Blogs from Darjeeling, West Bengal, India, Asia - page 20

Sadly saying goodbye to Kolkata, I jumped on a train to Silguri - the gateway to Darjeeling and the Himalayas. Another blockbuster journey - 13 hours on a sleeper train, half an hour by cycle rickshaw to the jeep stands, and then a mad three hour jeep ride up tortuous mountain roads. (Hill station my arse. I've seen hills in England and they don't take three hours to drive up. It's a mountain station, and there's no two ways about it.) It's pretty tiring, the travel, and although the sleepers are ok, you still don't get a lot of sleep, with the train stopping every hour or so and new passengers getting on. Met a very nice bloke from round here, who was travelling from Kolkata back to his home in Siliguri. What I didn't realise ... read more

Upon arrival in this pretty little town, some downtime seemed like a wise thing. We needed to absorb, sight to soul via brain, the wonder of what we had just experienced on our first Himalayan encounter. We also needed to acclimatise to the dulling effects of altitude change. In addition, signs of an incipient cold-attack were pressing. Enter three elderly, good Tibetan men, the hotelier, the general store proprietor and the restauranteur. The one settled us into his top floor, corner suite, englassed at the right angle and heated by a log fire. After some hot Darjeeling tea, he sent us to the general store, where the other good man poured a litre of fresh orange juice each into us, forwarded us post- haste to his Druggist-Chemist ,carrying his own prescription of what we needed, and ... read more

OK ....Varanasi was much better than expected...thank goodness....made two new friends ...a man from South Africa and a woman from Varanasi. Also, I have brought with me the affliction that the driver in Agra warned about .... although I stilll question as to how the varanasi-vengence would dare to come my way....in all my years of travel and eating everything anywhere this is the first time. I must confess I have gone the way of emodium only because of the prospect of continued long train rides and upperbunk reservations (not my choice). Who knew all the trains would be full, that it was winter vacation for the kids and that the man we hired to reserve our seats could do no better. He has prbably done very well just getting us on a train. A woman ... read more

I was out of my room by 7AM in order to try to catch some mountains unawares, and I was rewarded with a faint sliver of Kanchenjunga off to the north. Though the majority of the mountain was hidden by cloud/mist, there was enough visible to notice that i) it's damn big, and ii) there's snow clinging to the peaks. On a completely clear day, it must look breathtaking. Darjeeling is quite high up, at 2,100m, but K is 4 times that height. As the morning went on, the view improved though still not to the point where I could get a decent photo. At around midday, it started getting mistier again so I gave up on K and ventured down to Darjeeling Zoo. The place wasn't as grim as I imagined it would be, and ... read more

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 ... read more