Kalka to Shimla

The British had left India more than a decade ago and had passed on the heritage of Shimla, their summer capital. Some of the boarding schools were in Shimla, and, with the coming of the cold weather, they closed for the winter break, a fortnight before Christmas. A whole toy train was booked by the school that I went to, to carry a load of apple cheeked children down to Kalka, the railhead in the foothills, from where school parties would take them to bigger cities of Delhi and Bombay and so on.

The railway line stretched like two silver threads curving in and out of the green hills. When it began to climb upwards from Kalka, the altitude was about 2100 feet and, at the end of the railway journey, it was 6800 feet at the station. The most exciting part were the 107 tunnels, some long and some short as the toy train wound its way through the Shimla hills, known as the Shivaliks.

There was a palpable air of excitement as the day of departure grew near. Boxes were packed neatly, printed with names and addresses. Holdalls, those tightly rolled pieces of luggage used for bedding, were all lined up for the coolies to carry to the station. A few days earlier, all the girls had placed orders for packets of sandwiches to be carried for lunch; for a change you could ask for ham and chicken instead of the usual tomato and cheese. And eaten on the train the packed lunch had an ambrosial quality especially when washed down by a coco cola, available at some of the bigger stations.

We reached the station well ahead of time to bag good seats. The compartments were tiny with sitting space for six or eight. A sense of fun prevailed as the green signal was given for the train to move. A cheer went up as the long-awaited holidays had begun and all the station staff and coolies caught the cheery feeling and gave a rousing send-off. The smell of the train was typical of a coal-fed engine, sort of steamy with undertones of coal. Sometimes when the wind blew backwards it brought in billows of smoke and the odd tiny bit of coal lodged in someone’s eyes then there were concerned cluckings from the nuns who scolded the children for putting their heads out. They always kept eyedrops and sterile lint for little disasters. When the train chugged through a tunnel, we hurried to put the windows up as the choking smoke would enter the little compartment.

There were so many curves on the line that sometimes one could see the front part of the train curving around while the back part was still at the far end of the curve. The engine was painted in bright red and black and had a high flat-topped funnel and carried its coal in bulging bunkers. The little carriages were painted the standard brick-red of the railways. Now the train is a diesel one and has blue and cream carriages.

The journey begins around early breakfast time and arrival coincides with lunch at Shimla or vice versa whichever way you make the journey.

The views were magnificent as the eye ranged over hills, valleys, gorges, terraced fields, villages and temples perched in the folds of mountain. At the higher altitudes the slopes were covered with blue pine which gave way to the ordinary pine at lower heights. The Himalayan oak was interspersed with the pines and would look silvery when its leaves turned over in the breeze. In the late autumn the grasses would brown and there were yellow and orange corn cobs kept on the roofs to dry, in some villages there was the red of the chillies staining roof tops. In the monsoons the slopes and valleys were an unbelievable shade of emerald and the variety of ferns and wild flowers was best in this season. if one went by train in the summer there was the overpowering scent of wild roses in the air and one could get off and pick the canary yellow Himalayan gooseberries for they grew wild. In March when it was time to travel up in Shimla, there were apple, peach and plum trees frothing with blossom in the orchards. The fruit was sold by the villagers in baskets they had woven themselves.

The stations were neat, small and well kept with flower beds and geraniums in hanging baskets. At Barog, halfway between Kalka and Shimla, there were fluffy omelettes, the best in north Indian or those who were hungry. There was a heavy demand for these as the cool hill air did make one very ravenous. There are nineteen stations between Kalka and Shimla, the names are evocative and musical as the flash through the mind: Summerhill, Jutogh, Taradevi, Kathleeghat, Kanoh, Kandaghat, Barog, Kumarhatti, Dharampur, Sonwara, Jabli and Koti. We used to intone them in time to the puffing of the train.

The monkeys and langurs of the Shimla hills were to be seen everywhere, the langurs were handsome and shy and likened to Hanuman by the hill folk, but the monkeys would of ten make a grab for the odd sandwich packet and jump off the moving train to enjoy their free lunch. There were also colourful birds to see as the train chugged along, yellow-billed blue magpies with their tails streaming behind them, partridge, minivets, kaleej pheasant, forktails at streams and waterfalls and blossom of trees. this is a journey that is put away in my memory like a treasured jewel and is taken out now and again to look at.

INFORMATION

The train is now a diesel one but it is still a toy train. Shimla is connected by a broad gauge line up to Kalka. From Kalka to Shimla the toy train covers 96 km of track in six hours.