A day of tale and a toy train too!

We took to the streets for our last day in Jaipur.  While much of this day would be a travel day we knew that we had some time for exploration!  Most of this was done through the old city (it's all pink and white!!!). On our way into the old city we stopped by Lasi walla (where walla translates to trader roughly, so Lasi trader!). This lasi stand had been in business since the 40's and was well known...in fact there were three other Lasi stands right next to it, some with the name Lasi walla even!  They serve their lasi in terra cotta cones...the locals, after finishing their lasi just throw their cone on the ground and smash it!  We decided to keep ours, though it mitt be smashed in the luggage already :p. While not mango, the lasi was very tasty and I haven't always been the biggest fan of the plain yogurt taste!
Any how...we walked with our lasi down through the old city.  Mostly we just passed through street after street of vendors peddling wares from fruit and other foods to clothes and jewelry.  Almost everything you can think of...besides electronics :p. The day was hot too!  While we would have liked the sun and blue sky when at amber fort...we got clouds...then the sun the next day in town with nothing that we needed sun for to take pictures of, figures!  The heat drove us to find some sort of cover, in the form of lunch!  Very nice.  After lunch we headed back to the hotel to gather our nags and head to the airport...much travel was about to begin.  
We had a flight to new delhi, from there we had to make it to the train station for a train bound for Kalka.  From there we hopped on a different train for Simla (also spelled shimla in places).  The flight went off with out a hitch, however we were less lucky with our train to Kalka.  This was an over night train that was supposed to arrive in kalka at 5am, and then we were to hop on the next train for Simla straight away from there.  Sadly our train was about 4 and a half hours late into Delhi!! Every so often there would be an announcement saying that our train was 2 then 3 then 4...up to 5 hours late!  We assumed that we would have no chance of making our connecting train to Simla, and maybe not even the next one out at noon the next day!  Wh
Ile this though wasn't a very nice one...it was getting late and even getting on our first train would feel great!  We could figure everything else out once we were in kalka!  Finally at 2am our train arrived and we were able to board...an hour later we were sound asleep.  Lucky for us our connecting train from kalka to Simla was more of a direct connection then we imagined, because most of the people on the second train must have been on our first train from delhi because the Simla train was held up by about 3 hours for us to show up!! Providence!!  This last part of our journey, which would take us almost 24 hours of travel was on a toy train...no not a small train for children, but a train that was smaller and ran on meter wide tracks!  It was a cute little thing, and it went back and fourth through the mountains, up switchbacks, through over 100 tunnels and quite a few bridges to boot!  The mountain air was cool and refreshing, and the view was amazing!  I've never been in a place that I could see pine trees and palm trees next to one another...also several types of cactus O.o!!  Amazing valleys and mountains...terraced lands...some growing corn? Never seen corn terraces in my life :p. Along the way there were also many villages built on steep mountainsides, much like Simla is.  After 5 hours we arrived at the train station...snagged a taxi and rode to the base of the hill that our hotel is on.  The taxi couldn't take us to the entrance, because the entrance was after a shit ton of stairs up!  There are no roads behind this place, so our only option is to climb, climb, climb!!  Ojce finally at the top we ran into an interesting problem with our room.  While we had reserved a room with 2 beds... Got a room with a double bed..."no, not one bed, two" we would tell the desk guy...and he would just repeat "yes, double" seems like we had a communication barrier...eventually we discovered that they only had rooms with one large bed...so we went about the long process of trying to get another room and figure out the price...after talking to his manager on the phone we ended up getting the second room for less than the first...kinda worked out.  But man is the view amazing from the room!!  This is one such example...

This is a HRD that my dad took out our hotel window...SWEET!

On our way to find some place to eat (I was starving too, with only one proper meal in the last day or so!) we walked along mall road, which most of it is nice shops and all closed off to the dangers of cats and motor bikes.  One of the first shops we recognized was cafe coffee day, oh joy! Would make a tasty desert.  We wondered around until our stomaches got the best of us and headed into a Indian/Chinese restaurant, ordered up a bunch of Chinese food and preceded to stuff our faces!  We sat on an outdoor area overlooking one part of the valley and mountains in the distance and enjoyed the rolling fog and clouds (our elevation is higher then government camp on mt hood, so really we were higher then many of the clouds) while we ate our dinner.  After leaving the beautiful scenery behind we purchased some snacks for our 10 hour bus ride tomorrow and headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep!!  A long day, but very nice over all, and Simla is a beautiful city with very nice people (no one bugged us to buy shit we didn't want or hassle us in any way) and also very clean!!  Now it's time for a long awaited sleep :).  More from manali!!  




Me hanging out the window of the toy train

     
this is a public urinal in Jaipur (super public if you ask me!)