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Published: January 16th 2006
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Happy Valley Tea estate
You can see the three leaves that they take to make the three different grades of tea - The top (newest leaf) gives the best tea. Well I'm back in India now and having been feeling a bit homesick and worrying about money recently I'm now well on track to enjoying myself again. First impressions of Darjeeling weren't that good. I thought it was polluted and dilapedated and that the views were nothing special - especially having just come from such privaleged views. Things have changed though since meeting some cool people and finding some really nice spots around town. I'm staying in a dorm at the moment and the two Aussie girls I'm sharing with (Mitsy and Sylvie) have a budjet of only just over 2Pounds a day! my 10Pounds makes me feel rich suddenly and the last three days have cost me very little.
My first real day in Darjeeling I met an English guy called Will while sitting and eating my breakfast at a viewpoint looking out to the Himalayas (Kangchendzonga range - 3rd highest in the world, with Everest just visible). We decided to walk around together and headed first for the Himalayan Mountaineering institute and Darjeeling zoo which were closed that day so we went and had a cup of masala tea in a nice little cafe (the 'Stimulating Cafe') looking
back towards Darjeeling. The day was spent bimbling around the place visiting the Happy Valley Tea Estate, trying a few different types of the street food and having a beer for dinner in the pub (which was suprisingly like a real pub and I also had beans on toast for dinner!). We also organised to go with a family at 4.30am the next day to a place called tiger hill to watch sunsrise...
Early the next morning I got up on time and got ready in the dark so as not to wake the girls. I then crept out quietly to go and meet Will who I had agreed to wake up because he had no alarm clock only to find that I was locked in the hotel! I tried to wake someone up but nobody came and i then spent the next 15 minutes or so trying to break out of the hotel. I climbed over the balcony at one point and also contemplated hanging from my floor and then dropping about 6feet to the ground where there were various ankle breaking obstructions awaiting me. In the end I gave up and went back to bed with my
Tibetan Refugee Centre
The cutest old couple in the world! The first stage of the rug making process. tail between my legs. I never saw Will after that and don't know if he made it or not but he wasn't in his hotel when I tried knocking for him later in the day.
I spent the morning wondering around the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute Museum and the Zoo which were reasonably interesting. The enclosures in the zoo seemed pretty small and drab despite the book saying they were big. The zoo has however had a lot of success breeding endangered species like the snow leopard, red panda and Himalayan wolf so it kinda leaves you with mixed feelings. Later in the day I scrambled up a random hill through brambles where I came across some small temples and bumped into Mitsy and Sylvie. We all went for a cup of masala tea at the Stimulating Cafe and then headed back to the hotel for some dinner before I left to catch my train to Guwahati...
Again another disaster. Having tried 3/4 times unsuccesfully in the past to book a train ticket myself without the aid of an agency (often no more help), I was feeling really pleased with myself that I had finally succeeded in getting a
Wool
Some of the colours they make for use in their Rugs ticket for a train due to leave on the evening of the 14th. I had been told by the guy at the Stimulating Cafe (i make it sound like i spend my whole time there) that catching a share jeep taxi at 7pm in the evening for the 3.5 hour journey to Siliguri/NJP would be no problem. This was not the case.
After dinner with the girls I said goodbye, picked up my bags and headed down the hill to find a taxi. A couple of hours later after getting lost and trying to flag down various passing taxis (none going to the right place) I came back with my tail between my legs - again, having found out that they stop at 5pm. Shit. The girls laughed then gave me some sympathy for my yet another failed train journey and then I went to bed.
Safe to say though that it all turned out OK. I could have got on the next train after paying a small fine but infact my train was so spectacularly late (over 9hrs) that it was still there when I turned up first thing in the morning and it pulled away about
Prayer flags
While scrambling up a random hill in the morning mist I stumbled across a Gompa with these flags hanging up all around it 15mins after I got on! Result.
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