Visit to Ambala, India Trip August 2017

Visit to Ambala Part 1

We were nearing the end of our holiday when I finally decided we were going to visit Ambala, the town where I had lived and been brought up. I lived in Ambala from when I was two and I remember going to nursery and kindergarten with my Ayah. We lived a short walk from the Convent School where I went. Then we left here, lived in Shimla and Chandigarh and eventually came back when I was 7 and stayed till I was nearly 12. I came to the UK in September 1969. I went to the Convent School - very posh - and then Air Force School Number 2, both of which were English medium schools.

I had been hemming and hawing, whether to stay for a night but decided we would do a day trip and use the other day to go to Agra and see the Taj Mahal, a decision I ended up regretting. We booked tickets on an early train to Ambala, with my cousin's help. We could only book a single as it was some sort of holiday and all the return seats were all booked. We would have to take a chance and see if we could walk on or get a ticket on a bus on the way back.

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Jain's - Milkshakes at weekends

My school until I was 10

Looking back

Spent a lot of yesterday and today trying to find pictures of where I used to live in India. The two places I remember a lot about are:

Shimla - we lived in Summerhill, in Sanjauli and the Oberoi hotel on the other side. I used to go to school near The Mall. I remember spending Sundays on the Mall, running around, falling and grazing myself countless times. My grandfather worked for the LIC of India and we used to walk together in the morning, him to his office and me to my school. In the afternoon, when I finished, I would walk to his office and play there or work (doing maths!), sipping sweet tea or coke brought by the chaprassi. Some amazing pictures of Shimla. They look so familiar.

I saw the BBC film about the Kalka - Shimla rail journey on youtube. I remember doing that as a child. Even more frightening was doing it on a bus driving far too fast along a poor road with a drop of several hundred (or thousand!) feet on one side.

Ambala - we lived here from 1963 on. I went to the Convent of Jesus and Mary School till 1968. I had to leave then. I don't think the nuns could cope with boys once we reached puberty..... Nowadays it's a girls only school. I showed pictures of the school from google images to Adam, explaining how the kites used to dive bomb us, snatching food from the hands of unwary children. After CJM I went to the Air Force School but that seems to have changed. A very nice young man has set up a facebook about the city and he may upload some pictures for me!

I also found some pictures uploaded by a man called R. Bhatnagar who, as I had hoped, turned out to be Atul's (one of my childhood friends) eldest brother. What a small world........ I am waiting to hear from Atul.


Update: Just reading the history of Ambala. I didn't realise how important it was militarily. I do remember reading a bit about Ambala in Rudyard Kipling's "Kim"

(i) Official Ambala website
(ii) Air Force
(iii) St. Paul's Church