India: Day 39: Refreshing Day in Shimla

We spent half the day just relaxing in the cottage and the rest in the capital city of Shimla. The cottage is about 50 minutes drive from the city, much further than I thought, but I suppose that's the price to pay for getting away from it all. Here are some brief notes about the day. I really liked the capital city. It was one of those cities that one would call "charming" in its own ways.

Bucket shower! There is no shower head, though there is hot water (from that ubiquitous "geiser"). I had to use the small bucket to douse hot water from the bigger bucket on my body. Too labor intensive!
The weather was weird. It was sunny and warm in the morning, but by lunch time it was pouring and the weather got cold. This was the monsoon?
In the city there were plenty of monkeys too, very well behaved, at least with us.
On our way back we saw two langurs!
Shimla is a prime tourist attraction and this is the start of the tourist season. (By tourist I mean Indian tourists.) There were rivers of tourists, and every now and then I even saw white people!
I was amazed by the fact that the city was built on a steep hill. It's not the first city I know that does that but I was still very amazed.
The city was sort of the summer capital of British India, and much of the city's architecture is English, what I would call Georgian, and this makes the city even more unique. The yellow church in the town center was another testimony to the British presence here.
Because there were lots of White people roaming around in non-Indian clothes, Jennifer didn't get those two-minute stares from Indian men. Or maybe people here were just more sophisticated and educated.
People, including lower-class ones, know English quite well; the education system is much better, one of the best states
People are very different, different ethnic groups, different facial features, dresses.
Sikhs everywhere, different colors of turbans. They were mostly tourists from the neighboring state of Punjab (highest concentration of Sikhs and I think the birth place of Sikhism).
The city was clean, no trash everywhere and definitely no paan spit.
I leanred that Ruuma, our guide and travel companion, was born here and knows lots of really old shops and great places for eating and shopping. Again, great lunch!
That night Jennifer and I tried making Italian dinner but the paucity of availability and quality of western ingredients made the meal less than what we had desired, but we still all ate it and were thankful to have something different from Indian!
Watched some parts of a bollywood movie, really weird, lots of song and dance, very predictable and boring plot, and unpredictable backdrop of Switzerland!