Simla Shimla

We left you at the last blog with us having enjoyed McCleod Gang and about to head off to Shimla (or Simla, depending on you position in time. India is very obviously changing its towns names back to original names. Mumbai has been returned from Bombay, which was a British pronunciation of Mumbai. Shimla is how this former summer capital is now pronounced, but all the old Indians we met still called it Simla when speaking English. Clear?). On the map, positioned just before Shimla was apparently one of the highest golf courses in the world. Surely we should pop in and say hello.

So after an incredibly hard nine holes, where 4 balls and plenty of pride was lost, we returned to the clubhouse to be invited to tea with some of the clubs members. This was a real eye opener for us, because not only was it intriguing to hear a different side to the Indian story, but also a couple of the members had also completed the same journey as us back in 1966! Wow - now that is a real story, and it was lovely to hear how happy their reminiscences of their trip were. It was clearly a huge part of their lives, just as this trip has been for us. Of course, these guys did it without the internet, without GPSes, without mobile phones, and in many cases without maps. We take our hats off to you Dorothy and Joginder!

As well as these lovely people (whom we met again later in the week for more tea) Ollie was also asked to take part in the club competition that was running - "The Dr Y S Parmar Memorial Foundation" - but with Ollie's pride still being nursed from the round, we decided to move onwards to Shimla.

Having stayed the night at the golf course we left with both of us feeling decidedly unwell, but luckily the drive to Shimla was only an hour. Arriving at the quaint hill city of Shimla is like arriving in a strange surreal English village, transplanted to the jungle furred hills of India. The city, until the World War II, was the summer capital of all of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka - an incredibly large and diverse region, and all paperwork and civil servants would be transferred from the sweltering and oppressive heat of Dehli up to the relative cool of the hills. And damn it, they weren't wrong! We loved the climate nestled on the hill, and enjoyed our little strolls along the English style main street, passed the red post office and underneath the custard yellow church.

       

 

Chandigarh

From Shimla it was a short hop down to Chandigarh, India's most modern town, designed by Le Corbusier in the 1960's. For us though, it was a by product of this new town status that had drawn us here. Chadigarh holds one of India's biggest tourist attractions, Nek Chand's Rock Garden. This was originally a private monument/protest built out of all the rubbish and rubble that was created in the destruction of the old village houses to make way for Modern Chandigarh. Once it was found, it was obvious that something special had been created and the garden now has a special place in Chandigarh's heart, but also history.

           

We think this place rocked! Gettit? Sorry :) Anyhow ... we arrived just after opening time (tip number one for visiting Indian tourist sites) and almost had the whole huge park to ourselves. It really is a stunning landscape, created almost exclusively out of recycled materials - in fact the garden is now one of the biggest recycling projects in India - and the tour that you take reveals huge chasms from nowhere, along with waterfall that you'd only expect to see in nature. The whole tour took us about 2 hours, and was thoroughly good fun.

Delhi, Mumbai and Goa

After Chandigarh we found that Jenny was ill with morning sickness most of the time, and Ollie wasn't much better with Delhi belly, and so our stops became much more abbreviated and often only involved a tuk tuk journey around the town for Ollie and a lie down in an air conditioned room for Jenny. We did manage to celebrate Diwali in Hadiwar, a major religious town for Hindus - and so here we saw all the colourful saddhus congregated, ready to bathe in the Ganges (or ganga as they called it).

           

From Hadiwar it was our worst journey of the whole trip, with us arriving in Delhi after non stop five hour drive, with both of us having to sprint for the toilet of the first hotel we could find. (Un?)luckily for us it was a five star hotel and we just felt duty bound to stay there :)

After Jenny's first scan in Delhi, we then made it our mission to get to Goa as quickly as possible, so we could relax, and get Jenny back into good health. Delhi to Goa is a 4 day drive, with no let up, and so we just gritted our teeth and got on with it, passing through both Jaipur and Udapur with hardly a backward glance - although if we could go again Udapur certainly looked worth a second visit. We also missed out Agra and the Taj Mahal, which would have been a highlight for both of us on the trip, but at that point, Jenny was our priority.

On the way to Goa we stopped in Mumbai, a huge sprawling city, to get Jenny's 3 month tests completed. We didn't get to explore the city, which is a shame as we have read two books, Shamtaram and the Moor's Last Sigh, which are based there. But our impression was it was just another massive urban sprawl - although we did find the best steak of the trip there - all things have their compensations!

Goa

So, we are now in Goa, along with 3 other bikers who are also recuperating here (more of which later), 2 weeks through a one month stay, with both of us feeling much better now, and with a new plan hatched. We have a great beachfront apartment, where we spend the evenings watching the sun sink into the sea, and discuss our future - a future that now involves words like job, house, and babysitter. A big change for us, but one we are very happy with.

 

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