Himalayan India

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Saturday 24 May
Drove down from Gangtok to Rangpo where we left Sikkim to reenter West Bengal and on to Kalimpong. A bumpy ride as usual but nice views of the hills as we descended to the valley although there was still some low cloud hiding the distant peaks. We followed the Teesta River for quite a while. It is very muddy at the moment because of work being done upstream as well as the heavy rains a few days ago. We climbed back up to Kalimpong which is 1250m so not as high as Darjeeling. It is on the trade route to Tibet, Nepal & Bhutan & was once the headquarters of the governor of Bhutan.

We are staying at the Himalayan Hotel which was formerly a private house visited by many mountaineers such as Mallory & Irving in the 1920’s & later by Mallory & Tenzing. It has a pretty garden & supposedly a view of Kanchenjunga but we did not see it because of haze.

It is much warmer here & sunny so we sat in the garden to have some lunch before we strolled down through the town to see the market where many people come from all around to sell their fruit, vegetables, grains & spices. We then puffed back up the hill to our hotel!

Sunday 25 May
We visited 3 Buddhist monasteries & one Church today. Two of the monasteries were of the Yellow Hat sect &the other was a Black Hat sect. They are colourfully decorated with paintings all over the walls & many statues of various sizes of Buddha in his various forms. Some have large collections of Tibetan manuscripts & Thankas which are Tibetan religious paintings on cloth full of detail & very beautiful. The monasteries are usually high up the hillside so they command a good view.

There was a vibrant service in progress when we visited the Mary, Mother of God Church. It is interesting because the murals & statues of Mary & Jesus are dressed in local costumes.

Finally we visited a Cacti Nursery which had a great collection of all sizes & shapes of cacti, many of which were in flower. We walked back down the hill to our hotel in the warm, sunny afternoon with pretty views down the valley to the Teesta River.

Monday 26 May
Twisty, busy & hot drive back down from Kalimpong to Bagdogra with good views.
Flew with Jet Airways back to Kolkata. Traffic very busy so it took a while to get to our hotel, the Oberoi Grand, which is very grand! Much posher than the hotels we have been staying in recently.

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