So far, for the most part, we’ve had a nice road trip. Most of the day before yesterday was spent fighting our way out of Delhi and the large cities north of it. The only long stop we made was at a lovely town in eastern Punjab, Chandigarh. Most of India, so far as I’ve observed, is quite poor, run down and dirty. Chandigarh has many large, well kept parks, and other signs of relative wealth, like not so much garbage, less abject poverty, mowed green traffic mediums, etc.. Anyway, we got out and walked in one of the parks for about an hour. It’s still lowland there, and hot, so I was for getting out of there. So we started making our way up into Hamachal Padesh. that was a slow go because it’s uphill and only two lanes. It got dark, which is really not a good time to drive, so we stopped at a roadside hotel. My room had a nice view out the window and a balcony view. In the morning we took a secondary road, which was way secondary, to Shimla. The good thing about that road was no trucks and few cars.
Anyway, we got here. You saw a couple of pictures on the last post. I’ve been walking around “The Mall” and doing this internet thing. Today my driver took me on a nice drive with nice views along the side of the mountain to a town called Naldehra. It’s basically at the top of that stretch of road. There’s a resort up there. We had already stopped to look at a couple of summer homes of rich royalty in the old days, and I was used to paying a little entrance fee to go in. This place wanted the equivalent of $8. I’m thinking this has got to be some kind of place! With communication between my driver and me spotty at best sometimes, I figured I’d see what it was about without trudging through our communication process. It turned out I had bought a horse ride. It was SO embarrassing. A guy walked the horse through hill and dale, with steep places and mud, while I rode. Oh well. I just let go of my ego as best as possible and enjoyed some really very pretty views. Up there is a gold course of all things. Hoo-boy, that’s a tough course. It’s all up and down, the fairways aren’t straight, and in places it’s about 20 yards wide.
After that we just got some lunch and he dropped me off at “The Mall”, where the internet places are, and I got help at a place recommended to me, and actually got that post with pictures done. But it wasn’t easy. The guy wanted to do it his way, which wasn’t working, and I had to let him try until he finally let me do it my way, the only way I know. Now I’m just wrapping it up for a couple of days while we go east to the Kinnaur and Sangla Valleys.
Talk to you in a couple of days.