We spent 22nd -25th Sept in Shimla at the Cedar Grand Hotel…..both for a bit of R&R after 6 months of travelling on the road…..often in very poor accommodation conditions…and moving on each day…….sometimes doing very, very long days on the bike, as well as time for me to recuperate from my ongoing tummy problems which have been getting progressively worse. I finally gave up letting “nature take its course” and went to see a local chemist and the antibiotics he gave me along with the medication Claire and Emiel shared with me (they too are having problems) seems to have done the trick. Vince is the only one with a cast iron stomach!

We spent the days exploring the village on foot and one day (23rd) Claire and I went and had our hair and nails done (my feet were beginning to resemble Shrek)……at an exorbitant cost of only 850 INR (A$17.50).

Whilst I was taking a photo of one of the many monkeys around Shimla (there is a Monkey Temple here), Vince thought it was funny to come up behind me and grab me…..scared me senseless and made me scream. This provided much amusement to ta local policeman who commended “Very Funny” with a sweeping grin…..Claire and Emiel also laughed. But Karma is alive and well in India…..and just a few minutes later, a monkey sitting on a railing lashed out aggressively at Vince and tried to grab him…..luckily it missed….although they all look healthy enough we did not want to have direct contact with any animals as a precaution against rabies etc. The actual Monkey Temple is called Jakhu/Jakhoo Temple and is dedicated to the Hindu god Hanuman. It is situated on Jakhoo Hill, 2.5 km /1.3 miles east from the Ridge in Shimla. It has a height of 2,455 m (8,000 feet) above sea level. It is the highest peak in Shimla and offers a panoramic view of the Shivalik Ranges and the town of Sanjauli. Every year the festival of Dushera is held there. Visitors can access the temple by either a steep climb on foot, on horseback or by taxi.

We are all quite fascinated by the mist that rolls in here on a regular basis…..our hotel has a terrific view over the town and mountain….but sometimes it is shrouded in nothing but white. We have had a couple of rainy days….but that allowed us to just relax in the hotel watching movies or reading books. We have been able to get some much needed washing done….always a challenge on the road as well.

We are on the look out for another point and shoot camera as my trusty workhorse ,,,,,Olympus TG-3….. has finally reached the unreliability point…….our research tells us it has now been superseded by the TG-4 and I would be happy to get that (if we can find it in India). Looking local, they are trying to convince me that the Nikon Coolpix AW130 is the way to go…..but although its mostly comparable (and cheaper), I have checked the specs and I like the faster shutter speed (1/2000 instead of 1/1600) on the Olympus (critical for my back of bike style of photos) as well as the wider stop (f2.0 instead of f2.8). Vince also says the new Olympus has Night Live Composite….our TG-3 is crap a night shots….but this improvement takes several shots and extracts the light to build up a brighter picture…..so he is pretty excited about that….he has seen this technology before and it’s impressive. So I think I will give the Nikon a miss and try to source another Olympus.

We will head to Chandigarh on Saturday 26th as we have the bike booked in for an oil change and possible rear brake pad replacement (we have the BMW parts with us that we bought in Austria) so plan to spend the night there….on the road again!

Having not got to bed until after midnight, and being woken up at 2.30am getting eaten alive by something in our bed (?bedbugs or fleas) with tiny bites all over my legs and arms…..the two Phenergan I had let me sleep in. Vince and I woke up at 12.25pm! I quickly dressed and went down to explain to our travelling companions, Claire and Emiel, who had been up and about for a while and already had breakfast. They said they planned to give us until 1.00pm and would then have come to check we were still alive!

It only took a few minutes for us to pack the bike and be on the road again. We paid the owner his 1200 INR for the room (with no shower/towels) and the 220 INR for dinner last night, he tried to encourage us to stay but our minds were made up from the moment we arrived last night. The loose plan now was to travel to Shimla itself, try to find a cafe with wifi, to have breakfast…..I was starving…..and check out alternative accommodation.

It was pouring with rain and the roads back up the hill were treacherous, the broken surface just mud slide in areas…..Vince had to use all his concentration to keep us upright…..but he got us to the top without incident. We made our way into Shimla dodging the local traffic, animals (mostly cows who have free rein here in India) and people. We were both soaked to the skin as we had sent our wet weather gear home from Austria. Shimla is a strange and colourful place that is set into the hillside…..you have to take two lifts to get up to the various streets, and one street in particular, Mall Road, where the eating places are. So the vehicles had to be parked at the bottom and we walked a short distance uphill to the lift station where we parted with our 10INR each for one way tickets up.

We found a nice cafe… but no wifi. We had a bit of a wait for a table as the cafe was very popular…..always a good sign….and had a lovely “Lunch”. Reluctantly we left the warmth of the cafe to return to pouring rain outdoors and made our way back down the lifts to the vehicles. With no way to search for accommodation, Vince and I were not keen to keep wandering the wet, narrow, busy roads in the rain so we decided to backtrack along the road we had just come to the Cedar Grand Hotel and Spa… which we had spotted on the way in. Although expensive (5250INR per night), it provided sanctuary on this otherwise miserable day and allowed us to get a good hot shower which was desperately needed. Claire and I had a massage at the day spa (3800INR for both of us) and it was just what the doctor ordered after the hellish place last night…..we felt somewhat human again. Whilst us girls had a much needed pamper the boys had showers and went to the bar….where we met them later. Dinner was in the hotel restaurant and an early night was in order for us all……it was like being in another world!

355km. 12 hours (inc stops. Approx 10 hours riding time).

The plan today was to ride from Amritsar to Chandigarh, pop into the Triumph dealership there and arrange an oil change for the bike, and then continue on to Shimla and the Hotel Chadwick View, where we have booked seven nights accommodation.

Google Maps suggested that it would take 4.5 hours to cover the 240km from Amritsar to Chandigarh, and an additional 3.5 hours to cover the 115km from Chandigarh to Shimla. As it was we were on the road for about 12 hours and it was a long, long day.

Claire and Emiel are travelling up to Shimla as well, so we all had breakfast at 08:00am at Mrs Bhandari’s Guest House, and were on the road about 09:00am. After negotiating the crazy traffic in Amritsar we picked up NH1 and started to make good progress towards Chandigarh. This national highway was three lanes wide (six in total) and we cruised along behind the Landcruiser, sitting on 100kmh, getting a little damp in the morning rain.

About midday we had a short break for a drink, and then it was back on the bike for the run down to Ludhiana where our GPS told us to leave the highway for Route 95. The traffic in Ludhaina started to get a bit manic, roadworks had ripped up the road, and my GPS chose this moment to have a fit – first repeating over and over the name of the road we needed to take, and then refusing to update the visual map. I pulled over so I could reboot the GPS, and after a quick chat with Emiel we pushed on, trading the relative calmness of the NH1 for a bit of bump and grind as we worked our way through the traffic and out onto the dual carriageway Route 95.

Chandigarh is a big city and it took us some time to make our way through it – one major road had a series of roundabouts on it and it quickly became obvious that the locals here either don’t know or don’t care about how to handle them, but we managed to steer through them unscathed and located the Triumph dealership I was looking for shortly afterwards.

Krishna Automobiles in Chandigarh is an umbrella company for BMW automobiles and Triumph motorcycles, and we parked in the BMW car park – with our motorcycle and the big Landcruiser immediately attracting attention from the staff in the showroom. Karen and I have become accustomed to the professionalism and courtesy extended by the various BMW dealerships we’ve visited during our travels, and Krishna Automobiles were no exception.

All four of us were looking pretty worn and ragged when we waltzed into the showroom, but we were quickly reclining on their comfy sofas, having a coffee and some biscuits as I explained my requirements to the Vice President – After Sales. We took a walk to the lower floor to see the Triumph mechanics as they assembled new Thunderbirds and 800XC’s straight out of the box and talked oils for a while, before heading upstairs again.

The four of us wandered across the road to the ‘Big Bazaar’ – a large, multi-storey shopping mall equivalent to what you would find in Joondalup – but even better as on the ground floor we passed a clothing store with a few Royal are fields in the window, a Harley Davidson showroom, and a beer hall selling 25 different kinds of beer. The Triumph showroom was just across the courtyard – Karen and I will have a look inside when we come back here next week.

We went upstairs to the food court and had our first KFC Zinger Burgers ™ in ages. The shopping mall was very busy, KFC even more so – full of young Indians eager for a taste of western culture.

We sauntered back to our vehicles, mounted up and headed off in the drizzle, passing a shanty town of tarpaulins and raggedly-dressed children just a short distance away from the ritzy shopping mall – a stark contrast if ever we’ve seen one.

It wasn’t long before we started up the Himalayan Highway – Route 22 towards Shimla. It was late in the afternoon when we left Chandigarh, and as soon as we started to climb up the foothills the going got much slower with the road shrinking to two lanes (total), and a lot of slow trucks ahead of us. The driving became quite frenetic along here in a dog-eat-dog style – if you weren’t prepared to risk your life and overtake the vehicle in front then you’d get eaten up by all the cars and buses and trucks coming from behind as they had no qualms about overtaking around blind bends and into oncoming traffic.

The wet and mud-slicked road surface didn’t help improve my disposition, and it was a battle of nerves to keep on pushing on, and the distance markers to Shimla ticked down painfully slowly. In Solan we pulled over to try and call the Hotel Chadwick View to tell them we were on our way – as the hotel had requested this – and to briefly chat with Emiel and Claire and see how they were going. It was almost dark at this stage and we still had about 46km to go – it was evident we were going to arrive quite late into Shimla.

The traffic lightened up a bit after Solan, but it just takes one erratic truck to ruin your day and I was constantly on tenterhooks, at times unable to see the edge of the road on my left through my rain-smeared visor, and being dazzled by the lights of oncoming vehicles. For most of the time I rode with my visor up, ingesting clouds of thick diesel smoke belched out by passing trucks.

Our hotel was a few km north of Shimla, and the road into it was broken and pot-holed. Emiel drove down the steep, twisting track first and I followed cautiously behind, tired from the long day and unable to fully sight the curve of the hairpin bends in the darkness as the lights of the bike just shone straight ahead. The track became even more broken up and it became a bit of a night-time off-road adventure ride in places.

I was relieved, and the others were as well I think, to finally arrive at the Hotel Chadwick View, but it wasn’t long before elation turned to gloom when we inspected our rooms and found out that the ‘deluxe rooms’ we’d reserved online lack basic things like showers. We managed to get upgraded to rooms that featured western toilets as the first rooms just had squat toilets, but even then the rooms were very primitive.

The hotel manager arrived in his zippy little car and he whizzed me back almost all the way back to Shimla so I could get some beer and water for the four of us as we all needed a drink, whilst his wife prepared some basic food for us. The drive back up the hill verged on the terrifying – Colin McCrae and his WRC driving buddies have nothing on an Indian in a hurry.

Emiel was asleep when I returned, struck down with the gut-rot he’d been battling with all day, so Claire came upstairs where Karen and I were, and we drank beer and chatted whilst we waited for dinner to be served and which arrived at 11:30pm.

We chatted a bit more after dinner and then it was time for bed, but not for sleep as first Karen got the heebie-jeebies from a big spider in our bedroom, so we shifted to another bed in another cubicle in our odd apartment, and there she got attacked by bed bugs or something, so it was after 02:30am before we finally settled down to sleep.

It had been a very long day, but I was pleased that we’d managed to get some things organised in Chandigarh for the bike. I would have preferred to have reached Shimla in daylight to have enjoyed the scenic view on the way and to have had a safer ride – this road features in the TV series “Ice Road Truckers – World’s Deadliest Roads – India” – and having ridden it in the wet and the dark I’m happy to tick the box and not do it again.

Tomorrow we’re going to relocate to another hotel – the Chadwick View isn’t turning out to be the relaxing locale we had anticipated, and none of us would survive a week here.

Up just after daybreak, Karen and I had a leisurely swim in the pool at Mrs Bhandari’s Guesthouse, and then it was time for breakfast with Claire & Emiel, all before 09:00am when our air conditioned van booked to take us on a sightseeing tour of Amritsar arrived.

We first stopped at Maharaja Ranjit Singh Panorama…..it was very interesting although a bit confusing at times. We saw exhibitions including the Golden Temple and the acquisition of the original Koh-I-Noor (1814). Fascinating to make the connections, even with Iran.

Next we were driven to Jallianwala Bagh memorial park – dedicated to the memory of the locals massacred by British troops in 1919. The massacre of hundreds of unarmed, defenceless Indians by British Brigadier General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer on 13th April 1919 at Jallinwala Bagh was a sad day. Under the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Dyer deployed his riflemen near the entrance without warning or order to disperse, they opened fire for 20minutes. 1650 rounds of ammunition was fired and 379 officially killed with 1200 wounded in a crowd of around 20,000. The park is very popular with locals, and it was a somber experience walking through it – seeing first a plaque denoting where the troops fired from, and a couple of hundred metres away a brick wall pock-marked with bullet holes. Nearby was ‘Martyrs Well’ – in an effort to avoid the gunfire many people jumped into this deep well, and after the carnage 120 bodies were retrieved from the well – all people who had drowned.

From here we travelled a short distance to the Silver Temple, Shri Durgiana Tirath – a copy of Amritsar’s Golden Temple. Placed strategically in the middle of the city, pilgrims flock to this temple not only from India but also from abroad. Over the years, it has become an epicenter of Hindu renaissance and rejuvenation. The complex is popularly known as “the Durgiana” and derives its name from the Goddess Durga. This connection with Goddess Durga has a socio cultural references as she is normally invoked for protection and health while the soldiers go to war. The sacred city of the Amritsar which was founded by the fourth Sikh Guru Ram Dass ji has come to assume a special significance in Hindu cosmology because of various mythical and historical connections. Amritsar is particularly nearer and dearer to Hindus as it is believed that the Lov-Kush along with their mother Mata Sita spent their early childhood in the ashram of Bhagwan Maharishi Balmiki ji in the land of Amritsar.

Not finished with temples, we then visited a Hindu Temple that was so outlandish that I would struggle to describe it, (Mandriva Mata Lal Devi). Perhaps if you imagined a cross between Adventure World and a temple you may come close – but even that isn’t close enough. We climbed up stairs through the multi-level temple arcade, climbing through narrow gaps that simulated the internals of an animal (I think ….) and then through the gaping mouth of a larger-than-life lion. For those of you familiar with sideshow alley at the Perth Royal Show, it was like a trip through the Ghost Train, with something new and exciting around every corner.

Lunch was enjoyed at a nice restaurant – my rogan josh was spicy and brought up a sweat, and it’s good we checked our change as that was quite short, and in the afternoon we went looking at the “Bazzar”….which turned out to be more of a shop to shop affair by our driver who may or may not have got a kickback. In any case we did end up finding a cool and tropical “Kurta” for Karen….inspired by Claire. Back at our guest house we had a swim and a few alcoholic drinks which haven’t had for the last 3 months….a relaxing finish to the afternoon.

Tomorrow we will move on again – this time to Shimla, for what should be a rest for a week or so. We’re all looking forwards to that !!!

0km.

Up at 07:30am, just in time to wish Martin safe travels before he headed off to Shimla, and after a pleasant breakfast of porridge and toast we went back to bed til midday as we were both bushed from our day yesterday, and the accumulated effect of travelling consistently over the past six months, moving on to a new location almost every day.

We met Claire and Emiel under the cool shade of the outdoor dining area, and sat around for the afternoon chatting and working on our computers. We’ve arranged to take a tour tomorrow around Amritsar so that will be cool.

Late in the afternoon we heard a ruckus outside, and the guesthouse staff opened the side gate to see what was happening. A parade was coming up the side street – led by a military band and then followed by a ute with massive speakers blaring out music, and then a crowd of people dancing in the street, followed by a horse drawn cart carrying the statue of a deity being worshipped. We were all taken into the group and had a dance with the people, much to their delight.

A short while before sunset we all caught a tuk-tuk out to the Golden Temple (Bhai Mati Das) Amritsar’s number 1 attraction. After donning headscarfs or bandanas, leaving our shoes at the counter, and washing our hands and feet we entered the temple complex and had a great time walking around the pool that surrounds the Temple. Soothing music was playing over the loudspeakers, and the place felt very serene and mellow.

Claire and Emiel had previously visited the Golden Temple yesterday along with Martin in the middle of the afternoon and had commented that it was very hot and very bright with the white marble reflecting the sunlight quite harshly, and the music was more frenetic during their visit, so they thoroughly enjoyed seeing the temple this evening.

After a slow wander around the temple we caught a tuk-tuk to the nearby Brother’s Restaurant, after reading good reviews in Lonely Planet and Trip Advisor. Our vegetarian meals didn’t disappoint, and for 1,000 INR (approx AU$20 total for four people, including drinks) it was great value.

Our tuk-tuk ride home stopped by at a bottle shop so that Karen could treat herself to a bottle of scotch, and for now we’re all relaxing in the cool garden.

Tomorrow we’ll go sightsee in Amritsar – including the site of the 1919 massacre that led to the downfall of the Raj. The following day we’re off to Shimla for some well-earned R&R