Blogs from West Bengal, India, Asia - page 70

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 ... read more

Darjeeling Photos... read more

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

Unbelievable. Humidity and pollution so high that walking the street is like being repeatedly slapped around the face by a warm and rather dirty flannel. And the streets - so hectic they make Mumbai look like Milton Keynes on a quiet Sunday, and Bangalore like Worthing on Sea off-season. The traffic is gridlocked, every pavement is crammed with stalls, touts swoop on you as soon as you stop moving, and the beggars are spectacular. You almost feel like clapping them on the back and saying 'well done'. (But I think that might be in poor taste.) The traffic is an experience in itself. Everything is knackered, from the taxis pouring out black exhaust fumes to the old boys pulling the human powered rickshaws. Forget auto rickshaws. Or bicycle rickshaws. This is the real deal. For a ... 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