A Heritage Walk Through Shimla — Not the Mall Road, the Other Shimla

Start at the Viceregal Lodge

The Indian Institute of Advanced Study — formerly the Viceregal Lodge, formerly the summer residence of the Viceroy of India — sits on Observatory Hill, a 20-minute walk uphill from the main town. Built in 1888 in Jacobethan style (a mix of Jacobean and Elizabethan architecture), it is where the 1945 Shimla Conference took place, where Nehru and Jinnah sat across a table and failed to prevent Partition.

The building is grey stone and deodar wood, with turrets, a central tower, and gardens that slope down toward the Himalayan foothills. Inside, the teak-panelled corridors still smell of old wood and scholarship. The library holds 100,000 volumes. The grounds are open to visitors; the interior requires a guided tour (₹40).

The Ridge to Christ Church

Walk down from the Lodge through the deodar forest to the Ridge — the broad, flat promenade that serves as Shimla's central nervous system. On a clear day, the snow peaks of the Pir Panjal range fill the northern horizon. On most days, you'll see clouds.

Christ Church, at the eastern end of the Ridge, was built between 1844 and 1857 — the second oldest church in North India. Its stained glass windows, depicting Faith, Hope, Charity, Fortitude, Patience, and Humility, were designed by Rudyard Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling, who was the principal of the Mayo School of Art in Lahore. The church clock, installed in 1860, still keeps time.

The Hidden Bazaars

Below the Mall Road — literally below it, connected by steep staircases and narrow alleys — lies the Lower Bazaar, a world the tourists on the Mall never see. This is where Shimla's working population has shopped for 150 years. The lanes are barely wide enough for two people to pass. Shops selling spices, steel utensils, rubber boots, and religious prints are stacked on top of each other, their balconies nearly touching across the alley.

The Lower Bazaar dates to the pre-British period, when Shimla was a small hill village. The British built the Mall Road above it, literally elevating their commercial district above the native one — a spatial expression of colonial hierarchy that persists in the town's architecture to this day.

Look for Baljees — not the tourist restaurant on the Mall, but the original confectionery in the Lower Bazaar that has been making barfi and jalebi since 1951. The barfi here costs ₹400 per kg and tastes like concentrated nostalgia.

Scandal Point to Lakkar Bazaar

Scandal Point, at the junction of the Mall and the Ridge, got its name from a rumoured 1890s elopement between a Maharaja's daughter and a British officer. True or not, the name stuck.

From here, walk west along the Mall toward Lakkar Bazaar — the "wood market" — where craftsmen have been carving deodar walking sticks, picture frames, and temple figurines since the Raj era. The wood comes from regulated forest harvests (deodar is sacred in Himachal and cannot be cut without government permission). A good walking stick costs ₹200-500. A carved deity might cost ₹2,000. The carving is done by hand, with tools that haven't changed in a century.

The Cemetery

Few tourists visit the British Cemetery near Boileauganj, about 2 km from the centre. They should. The headstones tell the human story of the Raj — young soldiers dead of cholera at 23, children who didn't survive the monsoon, wives who followed husbands to a hill station and never went home. One grave belongs to a Captain Henry Torrens, buried in 1847, which makes it older than the Mall Road itself.

The cemetery is overgrown, atmospheric, and completely silent. The only sounds are mynas and the wind in the pine trees.

End at the Kalka-Shimla Railway

The Kalka-Shimla Railway, completed in 1903 and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008, runs 96 km through 102 tunnels and over 800 bridges. The most scenic way to experience it is to take the rail motor car (a small, fast service) from Shimla to Barog — 33 km, 1 hour — and get off at Barog station, which sits at the entrance of the longest tunnel on the route (1,143 metres).

The story goes that Colonel Barog, the engineer tasked with building this tunnel, miscalculated. The two teams digging from opposite ends failed to meet in the middle. He was fined one rupee and, according to legend, shot himself. His ghost is said to haunt the tunnel. His grave is near the station.

Whether or not you believe in ghosts, sitting on the platform at Barog station — with its colonial-era waiting room, its flower beds, and the dark mouth of a tunnel that killed its maker — is a more honest experience of Shimla than anything on the Mall Road.