Advertisement
Published: February 1st 2006
Edit Blog Post
In order to get to Tiger Hill for sunrise, it was necessary to get up just after 4AM and then troop down to Clubside (about 10 minutes away) to find a Jeep with a spare seat for the journey. The sky was full of stars, which boded well. No problems finding a Jeep, though the legroom situation wasn't particularly great. I found myself sitting next to an Irish guy, Patrick, who was in the last couple of weeks of a 9 month round-the-world odyssey.
Though 4AM seemed early enough to be getting up at, there were clearly many people who had been up even earlier, as Tiger Hill was already swarming with both Jeeps and people when we arrived. On the way up, we had had to make a decision as to whether we wanted to stand outside at the top (Rs 5) or in a (warm) building (Rs 30, I think). It was difficult to make the decision at that point, having no idea just how chilly it might be on top of the hill, nor how full the building would be, so we both plumped for outside tickets. Though it was certainly cold, there were enough other bodies
around, plus assorted coffee sellers, to keep ourselves warm. For reasons unknown, there was no option to upgrade your ticket once you were at the top.
Unfortunately cloud made yet another unwelcome appearance, so Everest wasn't visible, and K looked barely different to how I'd already seen it from Darjeeling. A poor return for such an early rise. Having seen a number of excellent sunrises and sunsets already on this trip, the sunrise didn't excite me either. Patrick said that he'd met people who had been to Tiger Hill yesterday, and had had great views - which meant that the Everest summiter I met on the way to Darjeeling had been wrong. And today's views were duff, which meant that the hotel owner was wrong too. I guess this weather forecasting lark is pretty tough.
After breakfast, I realised that I couldn't leave Darjeeling without seeing some tea plants, so I headed downhill to the Happy Valley Tea Estate. The journey was not a pleasant one. The track going down was so steep as to hurt my legs because I was constantly having to exert pressure to avoid careering down at a rate of knots, and the trip
back up is not one I care to repeat any time soon, as I had to stop every few minutes to get my breath back. On top of that, the wretched estate wasn't even open (for tours, at least), so all I managed to get was a few photos of tea plants.
I finally tried something today that I should have tried months ago, namely minimising my photos before uploading them. Via Microsoft Paint, which is available on virtually all computers, you can shrink photos by 30% in both dimensions, giving you an image about one eleventh of the original size - which uploads in a flash. On this blogging site, you really can't notice the difference between an image that was 1 MB when it was uploaded versus 0.1 MB. This should mean I never need fall behind on the blog for lack of a fast connection.
It was Republic Day today, which for some reason meant it was a "dry" day, so you couldn't buy alcohol from shops. Fortunately Joey's Pub was still serving regardless, so I met Patrick there and we had a few beers to celebrate. The nightwatchwoman had to let me in again,
though I was only about 10 minutes after curfew.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.053s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0301s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb