Amritsar Trip - 9 March 2009 Day 2

The next day we set out in our car for sightseeing in Shimla. Sheila had her fingers crossed till we reached Khufri Mountain. But as we were approaching the place in our hearts we already knew that we are not going to see even a trace of snow in his hot weather. So after reaching there, I did not even get out of our car and proceeded to Mall Road after momentarily stopping at Shimla House. As school exams were still going on, there were not many tourists around. We loiter on mall road, lakkad bazaar, did some shopping, and ate our meal in a famous restaurant Opp. Church on mall road. It was not very cool but windy, so we were still wearing our sweaters. We returned to our car by 3pm. The car dropped us at the Shimla station as we were supposed to travel back by the legendary Toy train “Shivalik Express”. There is only a 1^st class in this train, and this is a Rajdhani Class train. As a result of the very high fare (Rs.238/-) as compared to other passenger trains (Rs.39/-), the train was relatively empty. There are in all 18 seats in each compartment. There is one attendant in each one, who served us food and water. Our car driver was instructed to go ahead and wait for us at Kalka station. As we left our luggage in the car itself, we were saved from lifting the heavy bags. This is a different train journey with 108 tunnels. We enjoyed the scenery till we can, before it became dark. This train journey take almost 4 and half hours and take you to Kalka at 10.pm. Our driver was waiting for us who reached here little after 6pm. in just two hours. From Kalka the car took us to Chandigarh at our guesthouse.