The Toy Train to Shimla: Arriving Slowly Through 102 Tunnels and 800 Bridges
The thing about the Kalka-Shimla toy train is that it's not trying to get you anywhere fast. It's trying to show you something.
At 6:10 AM on a Tuesday in November, I boarded the narrow-gauge train at Kalka station — a flat, dusty junction town at the foot of the Himalayas that exists primarily as a place to leave. I wouldn't arrive in Shimla until just after noon. Six hours for 96 kilometers. My phone could have driven me there in four.
But my phone wouldn't have taken me through 102 tunnels, over 800 bridges, past tea estates and deodar forests, or climbed from 640 meters to 2,076 meters in a series of switchbacks and loops that engineering textbooks use as examples of "creative problem-solving under impossible topographical constraints."
The train costs INR 300-700 depending on class. I booked the Rail Car — a glass-sided heritage coach that holds about 20 passengers and costs INR 700. Worth the premium for the panoramic windows.
The First Hour: Leaving the Plains
Kalka to Dharampur — the first stretch — is deceptive. The landscape is scrubby, semi-urban, not particularly beautiful. You think: this is what I'm spending six hours on?
Then the climbing starts. The train enters the first tunnel. Then the second. By the third, you realize the track is doing something you can feel in your body — it's corkscrewing upward through the mountain. The engine strains. The carriages sway.
A vendor walks through selling chai in clay cups. INR 15. The tea is milky, sweet, and tastes like every Indian train journey ever taken. I drink it watching pine trees begin to replace scrub brush outside the window.
The Middle Hours: The Engineering
The Kalka-Shimla Railway was completed in 1903 by the British, who needed a way to reach their summer capital without dying on horseback. The engineering is absurd. The track reverses direction at switchback stations — the train literally zigzags up the mountain. At Barog station (the longest tunnel at 1.1 km), the story goes that the original chief engineer, Colonel Barog, made a calculation error and the two ends of the tunnel failed to meet. He was fined one rupee and, according to legend, shot himself. (The tunnel was completed by a different engineer.)
The train passes through stations with names like Summer Hill, Tara Devi, and Solan — each one slightly higher, slightly cooler, slightly more forested than the last. At each stop, platform vendors sell samosas (INR 10-15), pakoras, and more chai. The train pauses for 2-5 minutes. Enough time to step out, stretch, buy something fried, and reboard.
The Final Approach
The last 30 minutes are why UNESCO gave this railway World Heritage status. The track runs along a ridge with valleys dropping away on both sides. Shimla appears gradually — first the radio tower, then the Christ Church steeple, then the dense hillside of colonial buildings clinging to the slope.
The train pulls into Shimla station at 2,076 meters. The air is immediately different — cooler, thinner, smelling of pine. After six hours in a gently swaying carriage, stepping onto the platform feels like waking from a very pleasant dream.
Shimla Itself
The town is immediately charming and immediately steep. Mall Road — the pedestrian-only main drag — connects The Ridge (the central viewpoint square) to Lakkar Bazaar. No vehicles allowed. Everyone walks, including the monkeys.
Christ Church (1857) sits at one end of The Ridge, its yellow facade and stained-glass windows looking transplanted from rural England. The Ridge itself is a wide open space with Himalayan views that make you understand why the British moved their entire government here every summer.
The Viceregal Lodge — where India's partition was decided in 1947 — is a 3 km walk from Mall Road. Guided tours INR 40-80, 45 minutes. The room where Nehru, Jinnah, and Mountbatten sat is preserved. You stand in it and feel the weight of history in a way that reading about it never delivers.
The Monkeys
I need to warn you about the monkeys. Shimla's rhesus macaques are bold, organized, and absolutely not afraid of you. Near Jakhoo Temple and The Ridge, they operate with the confidence of a street gang that knows the police won't intervene.
Don't carry visible food in plastic bags. Don't make eye contact. Don't bare your teeth (they interpret it as aggression). Keep sunglasses secure on your face, not perched on your head — they grab shiny objects. On the Jakhoo Temple hike (2 km up, 30 minutes), carry a stick. Not to hit them. Just to look less like a target.
The 33-meter Hanuman statue at Jakhoo's summit is visible from across the city. The panoramic views from the top are worth the monkey gauntlet.
The Food
Shimla's food scene is small-town but genuine. Baljees on Mall Road (since 1930) serves the best dal and rice I had in Himachal — mains INR 150-300. Their breakfast aloo puri is a morning institution.
Sita Ram & Sons does dham — the traditional Himachali thali — for INR 150. Rice, dal, rajma, curd, sweet. Simple and filling.
For evening snacks, Lakkar Bazaar has vendors selling roasted corn (INR 30) and Maggi noodles (INR 40-50). Yes, Maggi in the mountains is a cliche. Yes, it tastes better at 2,200 meters. I don't make the rules.
The Return
The classic Himachal circuit combines Shimla with Manali, the adventure capital.
I could have taken a car back to Chandigarh or Delhi. I took the toy train down instead. The descent reveals different views — the valleys you climbed past are now below you, the plains visible in the haze, the tunnels echo differently when you're going downhill.
Some experiences improve with slowness. The Kalka-Shimla Railway is one of them. In a country racing to build bullet trains and expressways, this 120-year-old narrow-gauge track does something radical: it insists you take your time.
