Kolkata to Varanasi

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So we arrive in Kolkata, determined not to be here for too long as from what we read it wasn't the most place to be.. Howrah Station had other ideas. Trying to find the exit amongst half a million people was hard enough, dodging taxi-wallahs, "Yes sir, Taxxxiiii", and stares, aiming for the pre-paid taxi booth which by now was the way forward. We queued for what seemed forever in the rain and intense humidity before we got to the front, paid a ridiculously small fare for how far we were going (this is why we discovered it's the way forward) and got into the next cab, driven by a guy who couldn't speak anything other than Bengali. Fab. The destination, our hotel, was written on the prepay slip but apparently this didn't matter as he took us to the side of a main road by some market, "here, here"
''Uh, no mate, not here, SG Road"
"Here, Newmarket"
At which point we spied two cops whom we beckoned over to try to help us translate to this guy. After we thought we had reached some kind of common ground, off we headed in the direction from whence we came. He dropped us at the first sign of SG Road, by this point we'd had enough of this joker and hopped out the cab leaving calls of "rupees, rupees" yeah nice try mate. We found a cafe to get our bearings, a nice guy directed us to where the hotel was, and we finally made it only for the reception dude to say those words no-one wants to hear... "sorry no rooms"
"Whaaaat...really?"
"Sorry"
"Do you know of a good place near here"
"We have rooms with a separate bathroom."
"You just said.. oh never mind, yeah we'll be fine with that!"
So we ended up with a massive room with an old school 17 inch TV and the world's strongest ceiling fan so smiles all round!
We had a plan for the next day, to be as efficient as possible to enable us to get out of Kolkata and continue with the tour. Head to the Chinese Embassy, miles out of town in Salt Lake City (no, not in America) first thing then head back to the railway reservation booking office which is conveniently located nowhere near the railway. So we headed to the embassy, after a lot of help from random strangers, not for us I might add, for the taxi driver... and breezed through the process of getting the visa. It would take one day and we would need to bring a banker's draft of the fee tomorrow. Easy.
Part 2, queue up for two hours at the reservation office (which had one benefit, meeting a really nice guy, an expat Indian named Jay who lives in Australia and invited us to stay with him in Sydney!), get to the front 5 minutes before the office closes only to be told that we had to have our passports, not just the details of it which we'd brought. 2 issues here:
1) our passports were with the Chinese Embassy, hence why we'd written down all the details from it, and had a spare photocopy..
2) not once on our whole trip had we been asked to produce our passports to a ticket office, we'd been asked for the passport numbers before but we just blagged them as we didn't know. One time, the station master even blagged them for us. But we weren't going to win here. Now let me tell you, inconsistency is possibly the last and most annoying thing in the world when you've been running around Kolkata in 35 degrees. We were fuming. All we wanted to do was get on with our trip, not have to spend even more time in this city! So we had to come back the next morning after picking up our passports avec visa, queued up again for ages and then got told that the train we wanted (which had "plenty of seats" on it last night) was now full. so that meant having to stay another night here! Arrghh!

But ya know what. Kolkata is actually a cool place. The subway metro is immense (5p to go anywhere), the food is good (kathi rolls from hole-in-the-wall kitchens are amazing) and there's some pretty spectacular sights, namely the Victoria Memorial which, if the Taj Mahal wasn't there, and the fact it was built by the British wasn't a problem, would be a major tourist attraction. We ended up having a good time in Kolkata, not sorry to leave mind you, but not the nightmare city we'd been led to believe!

Darjeeling beckoned for us, and we arrived in New Jaipalguri Station, 5 hours by road from Darjeeling, in the midst of a thunderstorm at 11am! slightly perturbed but not to be beaten we got a tuk-tuk to the bus station where we were told that there were no buses due to it being too dangerous, but we could get a shared jeep.. and this is precisely what we did, for 100 rupees each (about 1.30) we went on a winding, rather daunting jeep ride for 4 hours! We then got thrown out of the jeep in the middle of a busy market and had no idea where we were, let alone how to get to our proposed hotel. But then out of the masses appeared two angels!
"hey guys, you just arrived?"
"hi, uh yeah"
"where you staying?"
"well hopefully Andy's Guesthouse.."
"oh, our place is opposite and we're headed up there now if you wanna follow us?"
OMG. AMAZING.
"that would be great thank you so much!"
So off we trundle through tiny little back streets, always uphill, until we reach the top of the town and get a room at Andy's, for 2 nights as we had booked up the rest of our week somewhere a bit more exciting..
Anyway Darjeeling is a town in the clouds, 7000ft above sea level (twice the height of Mt Snowdon!) and has amazing panoramic views of the Himalaya mountains including the 3rd highest in the world, Kangchenjunga (no we hadn't either). But when I said Darjeeling is a town in the clouds, I meant it. We spent the week straining to see through the mist to maybe catch a glimpse of a part of a mountain but alas, we only saw the rolling hills that made up the valley below. A little disappointing but it gives us both an excuse to come back one day 😊
There's plenty more to do than just gaze at the views, so we moved out of Andy's after 2 nights and headed across town to Revolver. A Beatles themed hotel. In the most northern reaches of India. Right.
But it was so right! We'd come across this place online and it had received incredible reviews from recent guests and decided it would be funny to stay here! We checked into our room 'Ringo', met the amazingly lovely Vikash and his wife who ran the place, had the best coffee in the whole of India, tasted home cooked Naga cuisine from Nepal, and generally had an amazing time there! This place will be in all the guide books' next editions and we felt a smidgen of pride at having found it ourselves first!!
Whilst here, we visited the Himalaya zoo housing species only found in this mountainous area including Tigers, black bears, red pandas, mountain wolves and snow leopards, and most of the enclosures were really big and well designed for the animals which is always good to see. We took a ride on the Himalayan Mountain Railway, a very famous railway by all accounts and a world heritage site, did a bit of shopping in the markets, drank some 3-second brew tea at the Happy Valley Tea Plantation (they supply Harrods with Darjeeling tea!) and plenty of cakes in the bakeries around town 😊 I really hope I get to come back here one day, when it's clear obviously, as its one of my favourite places so far on the trip!

We had sorted out our train to Varanasi after some delay and frustration (well it wouldn't be right if it was easy...) but the drawback is it would take us 41 hours from start to finish, including a 14 hour stopover in...drumroll.....KOLKATA! ugh.
It was a pretty gruesome affair, but we managed to kill our time by watching two films in the cinema, stuffing our faces with pick n mix and sitting in coffee shops for far longer than i'm sure anyone ever has done before. Tired, smelly and in need of a good soak (not the Ganges, we weren't that desperate...) we arrived in Varanasi and were smacked round the face by the heat, in a scene reminiscent of the tango adverts of the late 90's. We got in a pre-paid tuk-tuk and headed for our guesthouse....

G&R
xx

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