KASAULI-SHIMLA-DEHRADUN. November 8th-10th

Leaving Kasauli. Saturday morning I drift down to the bus stand after a hearty breakfast, and soon track down the 'Kasauli Queen'. At Dharampur the bus to Shimla is waiting for us, and a couple of hours later I get dropped off at the same spot as when I first arrived in Shimla. The obligatory hotel tout attaches himself to me, but I maintain a monastic silence all the way through the Victory Tunnel and up the long steps to The Mall, and by the time I reach the Hotel Classic he has vanished.

I tend to use Lonely Planet a lot for planning my strategy for accommodation at the next stop, and for working out what things I want to see there, but don't bother much with their 'Eating' suggestions, as there are usually always acceptable places near to where you are staying. Shimla has been a bit disappointing in this regard, so I study the LP, and make a list of 4 possibly-okay places.The first of these is the 'Ashiana' on The Ridge, which I try for a late lunch, and find to be excellent : large circular restaurant with picture windows, sink-in-able chairs, efficient waiters, and scrumptious food. In order to build up an appetite for dinner I walk a few kms to The Glen, a forested area supposedly reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands, and to Annandale, former site of a very famous racecourse. This gives me an excuse for a return foray to the Ashiana for dinner and another of its mood-lifting meals.

The hotel tells me that the first bus to Dehradun (apart from the 5 am one), is 9.30. After cutting it a bit fine the day I left from McLeod, I decide now to take off early, and arrive at the bus station around 8.30. Consequently I get bundled onto an earlier bus to Pranta, from where you can get another bus to Dehradun. In retrospect this move was a mistake, because the bus stops for anybody who waves it down, plus it stops at Solon for half an hour, for no good reason as far as I could see, and so the trip takes a lot longer. I realise too, that the previous day, if I'd left Kasauli early, I could have got off at Solon (between Dharampur and Shimla), and got a Dehradun bus from there, and therefore gained a day. Only problem is, then I would have missed out on the two life-saving meals at the Ashiana cafe - (if you do 'A' then you can't do 'B'). After a twenty minute wait at Pranta, a Dehradun bus turns up, apparently full already. I manage to get on, mainly because several people in front of me in the queue jump out again once they see how full it is. The consequence is that I'm sitting on my backpack about a third of the waydown the aisle, with the conductor having to practically leap over me. Later some people get off and I move towards the back of the aisle, and some people give me an edge of their 3-person seat. This puts me into a good position to snag a seat when someone behind me gets off, but some people end up standing all the way.

The Clement Road bus station where the bus terminates is 5 km out of town, and so I get a tuk-tuk into the centre, with Cheech and Chong. Chong, I suspect, was only driving for the second time in his life. Neither of them had a clue where the Milan Palace, (my hotel), was. It didn't help either that Lonely Planet said it was in Gandhi Road, whereas it is actually (I later found out), in Hardiwar Road. I end up abusing them and setting out to find it on foot, along a street that not only doesn't have any pavement, and a non-stop stream of traffic, but also people on motor bikes and scooters are driving against the traffic, at the edge of the road where you have to walk.

Nobody has heard of the Milan Palace Hotel, so I decide to try navigating scientifically, and working out from LP that the hotel is near the railway staion, I ask for directions to there. Then I start asking at all the hotels, and finally, outside the enormously-signed Grand Hotel, a guy (hotel-tout) points up, and in miniscule lettering, next to the Grand Hotel, and 5 metres to the left of it, is the Milan Palace. I'd only gone past it three times already. (The 'Palace' part ends with the name of the hotel). I ask for a room at the back, where nevertheless the decibel-rating is quite high from the nearby traffic, and just when I think it couldn't get any louder, some sort of religous procession, with an enormous band, starts up outside as well. I beat a hasty retreat to the dining room of the nearby Hotel Meedo, where, despite the Mafia-like waiters, I get a passable and quite enjoyable dinner. Back at the hotel everything goes quiet at about 11 pm, and I sleep like a log all night.

Next morning, (Monday), before I take off for Mussoorie, I go to the railway station to see if I can get a ticket to Calcutta for Thursday. No 2AC, no 3AC, and no dreaded 'Sleeper' class, not till Thursday week. How am I supposed to get there - by local bus? Aha, but, (for an extra 300 rupees), we have emergency seating (for foreigners), so I end up getting a 3AC ticket for Thursday night for 1490 rupees (about 42 dollars). 2AC is an air-conditioned carriage with 2-tierbunks, and 3AC is air-conditioned with 3-tier bunks, I now know.

Also before leaving, I want to try and find out the location of an internment camp for German nationals from all over India, that was situated at Dehradun during WW1 and WW2. Its most famous son during WW2 was Heinrich Harrer, leader of the German mountaineering expedition to the Himalaya in 1939, until he and his team were interned on returning to India after the commencement of hostilities. He and a friend later escaped back over the Himalaya to Tibet, a journey he described in his book 'Seven Years in Tibet'. (He was the one in the movie that looked like Brad Pitt). Anyway, my Irish grandfather, who had already served about 45 years in India, was put in charge of that camp for the duration of WW1. My mother still lived at home then, until she got married in the second year of the War, and I can remember her talking about life in Dehradun at that time. Then it was apparently just a whistle-stop, not the teeming metropolis that it is today.

In pursuit of this quest, I had already made an abortive attempt at the railway station earlier. Nobody was manning the Tourist Information Counter, so I asked at the 'Enquiry' counter next door. 'Go to the Tourist Information Counter'. 'But there's nobody there'. 'Yes there is'. 'No. there isn't'. 'Well wait there till somebody comes'. Sometimes I feel like a character in a Kafka novel. So, as I still had a couple of hours till check out time at the Hotel, I battle my way to the main Tourist Information Office halfway down Gandhi Road, where the delightful Mrs Mhistri, who can't herself help me, directs me to Mr Joshri at the Local Intelligence Unit, across the road ('Who can'). I'm beginning to wonder if I'm walking into some sort of subcontinental KGB trap, but the Unit is a sort of registration place for foreigners working in the Dehradun area, (including Tibetans). However, I draw a blank, as the busy and obviously overworked Mr Joshtri knows nothing about it.

After a leisurely and enjoyable late breakfast at the Hotel Meedo, (much, I imagine, to the chagrin of the Mafia waiters, whose TV viewing I interrupt), I wander over to the Mussoorie bus stand, conveniently located next to the railway station. Every bus I've been on so far in India has looked as if it should have been retired years ago. The Mussoorie bus is so new that it still has the plastic coverings on the (light-blue!) seats. The trip takes about one and a half hours, over a mountain road with about roughly two thousand bends, and is uneventful except that a small child, sitting on the lap of the man in front of me, was sick ALL over him. The sight of this man's friends using about 2 boxes of tissues to clean him up, while the bus zoomed around 'x' number of hairpin bends, was not for the squeamish.