Last week me, Gaurang and Kunal went for a trip to Shimla with Kunal’s Mausa (Mom’s sister’s husband). We had planned on leaving by 6 – 6:30 am on Thursday so I left from Noida at 5:20 am and drove to Gurgoan in my trusty on Maruti 800. (For those of you who don’t know, this car is about 25 years old with no AC). Got there in about an hour and we left from there at 6:35 am.
The road out of Delhi was thankfully not very crowded and even though we all were not really sure where to go but rather had a general idea of the route we made good time and made it past Karnal in about 3 hours. We stopped at a dhabba (Roadside Restaurant) a few miles past that and had breakfast. This set the trend for the rest of the trip which was more of a ‘Foods of India’ than a road trip. By this I mean that we ate and ate ate throughout the trip.
The trip to Shimla took us 10 hours because of the Traffic after Chandigarh and the curvy roads near Shimla so we finally reached there at 4:30 pm. After we got there we rested for a while at Mausa’s place (They stay in Shimla) and then drove back to main Shimla (They stay in New Shimla) and spent a couple of hours walking around on Mall Road. Most of the shops there closed up at 9pm so we were back home by 10 and were off to bed by 11pm.
The next day we got up by 7 and lazed around for a while, then came down for a huge breakfast. After which we relaxed till Mahak (Mausa’s Daughter) came back from School and then went back to Mall Road. Spent pretty much the entire day there and enjoyed the view, food and crowds.
On Sat we decided to drive to Kufri with Mausi and Mahak. On the way there we changed our minds to go to the Hot water springs instead. However when we came to the junction where we had to turn for the springs we saw that the springs were 58 Kms from that point so we went to Kufri instead which was only 7 kms. There wasn’t a lot to see there except the view and horses. Oh, and we also saw a Himalayan Yak there near the parking area. Since there wasn’t a lot to see there we decided that we would make the trip to the hot water springs to check them out.
If you think hilly roads are painful, try traveling on them with three people who get motion sick; one of whom is a 5 year old girl. We were pretty much stopping about every 15 mins because someone or other felt like they were about to throw up. We made it half-way to the springs before we gave up and stopped at Naldhera instead. Spent about an hour over there drinking tea and relaxing in the sun before we drove back.
Once we got back to Shimla we went back to Mall Road again and spent the rest of the day relaxing/walking about over there (plus all the streets/area’s above and below the mall road)
Got back home and crashed, then left home on Sunday morning at 10:30 am after a huge breakfast and got back to Delhi in 8 1/2 hours. Had dinner and Gaurang’s place and crashed. Drove back to Noida on Monday at 6 am so as to avoid the traffic.
In all it was a great trip, very relaxing and very filling. Both Mausi and Mausa fed us like anything but I enjoyed a lot. Hope to do something like this again soon.
Edit (30th Aug 2009): The photos from the trip have been uploaded to Photogallery under Trips -> Shimla Trip (Aug 2009)
– Suramya
