Cumbermere

I fell off the blogging map and ended up in the Himalayan mountains.  

Here are a few pics for you all who wonder where I went.  

Most of the pictures are from a four hour period on Sunday morning last.

This miniature post office greeted us fresh off the "lift."  The Lift, a local fixture and point of reference, takes you from the taxi stand, bus stand and any other vehicular transport stand up to the Mall (read here British English for spacious gooming area where you go to walk, see and be seen).  The Lift is simply an elevator shaft up to a bridge which takes you from the top of the shaft it the mountain side.  If they had made the elevator of glass sides they could have charged more for the Experience. 

Clip Clop.  They started together and one third of the way through Abe was done.  Not so for Zana.  She clopped through long minutes of riding making faithful horse noises with her mouth.

She takes after me who once got third place in a horse riding competition! 

Natural horse woman is she. 

For three rupees each we got into a relatively tourist free garden with little steps down to another garden where we had the place to ourselves.  It felt a little like stepping into some Narnian reality.

Abe was crushed when we would not let him climb higher into the tower.

Notice the high riding winter pants.  

Maybe time to retire those, I was so hoping to use them for one more winter season.

No we were not in England but the Victorian Gothic Theater built in 1887 with edging from Paris (less than 50 cents entrance fee) put me into raptures!  This is not a photo of the theater but of the club.

Could be London.

Simply irresistible.  

And still potty trained after two full days of childcare.

Hallelujah.

They refused to pose and squatted comfortably instead.

After two days of travel we had a lovely morning just being tourists.

Even the cheek pinchers seemed less and the green, cool refreshed our souls.

Utterly lovely. 

Shimla ranks highest on my hill stations of course after Murree.