July 30, 2010

We had to wake up early on Friday to catch the 7:00am train. It was a four hour train ride. It was not that packed so luckily the guy who was going to sit next to me was moved to an open seat so I was able to stretch out. I wanted to sleep but instead I made flash cards and studied my Hindi. When the train reached Kalka, we got off and went on two busses (there were 14 of us). The bus ride was three hours to Shimla. We stopped about an hour after we left Kalka to eat lunch. We ate a hotel which was used by the British. The food was great, as usual, and we had a pretty view of the Himalayas. We rested at the hotel for about an hour because we were enjoying the coolness. After another two hours, which most of slept through, we reached Shimla. It is beautiful. The town has hundreds of shops, as well as hotels, temples, restaurants. Then of course you have the Himalayas. Which are gorgeous, especially when there is no fog. We took two elevators and after the two elevators we walked a good distance to our hotel, which was very far up so we had a great view of the shops below. After we got settled in it was about 5pm, we went in groups to look around. My group wanted to look at the shops and then we ate dinner. When we were eating it was pouring rain so we waited for the rain to die down. All night it rained heavily.