Our latest travels have brought us to Shimla in the western mid-hills of the Himalayas. Our journey here was quite an adventure in itself, as we took the narrow-gauge toy train up the hills. As its name suggests, this is a small train that rides along a thin track over dubiously constructed bridges and through pitch black tunnels. It also has horrible little toy seats not quite big enough for a fully grown adult human. We spent 6 hours on this train, but the Himalayan scenery made all the discomfort worth while.
Shimla is an odd little town to say the very least. Its quite different from anywhere else we have been so far. Other than the inhabitants and location, it shares more in common with a Victorian British dwelling than an Indian one. Littering and smoking in public can result in a £7 fine or imprisonment, there are numerous tailors specialising in tweed jackets and the majority of buildings have mock-Tudor timber frames. We even saw an Indian gentleman taking his Bulldog for a walk. As you can imagine, it was all rather surreal upon arrival. After further research however, I discovered that Shimla was used as a holiday resort for the colonial British back in the day. They tried to make the town appear as much like Britain as they could and done a pretty convincing job.
As well as the strange settings we have also witnessed other oddities during our stay. We have been approached by an Indian man who asked "Please can my wife have her photo taken with you?". We watched the filming of two scenes from a Bollywood blockbuster. In one of the scenes, an Indian man pushed a disabled beggar child off his crutches and with a level of acting ability seldom seen outside of junior school nativity plays, he then raised his hand to his head and pulled a facial expression which suggested he had a migraine brewing. I think he was aiming for guilt but got it all terribly wrong. We trekked up a hill to visit the monkey temple. 
The temple, as the name suggests, is inhabited by hundreds of wild monkeys. We had to hire a stick to ward them off when they got too close as they have been known to attack humans and steal their belongings*. And finally, we slept in a cloud. I'm not sure where the cut-off point between thick fog and cloud lies, but it was freezing cold all you could see out of the window was a white fluffiness (I think that's the term meteorologists use). This, in conjunction with the fact we are thousands of feet up a mountain, has led me to believe we were in a cloud. In all, Shimla is a fascinating place that I hope I get a chance to visit again.
*No monkeys were harmed in the making of this post.
