As Shimla's grand historian Raja Bhasin puts it "Things are changing very, very rapidly. One by one the old British bungalows are being knocked down. In time nearly everything will go. In the end, India overcomes all the forces that invade it". Yet here is this beauty in all its charm, and like the honeymooners clasping hands on the Mall, this is the place where the British past walks hand-in-hand with a modern and vibrant India, while as the night falls the springs and brooks and monkeys here babble endlessly having seen it all...