Mall Road is The High Street of Shimla

Mall Road or Mall or The Mall, as people know it commonly, is the high street of Shimla. It stretches from west to east for about a kilometer and displays a variety of shops for branded clothes, footwear, restaurants, pubs, and other consumer goods. The road is completely traffic-less and is open only the pedestrians. The only vehicles that can be there are the mail wagons, the ambulance, and the lorries of the Municipal corporation to collect garbage. Except for the ambulance, the two vehicles also have fixed timing to be at the Mall. 

You Do Not See Mall Road When you enter the town

You enter the hills from Kalka and after two hours you get the first glimpse of Shimla to your right side. You are confused if you are at the right place or not because the buildings have covered most parts of the hill slopes. The old part of the town is almost hidden in the clusters. Houses on houses are running from the bottom to the top of the hill. You heard of the Mall Road and that is not visible anywhere. As you are near the town you find a number of cars lining up along the road. Mall Road is still nowhere and it looks like you have been seeing some wrong videos of Shimla or have been reading some fake articles. All those articles said that Mall Road is the high street of Shimla.

How the Mall Road came into Existence

Before 1875 Mall Road of Shimla used to be a narrow street where people went on their horses. It had no tarring and the narrow trail passed through the cedar trees. Apart from a few buildings which were at much distance from each other, there were no shops like today. On the right side of the Mall where lay the Middle Bazaar and the Lower Bazaar are almost no shops or any other buildings. The main market of Shimla or Shayamala, as the village was called at that time, used to be up at the Ridge. In 1875 a fire broke up and burnt the entire market. After that, the British Government was never allowed to have any shops up there at the Ridge, and Mall Street was formed.  

Why visit the Mall Road at least once in your life

Almost every hill station in India has a Mall Road but the Mall Road of Shimla is known for its ultimate style of Victoria architecture. The alpine-shaped roofs of this British Himalayan Town make you feel like you are in some old European village. The trackless street, decorated with the Victorian and post-Victorian style of buildings, elegantly dressed up local men and women, neat & clean roads, well-designed facades of the shops, the tommies of Police marching around and keeping an eye on something happening nasty – all these things together make it a unique place. The Mall Road of Shimla has its decorum and everyone visiting this place, a local or a tourist is expected to maintain it. No nuisance can be tolerated here and immediate action by the police is taken to control the crowd. 

Know the writer. Sumit Raj.