Sleep

There are plenty of hotels and restaurants in and around District HQ as well as main tourist places. There are rest houses of HP PWD & Forest department at places where it is hard to find hotels.

Sleep in Shimla

There are lots of options from dormitories to luxury resort hotels. Online booking is the most convenient way to reserve a room. Alternatively, the tourist office can supply a list of hotels, and you can phone or trek over an reserve a room in person. Rooms in Shimla range from as low as US$ 5 to a whopping US$ 600.

This guide uses the following price ranges for a standard double room:

Budget Under Rs 1500

Mid-range           Rs 1500-6000

Splurge Rs 6000+

Avoid touts at all cost, whether locals or outsiders (many are in fact Kashmiri chisellers disguised as locals, and calling themselves euphemistically "guides", who have been working the Shimla beat for years and decades); they scour the railway and bus stations for incautious or vulnerable-looking victims among the new arrivals, and foreign travellers carrying luggage are their prime targets in the streets as well: if you allow them to lead you to your hotel you will be manipulated in manifold ways: (1) your daily room rate will automatically (but surreptitiously) be bumped up to cover the commission they will receive from the hotel for their unnecessary services (resulting in an increase in hotel price of as much as 200%); (2) the touts will (unbeknownst to you) steer you away from hotels which deny them such commission but which may be better choices from your point of view; and moreover (3) you will subsequently be pestered by your tout, who will now "own" you during your stay, to buy additional "services" from him, while (4) being force-fed additional doses of misinformation. The experience of being "led" by an unscrupulous but ingratiating manipulator with his own interest in mind rather than yours can be the ruin of one's visit to Shimla. The touts can be extremely importunate and persevering in pursuit of their illegal trade while at the same time feigning "friendship" intended to ensnare the gullible.