Day Hikes and Forest Walks Around Shimla (2026): Jakhu, the Glen, Tara Devi & Shali Tibba

Shimla is a walking town that everyone drives around. Get off the Mall, point yourself at the deodar, and the city you came to escape falls away in about ten minutes.

I write this from Kullu, so I will be straight with you. I am not a Shimla local, and I am not going to sell these as secret treks. They are not secret, and most of them are not really treks. Jakhu is a temple walk half the city does on a Sunday. Tara Devi is a landmark you can see from three districts. What they add up to is a proper spread of forest on foot, from a twenty-minute climb to one real full-day hike, all starting from a town with a train station. This is the on-foot Shimla, sorted by how much your legs will complain.

First, an honesty note about the word hidden

Shimla content online loves slapping the word hidden on everything. A local pushed back on exactly that under a Tara Devi post: how is it hidden, it is literally used as a landmark (r/HimachalPradesh). He is right. Jakhu is on the ropeway map. Tara Devi has a temple with a daily crowd. So read the list below as a spread by effort, not a list of secrets. The reward here is easy deodar within reach of a train station, not bragging rights.

Jakhu Hill: the one everyone already does

Start here because it is honest. Jakhu is the highest of Shimla's seven hills at 2,455 m, topped by the Hanuman temple and a 33-metre (108-foot) statue you can see from most of town. The path up is a steep two kilometres from the Ridge through deodar full of very confident monkeys. Somebody on r/HimachalPradesh said it best: I would not call Jakhu a trek, more like a walk (r/HimachalPradesh). If even that is too much, there is a ropeway.

Two things worth knowing. There is a bhandara at the top on the right days, which is the real reason a lot of locals climb it. And a walker on r/shimla flagged something that stuck with me: they have cut down trees to make the view better, and that is saddening (r/shimla). Keep to the path, keep your plastic in your bag, and let the hill stay a forest.

The Glen: easy forest and an old ghost story

The Glen is the low-effort pick, a wooded fold below the Ridge on trails the British laid out and the Forest Department still maintains. One local kept it simple: had many walks through it (r/HimachalPradesh). It is where you go when you want an hour of pine and birdsong without earning it.

Refuje sells this one as a guided Glen forest walk with a haunted tunnel, and the Glen does carry its share of Raj-era ghost stories: a woman in white by the stream, an old wartime hospital site that became a graveyard. Take the ghost part as folklore. Take the forest as the real thing.

One more for your list, off the tourist track and not a product we sell: Chaili, just below Summerhill. A local described it as literally one km from Summerhill, all land under the forest department, nice for walks or cycling, with fewer people than the main town (r/HimachalPradesh). If you are staying near the university side, it is the quiet one.

Tara Devi: the temple-hill forest walk

Tara Devi is the easy hike with a payoff at the top. The temple sits on a ridge at about 2,100 m, roughly 7 to 15 km southwest of Shimla depending on your route, and the walk up runs through quiet mixed forest. It is famous, not hidden, and a local settled the ranking neatly: it is a Shimla landmark his family has been visiting for fifty years, and it is literally the definition of peace (r/HimachalPradesh). The bhandara there got its own line of praise in the same thread.

If you want it walked properly rather than driven to the gate, Refuje runs a guided Tara Devi day hike, about five hours, easy grade, good as a first day while you get used to the altitude.

Shali Tibba: the one that earns the view

This is the real hike, and the reason to keep a day free. Shali Tibba is one of the highest points around Shimla at about 2,870 m, with a Kali Mata temple and a stone sarai on the summit and a genuine 360-degree Himalayan view when the air is clear. A walker on r/HimachalPradesh described the top exactly: the sarai looks like a step and the temple gives a sharp looking point to the mountain (r/HimachalPradesh).

Here is the logistics part people get wrong. It is not a walk from the Mall. The trailhead is Khatnol village, roughly 35 to 48 km from Shimla by bus or taxi via Mashobra, and from there it is about seven kilometres of climbing to the top, a full day round trip. Grade it moderate, not brutal. The forest on the way up is thick deodar, the kind another walker compared to the fairy forest above Pulga in the Parvati valley (r/HimachalPradesh). Refuje runs it as a guided Shali Tibba day hike, which is the sensible way to do a first attempt given the drive and the distance.

Other ways into the forest

Three more, briefly, so you can slot them in. There is a guided heritage walk if you would rather read Shimla's colonial bones than climb a hill, and our things-to-do guide and local's map of Shimla both go deeper on the town itself. There is a guided birding walk on the same Raj-era forest trails if you want a reason to go slow. And if your knees are done but you still want the deodar, the Calm Circuit on an e-bike runs a traffic-free gravel loop through a reserved forest to an old British water reservoir. For everything that needs a car instead of legs, our Shimla day-trips guide covers Kufri, Naldehra, Chail and the rest, which is a different kind of day and out of scope here.

Walking through heaven, every evening, it seems.

A three-day walker's Shimla

When to go, and the two months to skip

April to June and September to November are the windows. Clear air, walkable ground, the forest either waking up or turning. For which month suits which part of Himachal, our best-time guide has the full matrix.

Two cautions the Shimla feed keeps raising. High summer brings forest fires to these deodar slopes, so check local news before a dry-season hike and do not be the reason for the next one. And peak monsoon, July and August, brings the landslides, so keep the ambitious stuff for either side of it. If you want the science of why walking in this forest does you good, that is a real thing, and we wrote about it in the forest bathing piece. The responsible-travel basics, plastic and fire and noise, are in our travel-without-wrecking-it guide.

FAQ

Written from Kullu. I know Shimla as a Himachali who walks it when I am up there, not as a resident; the effort levels, the bhandara, the tree-cutting note and the Shali summit description above all come from Shimla walkers on Reddit, linked at each mention. Trail facts, altitudes and transport were checked in July 2026, but times and prices move, so reconfirm before you set out.