Leaving Shimla: Just your average road in Shimla, cows, buses, cars, motorcycles, and pedestrians - all thinking they have the right-of-way.

Just your average thousand foot drop by the side of the road (without guard rails, or seat belts, of course). It looks a bit overcast but we are hoping it will clear by the time my flight leaves.

This is the Shimla Airport. These are the things that you should notice about it, the arrivals and departures are about a hundred feet apart, it is only one building and the sky is really dark. We decided to wait it out in the car for a bit.
It's about 10:30 AM.

This is the sky two hours later. Maybe a touch lighter but not encouraging. At first they didn't want anyone who wasn't flying to come into the building. The six Indian soldiers with machine guns looked pretty serious. But faced with four women that had waited two hours and were twenty feet from a ladies room they relented and let us in. The man in charge of the airport then sent a guy out with four ceramic flowered china cups with Chai tea. He said that if we would just wait a bit more, maybe a half hour, the plane from Kulka would be landing and we could "probably" fly out then. OK, we'll wait.

We waited but it was hard without food. No, the airport did not have any food, just the guy with the tea and he was someone's uncle that went home to make it. So we made them open the gate and drove back down to the first roadside stand for a nutritious lunch of chips, peanuts and crackers and diet Pepsi.
Not a lot of head room for tall Americans.

Hum de dum, get some work done. Take a nap, check the map. Wait around, on the ground. Spend some time, think in rhyme. Sky is dark, plane is parked. OK, so I'm bored and not a poet. At least, I know it.

We were a constant source of amusement for the guys at the airport.
Tai Chi, Wang long form, section one. How do we look Roger?

Trisha talked to the pilot of the plane, he was heading for Kulka and would go to Delhi if the weather was bad or come back if it was OK and go from here to Delhi. It was 3:00 pm when they told us the plane was grounded by bad weather in Kulka and that I couldn't fly out today. Time for plan B.

So we head back down into the valley when the sky starts to clear a bit. But they have refunded my ticket price and the money I paid for my luggage - almost as much as my ticket - and cancelled the only flight to Delhi that day.

Trisha's car started to overheat. So besides driving me to the airport (one hour on winding roads), talking to pilots, walking past six guys with gun to go to the ladies' room - she can fix cars. Go Trisha!

Needs water? No problem!

Just find a roadside well.

"People! They just can't make up their minds. They go up the mountain and come down the mountain. And they think monkeys are funny!"