This is just a note to thank you so much for sharing your insights on Shimla and taking us to the places where our family lived, worked and played. Our three ays with you were very excellent!!

Sumit enabled us to understand India deeply from various prospective. He is educated person who has long experience traveling across India. We spent marvelous time with him.

Conclusion : We find the experience traveling with this guy very fruitful for us. We shall recommend our friends to use his services.

Sumit is the best tour Guide that Sharon and I have ever had. He showed us around Shimla and environs. Sumit also arranged for us to meet the gentleman that now runs a school which was the scene for “Staying On” – with Trevor Howard (a sequel to “Jewel in the Crown”).

Sumit has written three books on Shimla (they are superbly illustrated and really quite excellent) focusing first and foremost on history. When we told Sumit of your grandfather’s role in the transfer of the entire contents of the British government’s files and other necessities between Delhi and Shimla every six months he was totally intrigued. Sumit works nowadays also on helping people, with known ancestors in Shimla, find their roots.

 Shimla was wonderful and was probably the highlight for me.  We found the family home, Strawberry Hill, although sadly the original house was burned down in 1938 but I’m now in touch with the owners who bought it from my family so I’m hoping they may have some pre 1938 photos.

I don’t know if this will be of any help to you but we had a very good guide in Shimla who is a local resident called Sumit Vashisht.  Not only was he very knowledgeable, but he was also a very nice guy, but his English also was perfect, and he’s very interested in doing more ancestry tours as well as his heritage walks through Shimla.

We had the pleasure of being escorted by a Guide called Shatrughan. He met us off our train in Chandigarh. His timing was excellent for our pick up. He was outside our Carriage on the platform waiting. Shatrughan was able to communicate with excellent English which made us feel comfortable as we did not have any knowledge of the language. He took control of our luggage & requested that we follow him to our private air-conditioned car. He had a very alternative attitude and measured balance of tourist information on route for sites, quite time and, interest of us and, our experience of India so far.

On route, we stopped and he settled us at an eating café with clear instruction for our collection. One arrive at Solan train station, he escorted us to our seats on the Himalayan Queen and made sure we were comfortable. Our luggage was driven separately. His attention to details was very reassuring.  He organized to check our wellbeing at the station on the route, this was in case any of us wished to get off and travel in the car with luggage. When we arrived in Shimla, his timing was excellent and he delivered a wonderful sightseeing tour with clear and interesting narration. We would be happy to recommend his service to anyone needing a safe experience guide that goes that extra mile to assist.