After a few disgustingly sticky days in Delhi we fled for the old, colonial hill-station of Shimla. Being the romantic types that we are (lolz) we opted for the narrow-guage 7-hour diesel train up. A snip at 80Rs each, but it did take - oh just rougly - 8 hours compared with the 4 it would have been on the bus.
We did however make friends with every single person on our carriage - most of whom invited us to come and stay with them - and got told that we would produce “very beautiful children”. So all-in-all we considered it a win.
At the train station we were greeted by a wall of taxi touts and feeling like obstinate bastards we decided to stubbornly walk the 5kms up-hill into town with all of our bags. It was a stupid idea, and the touts followed us all the way there trying to take us to a different hostel. One of them had bird poo on his jumper, but he thought Dan was just “being a funny funny guy!” so it stayed there.
Shimla itself was a slightly drizzly town perched atop a huge hill overlooking an absolutely [insert superlative here] amazing view. There was not much to do except walk up a hill, fend off monkeys with big sticks and stuff ourselves silly with incredible Punjabi food. We hung out with some awesome people and felt cold for the first time in months. Well worth the visit.