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Published: April 16th 2007
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Darjeeling 10
The Darjeeling tea itself at the Tukvar tea Estate Darjeeling - Kathmandu - Tibet Basically Darjeeling was awesome, made some cool new friends with the
other volunteers there and had a great relationship with my hosts - Major
Wangdi (aka Tom Cruise) and his wife Neema who are both legends!! Really loved
teaching at my school and it was actually kinda hard to leave! They put
on a bit of a party for me on my last day where the kids performed some
dances they had been preparing and the teachers got me pissed! Felt quite bad
being a volunteer in a poor school in India, getting drunk on local beer which
the kids were bringing in whenever I got low!! Had a great day tho and
apparantly I made quite an impression in my few weeks as some of the
kids were even crying that I was leaving!! I had a procession of gifts given
to me by teachers and students including 20 odd silk scarves, flowers,
letters and cards which was really nice. As for teaching them, the top 2 classes
now know enough about a PC to turn it on/off, open/close programs, use word
and paint and the piece of work I got them to put together turned out pretty
good
Darjeeling 9
The crew outside Tukvar Tea Estate, looking our best! too so I was chuffed with that.
Darjeeling became pretty routine with school everyday and I didnt get up
to anything else hugely exciting while I was there other than getting drunk
at the weekends for about 3 quid!
So we eventually sorted out our plans for heading to Nepal which
involved a few jeep rides and a short flight in a 19 seater plane over the
himalayas to Kathmandu which was all pretty cool. We spent just under a week in
Kathmandu, mainly chilling out in the travelleres mecca that is Thamel
where bars ae open late, shops are cheap and you're offered 'smoke' every
10mins or so. Our first hotel in Thamel was pretty shoddy with no hot water at
all and brown water from the sink and toilet - nice! We did the usual visits
to the monkey temple and Durbir square where hippies used to lurk a few
decades ago and also booked our tour into Tibet (the only way into Tibet is from
Nepal on an official organised tour). Jade was in shoppers paradise and
bought plenty while I salivated over Asias highest bungy jump and/or
swing which we did eventually book for
Darjeeling 11
The legendary singer at our local in Darjeeling our last day. After changing hotels for
a much nicer and cheaper place, we finally had a shower and felt clean for
the first time in a long time!
After some more shopping, Friday finally came around and we were up at
5am for a 4hr drive to 'the last resort' for our 160m high swing through a
Himlayan gorge, near the Tibetan border. There were about 20 people
there to jump, most of which were bungying as they didnt have the balls for the
swing! The jump was from a small platform on the edge of a bridge
suspended between the 2 sides of a 50metre approx wide gorge. The swing was a leap
of pure faith of the edge into the rocks and small white water river below
for an 8 second freefall (twice that of the bungy) before a rope attached to
your harness and another wire which joined the sides of the gorge above
took over and you then swung like tarzan at about 100mph through the gorge. -
IT WAS AWESOME! so much so I had go again! This time though I had the
harness on backwards and the rope this time was attached
to my back so I had
nothing to hold on to at all and ended up flying like superman through the
gorge! Jade also did the first jump and loved it after being a little nervy
beforehand.
We are now half way through our tour across Tibet to Lhasa which sadly is
very Chinese now but the views at 5,000 metres up are pretty spectacular
to say the least! Its like desert land with mountain peaks all around and
the odd Tibetan village hear and there between the larger Chinese towns.
We've driven past everest and a few other high peaks and I've also had real
Chinese food, in China which was cool!
I've probably missed tons out but its hard to remember as the last few
weeks have flown by!
So we should be in Lhasa by Thursday and we will book our train ticket
to Xi'an in mainland china then.
Oh and I've shaved all my hair off and managed to get a barber to give
my bum fluff a shive with a new cut throat razor which was fun!
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