The driver of our car swings around a series of dizzying hairpin bends. Off the edge of the road are valleys lying hundreds of feet below us, their toy-sized village houses clinging to the slopes, their pathways threading along the folds of the hills.
And rearing against the horizon are the mighty Himalayas - range upon range of gigantic snow covered peaks - one of the most splendid panoramas in the world.
My cousins and I are in India, travelling to Shimla at an altitude of 7,500+ feet in the Himalayan foothills. Once the summer capital of the Raj, this is where the elite of the British civil service and military brass exchanged the searing summer heat and dust of the plains for the cool deodarand-pine forested slopes of the hills.
Today it is a popular holiday resort for Indian families who hike the mountain trails in summer and toboggan down the snowy slopes in winter.
My cousin who lives in Australia has nostalgic memories of growing up in Simla (as it was known then) and I, too, recall with fondness my last visit to the town, back in the 1960s. As we round the last corkscrew bend, Shimla comes into view, and we exchange rueful glances.
What was once a settlement of Tudor-style government buildings and English country cottages set in forested glades has burgeoned into an immense swath of ugly concrete multi-rise commercial buildings, all tightly packed in Lego-like tiers up and down the hillsides.
Later that afternoon we set out on a walk along the Mall - the main street that straddles the town. Our initial dismay begins to dissolve as we discover that beneath Shimla's untidy façade, Simla's old world charm and reminders of a less hurried world still lingers.
We recognize landmarks that evoke a different era - the stately turrets of Viceregal Lodge, once the residence of British viceroys, rear against the sky. It was the scene of feverish negotiations that ultimately closed a chapter of Indian history in 1947: the end of the British Raj and the birth of two independent nations - India and Pakistan.
Today the building serves the country's intelligentsia at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
Gorton Castle, a baronial edifice reminiscent of an English country estate, used to be the Secretariat offices from where one-fifth of the world's population was once administered.
Rising off the Mall is the Ridge, a promenade with views of Himalayan ranges on the horizon. Today, however, a chiffon scarf of mist obscures the peaks, so we turn away and stroll along the Ridge towards Christchurch, pausing en route to click a photograph or two of the half-timbered Tudor-style Town Hall and Library.
Inside the Anglican church sunlight streams through the stained glass windows and alights on memorial plaques to long dead British military officers - mute testaments to a vanished era.
It is easy to imagine Simla of yore in these surroundings. Historical Simla still exists beside contemporary Shimla. Both are worth visiting.
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