Off to Darjeeling for tea

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I had had enough of the blistering heat of the desert and Delhi so where to go. Most locals go to the hill stations in the north at the foot of the Himalayan ranges. On the grape vine i heard that Darjeeling is nice and cool at this time of the year so off i went. i heard they have good tea too!
As some of you out there may have gathered, jill had to return to work and hasnt been with me in India. I managed to pursuade a friend to come out and join me for a tea drinking week in the hills.
The week was far removed from drinking tea all day. we took a 4 day trekking expedition up to the highest point in the region to get a great view of Mt Kangchendzonga (3rd highest peak in the world) and we could also see Mt Everest, how cool is that ! unfortunetely it required 4 days of hard work - thankfully not as bad as the inca trail!
Enjoy.

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Photos

Darjeeling
After a 3 hour plane ride from delhi followed by a 4 hour 4x4 jeep ride up into the mountains, we arrived in DArjeeling. Richard waited ages for the train, there were only 2 trains per day.

Darjeeling town
This is the view from the hostel window. on a clear day the view is meant to be really nice (i'm told). The town itself is not quite the green lawns and colonial country houses set in tea plantations that i had hoped for

Trekking Adventure begins
Day 1 of the trek. Richard and I found out that the route is quite steep and we had to carry all our equipment for the next 4 days. The solution was to pay for a couple of porters to lighted the load. A bargain at £3 per day!

All Uphill from here
As we started to walk uphill into the mist and the temperature started to fall, i was very gald i was not carrying my own bag.

The Locals
On the way we met some of the locals

Nepal
The route took us across the Nepalese boarder a number of times - Another coutry to add to the list.

Sunset
I know that there are too many pictures of sunsets on the blog already. i couldnt resist adding one more.

The Peak
After 3 days of hiking we reached the top. from the photo you can see that it was quite cold up there. just after the photo we had hail stones and the temp. dropped to -5 to -10 at night. a far cry from the 40 degrees of Delhi.

The VIew
The following morning we had a superb view of the HImalays!Wow!

Downhill
NOw that the hard work was over and downhill all the way - smiles alround.

Time for Tea
After an exhausting 4 days there was 1 last thing to do. Buy some tea. this wholesaler sells the tea leaves directly from the plantations all over Darjeeling. The 1st flush (ie 1st harvest)of 2006 is a good tea vintage apparently.