Blogs from Darjeeling, West Bengal, India, Asia - page 6

On day two we were awoken at an ungodly hour to see the sunrise over the Himalayas. It was really quite worth it, and then we went back inside for a lovely breakfast. We had loads of porridge, doughnuty bread with jam, and milk tea. It was a great start to the day. After we got walking we descended about 400 m to the low point of the ridge hike. After reaching the minimum, we began to climb, and the rest of the day was entirely spent going uphill. All in all, we did 18 km in length, 400 m down and then 900 m up if I remember correctly. The ascent was exhausting. There were a couple of points on the hike up to Sandakphu where I was thinking about just giving up, but I ... read more

Day 1 - Still in Cherapunjee we checked out and clambered into a sumo to make our way back to Shillong. Here we flocked to Subway and then headed back to Earle Holiday Home where we spent the night before leaving for Kurseong. Waking the next day we headed to the ticket office to book our train tickets from Guwahati to Siliguri, before taking a 3 hour sumo to Guwahati train station. Arriving at Guwahati we experienced the same reception .... nowhere to leave our bags and general unfriendliness! Feeling hungry we made our way to a bar which was very dark and playing cheesy music, not to mention the staff trying to charge us double for our food. Annoyed we decided to wait out 4 hours at the station platform until it was time to ... read more

Being from a Service Family background, my love for travelling and seeing new places grew leaps and bounds at a very young age. It was when I was about nine ten years when my father planned a trip to Bhutan from Dehradun. We were to travel by road as my uncle, who too was in the Army and on deputation to the Border Roads, was the Director of projects in Bhutan. After entering Bhutan through Phuntschilling, i simply fell in love with the majestic beauty of the mountains, the flora fauna and especially all those wild strawbwerry plants growing in abundance besides the roads. the best thing that has always stayed with me was that in spite of the strawberries and cherries growing wildly, the people of Bhutan were completely uninterested to stop and gather them ... read more

Some people may think it's pointless to travel to the Himalayas in monsoon season. The rain, the landslides, the fog, the veiled views, blah blah blah. Well, all those things may be true, but you also get hill towns with almost no other tourists, guesthouses with rates cut in half, and just possibly a glimpse of those mighty mountain tops...if you're patient and a little lucky!! We left Varanasi in the middle of the afternoon to start our long train journey across northeastern India into the hill town of Darjeeling. We had an evening stop in Patna where we boarded our overnight train to New Jalpaiguri, the jumping off point for the hill stations, northeast states, Nepal and Bhutan. There are really two (cheap) ways to Darjeeling from here; train and jeep. Since we just spent ... read more

Hello from the Himalayas!! Yes I have reached Darjeeling and today I actually rejoiced at being cold (yes I know this is me!). I have had to buy another jumper and reintroduce my feet to those strange things called socks and shoes but its so lovely to not be drowning in my own sweat for once! Getting here has been a bit of a mammoth mission but more of that later. So i think last time i wrote i was the other end of this giant country by the beach. Well i spent a few days there checking out the old stuff before i did a 24 hour train ride to get me to Hampi. This is the place everyone i meet tells me to go and it really is beautiful. Its surrounded by boulder strewn ... read more