Dial and Talk Foreign at Once by Frank Kusy

Author:Frank Kusy [Kusy, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grinning Bandit Books
Published: 2016-09-08T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Stressed out in Simla

Not surprisingly, we arrived in Simla early, at 5am. Too early to book a quick bus or train out again and too early, I was guessing, to even get some accommodation. But I needn’t have worried. ‘Porter!’ announced a young man who came up to me on Simla’s dark, silent Cart Lane. ‘Government porter!’ I studied the anonymous brass token he thrust in my face and gave him a nod. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Take me to hotel – cheap and best.’

His idea of ‘cheap and best’ was to lead me to three progressively grotty and expensive hotels – all of them up steep hills. ‘Too much hill,’ I grumbled at him. ‘One more bad hotel and I look for myself.’ My complaint was noted and porter boy promptly led me to the clean and affordable Hotel Ridgeview up on the Ridge, behind Christ Church. Here I was shown the best room I’d had in weeks (all the lights worked, it even had a waste paper bin) and I finally, after 24 hours, got some sleep.

I awoke five hours later, still fretting about Steve. Steve had seen my weakness. ‘You’re not very clued up, are you, man?’ he’d chided me back in Bombay when I complained of not being able to sell my duty free fags, booze, and electronics on at a profit. ‘This is Bombay, not Delhi. They already have all that stuff!’ And just as I had not researched Bombay in advance, I had not researched anywhere in India in advance. All I did was collect mountains of tourist literature, stuff it in my bag without reading any of it, and move on to the next place. Steve must have known that the stupid Manali-Simla bus cost 10 rupees more than last season, and had shown me an out-of-date Lonely Planet guide.

‘It’s gone noon,’ I grunted to myself. ‘Time to hit Simla and go in search of that little git. He can’t have gone far.’

But then I stepped out the hotel and my lack of research skills dealt me another blow. Simla was massive – finding Steve here would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Also, and this was an even bigger surprise, Simla was not a sleepy, semi-suburban, Victorian-type residential town at all, and not on the ‘flat’ as I had imagined. Instead, I found a second Darjeeling – the same hill-station built on a series of ridges, the same concentration of most government offices, banks and restaurants in just one street – the Mall – and the same arduous hikes up or down very long staircases to get anywhere. The only real difference I could see was the prevailing ‘Britishness’ of the place – not just the English red-roofed cottages, Georgian-style houses and palatial summer residences of the Raj, but the almost ‘seaside’ flavour of the Mall itself. Here, as I went in search of the tourist office, I encountered bracing air, civilised promenades, ice-cream counters, and bright souvenir shops. ‘Good Lord,’ I thought, mystified.

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