I had visited Shimla soon few years back but the memoris are still afresh. The month was February. We had our private vehicle as well our private stay arrangements therefore not much to comment there.
My journey began from New Delhi to Chandigarh where we stayed over night. Both these cities give you a refreshing experience if you go for a night drive towards end of the winter. Since the harshly cold season has mostly passed away by mid Feb this is particularly beautiful time to travel with a very pleasant climate.
Delhi - Chandigarh is a fairly good drive, enrout e there are elegant stop over restuarants of Haryana Tourism with a dense eculyptus plantation and waiters with the Raj type pagdi. Chandigarh is simply spacious and green and easily appears as a city very well groomed. You simply fall in love with Chandigarh.
Road to Shimla
Chandigarh to Shimla drive is one feast for the eyes and the senses following. As you ascend negotiating steeply rising curvy road you are rewarded with spectacular view of the terraced farms descending thousands of feet into the deep valleys below. The green florescence of the sprouting but very tiny crop is quite a soothing treat. As you rise Higher the terrain changes into tall pines with all their dark greeness. All your systems are now in a state of reset from whatever stress they may have gone through in your daily grind, especially as you breathe in the cool crispy mountain air.
En rout we stopped at Hotel Barog which has a good restaurant and the food is quite palatable and reasonable. Hotel Barog, very true to its phrase as "amongst the pines" occurred to us as a decent place.
*Entering Shimla
*As we entered Shimla The Pines became darker and suddenly you felt on the top of the world. However soon we were hit by dense urbanisation featuring woody buildings with sloping roof tops colored green or red. As we negotiated Shimla’s curvey roads over bits of hardened ice residual from the ending winter Shimla unfolded itself to us mostly looming tall above the road. The resemblence of Shimla to some old British Castles is quite evident with roads ever ascending towards a central peak, here, the Ridge.Vehicles are allowed only upto the foot of the ridge.
Shimla’s beauty, though, is marred by the garbage strewn down slopes of the bungalow properties. The Municipal Corporation could do well to earmark a budget for inculcating cleanliness and garbage disposal discipline and participation amongst citizens.
The Ridge is a great place to gaze at the dense pine forests carpeting the large mountains and peaks. From here you also tower over the town below. This is a very very tourist spot with photographers offering services, curio stalls etc. So you can get a few good pictures of yourself in some Dogra or Grahwal costumes and wear the famous squarish Himachal topi. The photographers are ready to take your pics for a tenner or so per pic with your camera, (costumes extra). Personally I think as a tourist, budget permitting we should provide roziroti as far as possible.
A night’s walk down the ridge to the vehicle hand-in-hand slurping the icecream in the cool breeze was a very romanticaly memorable experience for me & wife.
Next day we left for Kufri and on the wayside we were lucky to get some very soft snow patches on the slopes. We spent some kiddy times throwing snowballs at each other and trying to slip down the snow. at some place the feet would burry shin deep in snow.
Kufri is a fine place not very eventfull but very high up and we rode some unhappy Yaks.
Another great place near Shimla is Naldhera which is a very silent place with large expanses of medows and some dense Pines with very huge trunks, here you see a very huge trunked Pine which has featured in many a Hindi Movies.
Eating out at Shimla was a luke warm experience beacause altough the restuarant attempted to serve food hot in some victorian type silver plated brass containers, the temprature refused to let anyone get warm food. The food was niether too expensive nor inexpensive.
The return journey was more enthralling especially since on the descent you drive on the valley side.
On the way is a government run food processing Unit where you can buy the apple juice concentrates, mushroom pickles etc.I would recommend you go for them.
Shimla is a great place to go.