Darjeeling

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March 31-April 4

A five hour jeep ride from Siliguri and we arrive in the famous hill station of Darjeeling and out of the heat of the lowlands. Darjeeling is beautiful, I think. At least pictures of Darjeeling and the Himalayas to the north look beautiful, but the persistent cloud cover and smoky haze limit our visibility to just the immediate valley.

What a difference Darjeeling is! No bicycles, rickshaws, or cows on the streets, all due to the fact that the city is perched on a steep, narrow ridge; with houses and streets perched at the most precarious angles on the steep hillsides. Share jeeps prevail. Remnants of what once was a huge pine forest still populate the city, and the streets are crowded with Bengalis, Nepalis, Tibetans, Hindus, and Muslims. The Bengalis love sweets, and sweetshops are everywhere.

In addition to just walking around town, we visited the Tibetan Self-help Refugee Center, the Darjeeling Zoo, and the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. The latter two share the same grounds, and proved to be a great experience. The zoo consisted entirely of Himalayan species, including pheasants, monkeys, barking deer, wild yak, Tibetan wolves, Bengal tigers, Siberian tigers, snow leaopards, common leopards, spotted leopards, and a Himalayan bear. All zoos are to a degree depressing, with even the largest exhibits never providing enough space for far-ranging animals, but on a whole this zoo was clean with large spaces for the animals. The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute was a special treat, with two museums, one on climbing in general and the other devoted to the history of climbing on Mount Everest. They had both an indoor and outdoor climbing area, and I made arrangements to climb with them the following day.

Unfortunately that evening I got hit hard by some bug, and carried a fever with aches and chills for the next 36 hours. I never knew what it was or where it came from, but it came and went very fast and ruined my chance to climb at the same institute that trained some of the best climbers in the world. The remaining time was spent arranging permits to trek in the neighboring state of Sikkim, taking high tea at a posh hotel, and regaining strength.

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