From midway through the 19th century until things began to get rather sticky for them in 1939, the leaders of the British Raj would flee to the small mountain town of Shimla for the Indian summer to escape the sweltering heat of the plains and enjoy a restful few months of putting their feet up, enjoying the beautiful scenery and venturing on walks that reminded them of the Scottish highlands.

With India finishing up the Australians nice and early on Tuesday morning ahead of a week-long break, I decided there was no reason why I shouldn't follow this marvelously colonial example.

Things are a bit different to how they were back then, and today's Shimla sprawls down from the ridge on which it was originally built and onto the surrounding hills. Some feel that its charm has been entirely ruined by such development, but they were obviously too busy complaining about the Indian-ness of it - the numerous dusty roads, masses of people and terrible litter - to look up and admire the view.

As any traveller to India will tell you the country is all about contrasts, with that last assessment a good example of this. Another poignant one was meeting Rony (whom I had first encountered on the bus from Delhi to Chandigarh) and his brothers - while Rony seems a typical notion of the old Shimla with his peaceful and gentle demeanour, brother Andy arrived wearing a black heavy metal shirt with 'die motherf**ker die!' on the back.

How Charles Kennedy - a Scottish civil servant who was the first man to build a summer home in Shimla in 1822 - would have been taken aback.

But like many hardcore metalheads, Andy proved to have a soft underbelly and was every bit as friendly as your average Indian. My arrival had been the subject of great anticipation among the brothers (and indeed the entire family I later learned) and I was quickly whisked out of town on the back of a motorbike, sunglasses donned to escape the mad dust on the chaotic roads.

As we hooted our way around the corners on roads surrounded by the Asian version of pine trees, new views popped up on either side of the road at every turn, each exquisite to the point of taking your breath away. In every direction that you face, the lush, green mountains seem to stretch forever and the valleys in between are filled with a white haze which is brightened by the blinding sun.

Urban India may have come to Shimla but it will struggle to fill those mountains and so the town remains a quaint place worth visiting. Even as I look up from my computer at the view through the window in front of me, what houses I can see are unable to distract my gaze from the endless mountains rolling out in front of me.

Tristan Holme