Our biggest most challenging day of travel!

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We left Kalimpong today and strated out on what was going to be a big day of travel. On Kezia's advice we travelled by jeep as far as Siliguri and enjoyed a delicious lunch in a cafe. The temperature away from the mountains had increased which hit us big time at this oppressive train station in New Jalpaiguri. The station was busy, dirty and beggars everywhere. We boarded the train at 2.00pm and shared our 6 berth cabin with a young Indian mother who seemed friendly but could not speak English. Opposite our berth was an older Indian couple, we later discovered that the wife snored and the husband stared at us continuosly. The train ride was an experience! I made friends with a boy who was around 5 years of age and had loads of energy. He entertained himself with my phone and liked playing a game on it, and without English we were communicating. We witnessed an aggressive argument between an adult passenger who was travelling on a child's ticket and the conductor . The passenger was kicked off the train at the next station. We all endeavoured to get some sleep under the supervision of the staring husbabnd. Marco had a nightmare and started yelling in the middle of the night, the staring man was saying " go to sleep', I eventually jumped up and calmed Marco down. We all settled back down and Nikki started laughing and said ' Marco's just had the biggest Spaz attack ever". Marco had no recall of this in the morning. The train had a Western toilet , but you had to be brave to use it as the journey progressed! We eventually reached Patna at 5.00am in the morning.

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