Sat, Oct 24: Shimla

We got to sleep in today and had a late, mid-morning start.  

We are staying at an older Oberoi hotel with great views of the valley and a grand atrium.

Shimla is a fascinating town built on the side of several fairly steep hills.  It was the summer capital of the British Raj because the temperatures were much cooler at this altitude.  Mary was quite taken with Shimla, and how the city looked with the buildings looking as though they were stacked on top of each other as they climbed up the side of the mountains.

Our first stop was the Viceregal Lodge, built in 1888 as home of the Viceroy of India.  

The building is now an institute for higher learning in the humanities and social sciences, Rashtrapati Niwas.  Fortunately a few of the rooms were open so we were able to see a bit of the interior.  The exterior is built in the Scots Baronial style out of grey limestone and was very impressive, as fitting for the Viceroy. 

The lodge was set on a high hill overlooking the valley and mountains beyond.

And there were the ubiquitous monkeys.

The next two stops, the Himachal State Museum and the Army Museum and polo field, were a bust…they were both closed due to a Muslim holiday.  

But there were some great views of some of the Shimla hillsides.

Our local guide was no longer on Tara’s good will list.  The closed sights were followed by a stop at a “lovely green area with views of the valley and hillside”.  The site appeared to be used a lot by locals who had no qualms about leaving their trash behind.  It was lovely and wooded but trashy and so wooded it was nearly impossible to see the views.  Tara was even less amused than before.

We then went to the Woodville Palace Hotel for lunch.  The hotel is the former summer residence of the Raja Rana of Jubbal, a pre-independence kingdom of the Shimla Hill States. It is a heritage property and is owned and managed privately by the decedents of the Jubbal Royal family.  Tara was checking it out as potential hotel for her future clients so we all got a tour of the facility, including the Royal Suite. 

The décor was 1930’s art deco plus many photos of the Royal Family and famous guests.  We had fun checking out the celebrities who had stayed there, including Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Fred Astaire, and Katherine Hepburn.  It was a very interesting tour but the place looked in need of a face lift and the mattresses looked rather uncomfortable.  We had lunch in the dining room there and the meal was particularly tasty.   

We then drove “downtown” and took a series of elevators up to The Mall.  This is a shopping street, built by the British, containing lots of English looking buildings 

and a Gaiety Theater, built in 1887 and recently restored.  It is still in use for theater productions.

We also stopped in to see the Christchurch church.

We did a bit of shopping, including looking at “authentic, 100% pashmina scarves”.  Unfortunately for the shopkeeper, Tara knows her pashmina and she was adamant that they weren’t 100% pashmina wool.  So no sale.  She was also very unhappy with the guide, who should have known.  Things were really going downhill for the guide, who announced shortly after that he was double booked for the next day and wouldn’t be able to be our guide.  We all spent time trying to decide if he was really double booked or just didn’t want to deal with Tara’s demands for excellence and care for her clients.  Either way, we’ll have another guide tomorrow.

We opted to head back to the hotel at the end of the day rather than staying downtown for dinner.  We had warnings from the hotel about keeping windows closed because of monkeys.  And we saw quite a few in the trees around the hotel.

We ate at the hotel restaurant and had a nice quite meal with a wonderful view overlooking the valley.