Day 10

Today was mostly a travel day, but it was travel with sightseeing built in. We got up to catch a morning train north out of Delhi up to Kalka. Swati's father, who had arrived in Delhi the night before, met up with us on the train. We were riding second-class "reserved", which, in actuality, wasn't particularly reserved. We all got our seats since we got on at the first stop, but there was a point where the commuters completely packed the car, and would just squeeze their butt into any inch of space available on the seats. But I actually got some good sleep in the darkness created by the mass of bodies surrounding me.

Later on, the train cleared out more and we were able to move around and stretch, or sit in the open doorways and watch the world go by. I spoke a bit with a married couple from the area. Both teachers, they had a combined monthly income of 18,000 rupees, or about $400. Despite the fact that I was unmarried and childless (and had no particular goals for either), after some discussion the fellow determined that I was a good man, and predicted that I would have a wife and child the next time we met.

At Kalka, we switched over to the "toy train", a narrow-gauge railway that climbs to over 2000m. It was really slow (almost 6 hours for only a little over 100km), but the views were amazing as we circled around the rising hills. The nice thing about trains is the rocking motion, so there were points where our entire group was asleep. Tony wasn't feeling so hot, so he basically slept the entire day on the trains.

Arriving at Shimla as the sun was going down, it was considerably cooler than it had been in Delhi. Our hotel was almost like a Swiss mountain lodge, so completely different than anything we had seen so far. We had a dinner with our jackets on at the hotel (no central heat in this parts), and turned in for the night.