Chugging through the Queen of hills

Have you ridden a train lately? Not the local metros, the long-distance ones. No? Well,we recently, made a trip from Kalka to Shimla on the toy train – The Himalyan Queen.
The Kalka station was one of the prettiest we had ever seen. It was open and windswept, surrounded by fields, hills and water bodies. The weather was freezing and there was just a hint of fog swishing over the ground. We fortified ourselves with mugs of tea as we waited for the train. It was a heart-stopping moment when we first sighted the looming engine at a distance. The fat engine with the dark blue compartments, with a thick yellow line running through its belly, looking straight out of the pages of Enid Blyton’s Noddy series. The train started off with a jerk at the scheduled hour and started climbing the mountains. We tried to make ourselves comfortable on the stiff wooden seats. The seats in worn out blue leather were closely placed and had very little leg space. It was a tight fit and very soon our knees were knocking against our neighbours.
Our companions were two attractive men : a bird watching doctor and an army officer who happened to be an avid trekker. They narrated us tales of the great Indian hornbill and also about a planned trek to the Pindari glacier. We shared stories and we shared food. At every station, we jumped to buy hot samosas, fried chips and regional specialties.
The 96 km journey from Kalka to Shimla was exhilarating. The train covers the distance through 103 tunnels and 969 bridges, it has 919 curves, 20 railway stations and 5 level crossings en route. A correspondent of the Delhi Gazette had first sketched this railway line sometime in November 1847, and almost half a century later it was actually constructed. The work on the Kalka-Shimla route was completed on November 2, 1903, yet it was opened for the general public only on January 1, 1906. It is a living tribute to the engineers who dared to bore 107 tunnels, of which 103 are still in use.
Soon, the comfortable click-clacking of the wheels provided a sonorous baritone for conversation and a lulling staccato for sleep. The weather changed as the train chugged through sleepy villages. The wind trumpeted down the mountain side and brought with it the first needles of rain. Soon, the lingering pattern of rain enveloped everything in its soft quilt. Runnels of rain-water ran down the windows as we glimpsed outside. We loved the sights of empty, rain drenched lands and the lowered sky with barely a sight of man in between them. We spent pleasant moments observing as the train curved through the countryside, the vertiginous thud of wheels over a bridge, damsels washing clothes, buffaloes in rivers; and verdant paddy fields that were greener than any emerald. The mountain roads were narrow and hugged the sides of the hills. In the distance, we saw the wide set eyes of the bus sweeping the mountain face above us. We chugged past another huddle of houses and the track narrowed down alarmingly. We held our breath, as the the train traversed through the tracks like cotton through the eye of a needle. After that, we were again chugging through mountains, bridges and tunnels.
Finally, after a good 5 hours we reached our destination. What a journey!