Buses, Planes, Jeeps and Rickshaws

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Hi All,

Sorry again for the long delay. But this one is a biggie.

After spending a week laid up in Manali, hobbled by stomach pains, I was dying to get moving. My gut had made a fairly miraculous recovery after a bold self-diagnosis and subsequent self-medication. I had about two weeks left before I had to fly home to New York, and what had once seemed like an infinite span of time for my travels suddenly felt very crowded. I had one more place that I dreamed of seeing in India. You see, I have always been a lover of tea, and India, as you must know, has one of the best environments in the world to grow it. Of all the places in India that produce tea, perhaps the most distinguished and romantic is Darjeeling. Ahh Darjeeling. The name evokes images of verdant, rolling green hillsides, intriguing, exotic, shrouded in clouds, mecca of tea, and the venerable Victorian retreat of the British magistrates.

Also, far from Manali. If you check on a map, Darjeeling is just on the opposite side of Nepal, traversed the long way, about 760 miles as the crow flies (I fly more like a turkey). To get there, you have to first go to Delhi, 14 hours, then take a 27-33 hour (!) train ride to get to the nearest train station to Darjeeling, followed by a four hour shared jeep ride up from the plains into the first fold of Himalayan mountains to reach the city the British dubbed the Queen of the Hills. Try to imagine spending more than a day locked in the hot rusty innards of a mechanical inchworm creaking, haltingly across the Indian plains. I resolved, over the strident objections from my cheapness instinct, to fly. I had little choice on taking a 14 hour bus ride to Delhi, but from there, it would be a comfortable two hours in the air to land on the plains below Darjeeling.

My bus from Manali to Delhi was supposed to leave at 3:30 PM and pull in at 5:30 AM, giving me about a three and a half hour margin for delays if I wanted to get to the airport in time for my 11:00 flight. An hour and a half of that was burned even before I left, as my bus didn't leave until 5:00 PM. The driver was, of course, not concerned by the fact that a departure time of 3:30 was written on the tickets. About an hour into the drive, we stopped on the side of the road for about half an hour to solve a crisis that came about because some of the sleeper compartments had been double booked. While most Indians would just scrunch up and squeeze two people into the space for one, these spots were expensive (800 rupees, $18) and, hence the ticket holders were upper class Indians, who expect better treatment (understandably - I would too if I paid that much). I couldn't follow exactly how it was resolved, but after a few heated cell phone conversations, some of the people accepted regular seats, and some stormed off the bus. Finally, we begin moving again. The short mustachioed bus driver made good time after this. I eagerly looked out for city names and calculated our speed as we descended along a valley between winding, pine-clad rocky slopes, a cold river bounding along beside us. We passed Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab, which is about four hours from Delhi, at 3:00 AM. At 4:20, we pulled in to a rest stop for a tea break. I anxiously looked at my watch, pleading for the bus to move, but the driver, maddeningly, lazed around outside, drinking tea and chain smoking. At 5:50 I went over to him and implored him to get moving. At this point, time to reach my flight was running short. The little man was not persuaded, muttering something about traffic in Delhi. Now, I am as credulous as the next guy, but the highway we were driving on was empty as far as the eye could see, and traffic jams usually clear up in the two and a half hours it would take to reach Delhi. Furthermore, I don't know of any traffic monitoring system in India that could have apprised him of upcoming conditions anyway.

Fortunately, somebody heard my plea. The tea shop owner made some inquiries and found another bus that would take me to Delhi, and it was leaving right away. I retrieved my bags immediately and ran over to the other bus. I had to sit on a narrow bench in the cab of the bus, with the driver, ticket-collector and two other characters whose jobs were unclear. It was uncomfortable, but I had a great view of the fields of Punjab unrolling as we sped on virtually empty roads towards the capitol of India. The driver demanded 100 rupees, a request which I was in no position to refuse. They tried to buy my camera (a king's ransom for an Indian) and I gave them a pack of playing cards as a souvenir, as I struggled to stay awake, having not slept the whole night in the bus. Overall, the experience was very satisfying, sort of like being taken backstage at a play, being allowed to see places where you normally aren't permitted. Miraculously, the bus delivered on its promise, letting me off somewhere in northern Delhi at 8:30 AM. I hopped in an auto rickshaw, and made it to the airport in record time. I had had nightmare visions of being stuck in endless Delhi traffic jams, so this was a great relief.

So, with some traveler's luck and a little polite nudging, I had managed to make my flight. I struck up a conversation with two beautiful girls in the airport also waiting for a flight, who I noticed were conversing in French. I find that it is actually easier to meet people who speak another language (that I speak) because I can introduce myself by saying "I noticed that you were speaking French. Where are you from?" a more acceptable alternative to the usually-unsuccessful "come here often?" I learned that they were also on my flight to Darjeeling, so I had found some traveling partners. We pooled our travel books (they carried Le Guide Routard) The flight was uneventful. I met a rotund tea grower from Assam, east of Darjeeling, who gave me some moderately useful advice on tea buying. We stepped off the plane and into the steam bath conditions of the Bagdogra airport, on the plains of central India. After yet another epic bargaining session, the three of us hopped in a van to Darjeeling. It was just minutes before we started passing through vast expanses of tea plants in a dizzying blur and swish of bright green. These were the first tea plants I had ever seen - they look just like the sort of ornamental shrubs that are planted as landscaping around suburban houses in the northeastern USA.

We entered the humid, semi-tropical forest that drapes the lower hills, and then began to climb. A peculiar companion on the long, serpentine drive up was the absurdly small-gauge tracks of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, which everybody calls the Toy Train. Don't let the nickname fool you - it's a fully functioning train line, with both steam and diesel locomotives. It acquired its adorable nickname because the tracks are two feet wide. It's hard to believe that any train big enough to fit a person could balance on those, but, in fact, each car holds between six and sixteen people. It takes eight hours, twice as long as a car, but the 125-year-old railway climbs more than two kilometers (7000 feet!) to get to Darjeeling. The station at Ghum is the highest in all of Asia! The way that the train ascends 1.4 miles in about 15 miles (the rest lies on the plains) is by constant swooping arcs of track that criss cross the roads every few hundred yards. (The road is, of course, the newcomer. The tracks predate it by a very long time.) The ride is said to be among the most spectacular train journeys in the world, and the reason I didn't take it is that I was exhausted from my 22 hours of travel, and you can take a shorter joy ride on the train from Darjeeling to get a taste (rather than the supersized big boy special that is the eight hour ride).

I napped on the drive up, but when the constant swerving of the car caused my head to bang into the window, waking me up, I noticed the temperature plunging with increasing altitude. Soon, we plunged into a chilly, milky fog. The towns we passed through clustered along the meandering train tracks, and crowded in tightly on either side of the road, so that there was scarcely room for two vehicles to pass (don't even ask about what happens when a train comes along). After passing through about a dozen one-yak towns, Darjeeling began to come into view between wisps of thick fog. The town was everything I had hoped. It was a gracious, somewhat crusty old Victorian affair, sprawling haphazardly on a steep, tea-clad hillside. The buildings were painted in whitewash, gray and faded pastel, with architecture typical of late nineteenth century in England, paint peeling, redolent of past colonial glory. The hills around Darjeeling are nothing short of voluptuous, rising in an endless crescendo of green from the Indian plains. Looking from the perch of my hotel's balcony, I watched the view of the hills through the shifting mists, and there seemed no bottom to the interconnected valleys below me.

I was pretty beat after 24 plus hours of travel, but I was even more hungry than I was tired. I was overjoyed to find that the food in Darjeeling is cheap and really good! Much of my time was spent tasting tea and stuffing my face - The challenge was finding ways to kill time in between chowing while I digested my food. I think I was a little malnourished after my stomach problems in Manali, and my body was trying to catch up. My Belgian friends concurred with a nickname I had acquired from a French girl on a trip I made to Peru last year: "L'estomac sur pattes", a stomach with legs. We found a place that made fantastic vegetable momos with a fiery sauce, near the old market, and the stands just east of the central Chowrasta square have great fried stuff - chow mein, veg and chicken pies, and, of course, more momos. There’s also, Glenary's, a fancy joint on the main pedestrian mall, which made a memorable chicken reshmi kebab (it's like chicken tikka) and delectable fruit cake.

Darjeeling is a corruption of "Dorje Ling" the name of the monastery that some British colonists found here when they were looking for a refuge from the searing Indian summers. They were understandably enchanted by the cool air and panoramic views. There are loads of Buddhist monasteries in the area, and Buddhism is the dominant religion. The people in this area are ethnically much closer to the people of Nepal and Sikkim than they are to most Indians. On Thursday morning, I got up blearily at 3:30 AM to go to the "must see” Tiger Hill, where fantastic views of the sunrise over the Himalayas can be had. That is, of course, if you can see over the heads of the thousands of the Indians clamoring to get the same view. A word of advice: if you go to Tiger Hill, spend the 40 rupees ($1) to get in to the highest observation deck. At least, then, you might be able to pretend that just a few dozen people surround you. Better, I would just skip Tiger Hill entirely - the view was hazy and indistinct, and it was torture to get up so early. And I have never felt more like I was in a herd of cattle than I did on that morning.

It did get better though. On the ride back, we stopped at the Yiga Choling Buddhist monastery, painted in kaleidoscopic colors, with yet another spectacular towering gilded Buddha inside. We also stopped at the Ghurka War memorial in Ghum, which was a pretty garden with (yawn) some jaw dropping views of the high Himalayas. Most importantly, while waiting in line at the entrance, I got some delicious namkeen from a street vendor. Namkeen, I have gathered, means salty snack. Usually, and preferably, fried. I ate two big triangles of perfectly fried dough, for about 25 cents.

At this point, a worry that had been dogging me began to seem more urgent: I had a ticket to fly to New York in two weeks, but it left from Kathmandu. Kathmandu was pretty much a 24 hour trip from Darjeeling, and it still wasn't clear if it was safe to go back. You may recall that scarcely six weeks earlier, rebels blockaded the city, and the King barricaded himself in his palace amid widespread, sometimes-violent protests. Food grew scarce, and the city was paralyzed. Travel in and out was impossible. It had since been resolved, but I prefer to wait at least three months after a popular uprising overthrows a country's government before I visit (I may have to make an exception to this rule in Africa). I tried repeatedly to get my airline, Gulf Air, to change my tickets to fly out of Calcutta, but I was always given the run around. "You must come in to the Calcutta office with your tickets, sir!". It didn't occur to him that I could fax him the tickets, so I suggested it. He tells me to call back in a few days... - very encouraging.

Next leg: Sikkim. I had been looking forward to this part of the trip since the beginning. Sikkim is north of Darjeeling, a rectangle of land wedged in between Nepal and Bhutan. It used to be an independent nation until, in a referendum in 1975, its people voted to become a state of India. The terrain is almost entirely rugged mountains, climaxing in Kanchenjunga (whose name means "The Five Treasures of Snows", for its five peaks) on its northwestern border, the third tallest mountain on Earth. Travel in Sikkim is highly regulated. You must get a (free) permit to visit, and it only buys you fifteen days. You can extend it to forty five, but after that, you had better get your ass out of there for something like a year. On top of that, I think about three quarters of the state requires additional permits to visit, ostensibly because they are "sensitive" border regions, particularly the northern border with Tibet. Some parts are forbidden outright to foreigners. Sounds like a pain, but I was excited to travel to an unspoiled ancient mountain region, with spectacular nature and old-fashioned ways.

Getting the Sikkim permit is absurdly, deliciously bureaucratic. First, you have to go to the District Magistrate’s office, fill out a form that they give you, and get it stamped by the bureaucrat on duty. Then, you walk out of the DM office, twenty minutes north, to the Foreign Registry Office. There, another supercilious state employee ignores you for a while, then takes your form, copies down your name and passport info in a ledger, puts another stamp on your form, and sends you on your way. Then, you get to walk all the way back to the District Magistrate’s office, where the functionary admires the image that has been impressed on your form across town, and issues you a piece of paper guaranteeing you safe passage to Sikkim. I can scarcely think of a better way to spend an afternoon.

My Belgian friends and I decided on an easy four day trek in West Sikkim. Before we left Darjeeling, I needed to do some serious tea shopping. After tasting about six different estates' produce, I purchased about 40 bucks and a kilo of tea, enough to last for at least of year of daily tea swilling.

After four days, in Darjeeling, the three of us packed up and headed for Pelling, a small town in Sikkim. It took four jeeps and five hours to get there. Roads in Sikkim, you see, don't go straight like they do on the Indian plain. They wind back and forth up and down the undulating green hills, so two cities that may be ten miles apart as the crow flies could be forty miles apart by road, and it's a slow, narrow, bumpy ride at that, so that trip can be expected to take an hour and a half. The way you get around is by "share" jeep. These work like miniature buses. They are privately run (I couldn't figure out who owns these jeeps, but I doubt it was the drivers), have fixed prices and run fixed routes at scheduled times. More or less. They will leave early if the jeep fills up, and might wait if they don't have enough people. "Enough" in this case, is usually at least eleven people, packed four to a hard bench about the width of an ordinary car. And the schedules are available only by word of mouth. Nothing printed, naturally. They also tend to depart infernally early in the morning, between 6:00 and 9:00, a pattern that makes getting around monumentally frustrating: if you don't get the info the day before, you are liable to miss your jeep in the morning and get stuck wherever you are for an entire extra day. You can hire a taxi, but they will rip you off good.

Pelling is a small town built along a road winding down a mountainside, with about twenty hotels and ten restaurants. It seems to exist solely for the admittedly beautiful views of the snow capped mountains to the north. What people do after they get bored of looking at the mountains is not entirely clear to me. There is really nothing to do here except go hiking, which Indian tourists don't do, as far as I can tell.

But we did. We (me, the two Belgian girls and two French girls who were in our hotel) found the beginning of our trekking route, set off and breathed in the fresh forest air. The path went down a steep mountainside, across the river, then had a long stretch along a paved, windy road. After at least 13 miles, we reached Kechupuri Lake, a tiny town at the end of the road. It’s little more than a couple of tea shops, but the main attraction is a beautiful Buddhist monastery built on the shores of a preternaturally calm transcendent lake. Weary after a loooong day of hiking, (ahem, the girls gave up about five miles before the town, hitching a ride on a jeep passing by, but not me 😉 ) we walked to the end of a deck flanked by dozens of prayer wheels, and laid down next to the lake, the scent of incense wafting over us. They say there are birds that live in the trees by the lake, which pick up and remove any debris that floats on the lake, part of the reason it is considered holy.

We had done enough walking, but for some reason, we chose to hike for another twenty minutes up a steep forest path to a small settlement at the top, with (surprise!) a Buddhist stupa at the top. The place had some electricity, and one rainfall-driven water spigot, but was otherwise blissfully out of touch with the modern world. We stayed in humble houses constructed of mud and straw spread over bamboo frames. There were wonderful views of the lake below and the mountainside all around, and the timeless feel of the village was exceedingly soothing. There were a half dozen other trekkers there, and we had a wonderful time sharing a communal dinner. I also tried what may be my favorite alcoholic drink. It is called chang, or Tibetan beer. To make it, you start by fermenting whole millet grains for about a week. Then, you pour them into a giant mug (in this case, it was a section of a big bamboo stalk about a foot high. How's that for biodegradability?). You then pour in boiling water to fill in the space between the grains, and drink it from the bottom through a straw (you guessed it - bamboo). When you drain it, just pour in more hot water! Think alcoholic tea. The taste is a little tart, but millety, like a cross between beer and white wine. Next time you find yourself in the vicinity of Tibet, you should give it a shot. mmm mm.

We had two more days of hiking ahead, but we decided to make a detour from our trekking route. Got up at the crack of dawn the next day, climbed down the steep wooded path to the lake, to get a share jeep to Rabangla, the site of a major monastery that was having a big festival that day. But when we got there at 7:00 AM, we found out that the jeep had left at 6:40 AM! Nobody really told us the time, and it seemed like seven was sufficiently early. However, we had little piece of good luck - a guy in town managed to phone the jeep en route and convince them to turn around and pick us up! How nice!

When the vehicle arrived, we were at a loss to figure out how we would fit in. There were, I kid you not, 22 people in or on the jeep. Not counting us. Lucky for us, there was still space on the rear fender! Aurelie managed to squeeze herself onto the bench in the back of the jeep, while Virginie and I joined a Sikkimese gentleman in standing on the four inch wide fender, hanging on for dear life to the luggage rack on the roof. The jeep stopped to drop people off and pick people up, achieving a peak population of 25 or 26, I'd say. We rode on the back for well nigh two hours. Several times, we had to get off and walk. It took me a while to figure out why, which was this - we weren't legally allowed to hang onto the back, so when we passed a police station, the jeep would drop us and wait for us just out of sight of the station. The experience of travel is in these details 😊. We got off and switched to a jeep where seats were mercifully available (my forearms were about to fall off). A mere three hours further brought us to the monastery.

The festival was a spectacle not to be missed. Hundreds of monks, big and small, paraded around the large courtyard before a magnificent, cascading roof temple painted in gold, green, purple and red. Many wore cartoonish stylized masks of various boddhisatvas or demons. The MC seemed to be a man in a fiery eastern dragon mask, cavorting about. The music, produced by a fantastic menagerie of horns and cymbals, was the very definition of cacophony. You can see a video of it here.

It seemed like exactly the sort of thing you would see in a photo-journalistic article in National Geographic. I wish I had a camera with more zoom to really get in there.

It was great and exotic and all watching the ceremony, for, like, an hour. By then, the various incarnations of Buddha milling about the courtyard gradually lost their allure. Bored, I wend down to the monastery kitchen for some momos that they said contained beef (no veg momos, oddly), but I swear it was really horse. Or tire. Then took a jeep back down to the town of Rabangla, which, I want to say, is officially the most uninspired town I have ever visited. A couple of friends and I spent a good hour trying to find a restaurant that had more than one dish that it was able to prepare. Approximately 50% of the stores were liquor shops. Check out the photo of the sign for Hotel 10zing, which pretty much sums up the town. The one cool thing I did, which I had been meaning to do for a while, was get an old fashioned shave at a barber shop. It's a little disconcerting having a man you don't know pull a surgically sharp blade across your neck. But, I escaped with nary a scatch, and I emerged the closest shave I think I've ever had. This was the highlight of Rabangla.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that we were desperate to leave. The Belgians and I hired a taxi at the rapacious price of $4.50 each, to take us back to Pelling, where we had left our luggage that we didn't want to carry on our trek. We picked up our bags and made some phone calls, unsure of where to go next. Sadly, it turned out that I would have to part with my new travel partners. They wanted to go down to the plains to see Varnasi and some other important sites, while I could not imagine spending another day in that heat. I elected to go to Gangtok (literally "Hill Top"), the capitol and largest city in Sikkim. Naturally, the jeeps had all left for the day, so I had to hire a jeep to drive me the whole four hour ride for the kingly sum of eighteen bucks.

When I got there, it was dark, and it was at this point that I realized that the Belgians had forgotten to give me back my Lonely Planet India Guide, so I was stuck in this town with no idea what hotels are good, or what there is to do. Well, I should have taken the advice of several people I had met in Sikkim: stay away from Gangtok. The place is a grimy, smoky blotch on a mountainside, and it is no place for a solo traveler. I wanted to do an expedition to northern Sikkim, to Yumthang or Chongmo Lake, but all the travel agents insisted on a group of two to four. Try as I might, I couldn't find any other tourists interested in joining me, and none of the agents had any groups leaving the next day. I should point out, at this point, that the date was May 9, and, as I had recently learned that I could not change my May 15th flight home, I had to get to Kathmandu by May 14 at the latest. Disgusted, I left Gangtok for Darjeeling in the afternoon sixteen hours after I had arrived, having seen almost nothing worth reporting.

So I got a jeep back to Darjeeling, where I resumed chowing the wonderful food found there. Unable to find anything else to do with the remaining time, I decided to embark the next morning on the long journey to Kathmandu. It was three and a half hours to Siliguri, then another hour to the Nepal border, Kharkabitta. Buses don't cross the border, so I had to walk across. This was a remarkable experience - the border was delineated by an empty, treeless green riverbed, traversed by a long causeway. I don't believe I have walked across a national border before, and it was an empowering feeling - knowing that I was able to walk, under my own power, from India all the way to Nepal. I passed through immigration at the border, then got on a bus bound for Kathmandu. They said it would take 13 hours. We drove through the night across the steamy Terai, the low plains in the south of Nepal. The terrain is jungle, like much of India northern India. The Mahindra highway that we followed runs the entire length of the country, and was the best road I had seen in Nepal, smooth and a full two lanes. There were lots of stupid military obstructions that the bus had to swerve wildly to negotiate, but other than that, it pretty good. At the 13 hour mark, we had just turned north into the mountains along the Tribuvan national highway, nowhere near Kathmandu.

Four hours later, we hit standstill traffic coming into Kathmandu. By the time I got off, the ride had stretched to 17 1/2 hours, the longest of my life. Was it worth saving the $110 dollar difference between the bus and a plane? For me, yes, as it let me see a big swath of Nepal that I had not seen before. But I would probably skip it next time. Once I dropped off my bags with my old friend, the Kathmandu Guest House, I looked up to see a Kathmandu palpably different from the one that I had left. Not only had some early rains cleansed the air of much dust and smoke, but the political eruption had actually relieved much of the tension that had been weighing down the city. Tourism was still very low, but store operators were optimistic that it would improve now.

It was nice coming back to a city that I had spent a fair bit of time in previously. I knew my way around. When I got in a taxi, I wasn't so worried about being ripped off, and I knew where to find my favorite restaurants and stores. Which is what I did. If you want to get a little bit of the feel of Nepal, check out these two videos - a firsthand view of riding a bicycle rickshaw through the bustling streets of Kathmandu.

So here is where the first chapter of my odyssey ends. I spent my last three days in Kathmandu, buying pashminas and other miscellany that I would give to people back home. The last cool thing I did was take a "mountain flight." It's a one-hour propeller plane ride that soars north of Kathmandu and buzzes the summits of Mount Everest and several other great peaks of the Himalayas. Unfortunately, there was a blanket of thick clouds over the whole region, and only the tips of the mountains were visible. Everest is so tall that the summit towers over the cloud deck, but its massive base and tentacle-like glaciers were hidden from view. It was still impressive, but the right season to take this excursion is in the fall, when clear skies are more common.

On May 13, at 5:00 PM I embarked on the thirty hour, three leg flight home. I landed at JFK, safe but exhausted, at noon on May 14th.


Epilogue

Thank you all for reading my blog. The compliments, support, appreciation and comments I have received from friends reading it is deeply flattering. It helps me feel that there is a little bit of purpose to my travel. When you are on the road alone, it is sometimes tough to have nobody next to you, if only to say "isn't that incredible!" Writing a blog gives me a chance to do that. So, thank you all for reading. This sounds like a goodbye, but it's not meant to be - my travels aren't over yet. But…

As of Aug 1, I am still in the states. I had intended to leave months ago, but I've been dogged by a stomach parasite that WILL NOT DIE. I'm finishing my fourth course of antiparasitic medicine, and I still am not well. It is really miserable. As soon as I am pronounced well again, I will buy a ticket to another far away place. I hate feeling sick, waiting to get better, with nothing to do. If anybody has any advice on how to shake a tenacious Giardia infection, please share it with me. Modern medicine has thus far let me down.

I will post another update as soon as there is something to talk about. Sorry to end this on such a low note. I look forward to the next one being a whole lot happier.

Dan

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Photos

Some dude
This is cab of the bus that I rode in to get to Delhi.

Darjeeling toy train
How Cute!

Misty Darjeeling Hills
This is the view from my hotel restaurant balcony.

Through the slats
Playing with focus depth. This balcony gives a taste of what Darjeeling feels like.

Balcony
Another shot I liked.

Street scene
A classic victorian building.

Tea!
As far at the eye can see. The leaves in the foreground are ivy, tho.

Tea planatation
Me and Virginie amid acres of blossoming tea

Kids
In Chowrasta square. They were cute.

Sunrise
4:54 AM at Tiger Hill

Me with mountain
It could be Kanchenjunga, but it's hard to tell through the haze

Yiga Choling
Monastery. Great colors, eh?

Blue Bhairab
I think that's the name of this god, in the interior of the Yiga Choling Monastery. He is supposed to remind us about mortality (or something).

Big Buddha.
9 or 10 foot gilded buddha. Have you had enough of these yet?

The Gurkha War Memorial
Has a priceless view

Hills
Another view of the lush Darjeeling landscape

Toy Train Tracks
They are ridiculously small!

Sikkim Permit
This crusty old sign characterizes the whole process of getting a permit

Precipitous Street Scene
I love those q-tip trees that dot the hills.

Sikkim Checkpoint
Aurelie and Virgine at the rural checkpoint on the southern border of Sikkim. The guards had fun posing for our photos.

Share Jeep #1
At the checkpoint stop. This one had just eleven people in it.

Kanchenjunga
This, I think, is the world's third highest mountain, Kanchenjunga. From Pelling.

Kanchenjunga Zoom
Damn do I wish I had a better zoom lens.

Prayer flags
Along the rural trail we were walking

Me
This is, like, the only good picture of me I got on the whole trip.

Monastery
At Kechapuri Lake

Monastery Entrance
At Kechapuri Lake

Painted Carved Rock
On a path at the monastery

Walkway
Next to the lake. Prayer wheels are on the left and right

Arty Shot
The lake through a prayer flag. It didn't exactly come out the way I wanted it, but I like it anyway.

Above the lake
Here's a house in the village we slept in above Kechapuri lake

Stupa
in the village above Kechapuri lake

The Proprietor
This old man ran the guest huts we stayed at. Very cheerful, very tranquil.

The Jeep
You can't quite tell, but there are about 22 people in this jeep right now.

Rabangla festival
Little monklings at the monastery festival

Hats and Horns
Quack!

MC Dragon
Check out that mask. Scary!