There is no single fare we can give you, and we will not invent one. The cheapest ways are the public ones, and a taxi or your own car is the dearest, because the whole vehicle is paid for whoever sits in it. Fares change by season and operator, so they are read from the booking page for your date.
Photos: Debsekharbose (CC BY-SA 4.0) — via Wikimedia Commons, resized.
By bus. The state transport corporation, the Himachal Road Transport Corporation, publishes its booking system and its concession rules on its own site, hrtchp.com. Private coaches also run overnight from Delhi to the hills. Shimla is 367 km from Delhi by road, 273 min free-flow on our routing, so budget the whole day or night.
By train, then on. Rail from Delhi ends at Kalka, where the Himalayan Queen and the Kalka Shatabdi Express connect with the narrow-gauge line. From Kalka it is 82 km and 154 min by road to Shimla, and the Kalka–Shimla Railway is 96.6 km, a UNESCO World Heritage line. Take it for the ride; confirm that it is running, since sections were washed out in the 2023 floods.
By taxi or car. The fastest and the dearest. A car from Delhi covers the 367 km in a day. For the full picture, see how to reach Shimla, the Shimla guide and when to go.
Check the bus fare on the corporation's page and the train fare on the railway's booking site, add the last stretch from Kalka if you take the train, and compare the totals for your date. Check the date, not a figure from last year.
How to reach Himachal from Delhi and Chandigarh and Barog's tunnel on the line have the road matrix to sixteen places, the railways and the airports.
The public options: a bus the whole way, or a train to Kalka and then a bus, a taxi or the narrow-gauge train for the last 82 km by road. A taxi or your own car costs the most because you pay for the whole vehicle. We do not print fares, which change; the official booking pages show them.
Shimla is 367 km from Delhi by road, which is 273 min free-flow on our routing. The real drive is much longer, because of the traffic out of Delhi and the hill road after Kalka. By rail the line from Delhi ends at Kalka, 82 km short of Shimla by road.
We cannot say, since we publish no fares. The Kalka–Shimla Railway is 96.6 km long and is run by Indian Railways, so its fare is on the railway booking site. It is a slow scenic ride, not the quickest way up, and sections were washed out in the 2023 floods.
