Darjeeling
We stayed in Siliguri for one night and as it was pretty uneventful I will skip straight to the main feature! We caught a jeep from Siliguri to Darjeeling which wound ever so slowly up the mountains on a very slim road (that teetered too near the edge for my liking) for about 3 hours. It was unbearable weather wise in Siliguri but the higher we went, the more blissful it became. I cannot describe the relief we felt after being in a sweatbox for 7 weeks! I was excited to put a cardigan on! We were crammed in opposite an Indian man who spent the entire journey chewing red tobacco (also a mild narcotic) and spitting it out the window. From a distance this never bothered me but when your face is about 2ft away, it aint pretty to see red saliva in between someone’s teeth (eww). We really wanted to catch the toy train but it wasn’t in commission from Siliguri at the time.
We had booked ourselves into the Ailment Hotel for one night only so we could move to the reputable Andy’s Guesthouse the day after. It felt so strange sleeping with duvets again (it drops to about 4 degrees at night in Darjeeling) and we were impressed with the spotless surroundings. That night we went to a pizzeria (with real cheese!!!) and had an early night. The next day we checked into Andy’s which was spotless and cosy as can be. The owner looked a bit like a hobbit and was very sweet to us, he said that his wife normally ran things but was in Calcutta having an operation. We unpacked (something we love to do as it means we are standing still somewhere in the world for a while) and headed out to sample the local food which included Tibetan, Indian, Nepali, English and Italian – we hadn’t been this spoilt for choice in a while.
Whilst in Darjeeling we did the following:
1. Visited the Himalayan Zoo and Mountaineering Institute.
2. Walked there and back to the small town of Ghoom (20km round trip).
3. Visited the Happy Valley Tea Estate which is where Harrods get their Darjeeling tea. This was lots of fun and consisted of a lady bustling us (and others) into her shop to tell us about the tea and give us a taster.
4. Visited a few monasteries and generally took long walks.
We had a great time in Darjeeling because the weather was so pleasant (like an English spring), the atmosphere was relaxed and the town itself was so quaint. The town is built into the mountain and consists of narrow roads winding up the hill and finally coming to a stop at a large town square.
We met some lovely travellers there and the main person that stands out to us was Max from Bristol (we liked him so much we met him again in Nepal!). We got chatting to him in a breakfast place, had some cigarettes (it’s our fault he started smoking again – sorry Max!) and generally hung out a lot for the rest of the week. He took us to a bar one night that served super cheap drinks but everything closes by 9pm in Darjeeling except a hotel bar called Tower View so we ended up there. This was definitely THE backpacker place to be and the beer was a steal. We were sat on the patio smoking and chatting when this bloke from Liverpool came and sat down. He was quite an imposing man, built like a brick shit house and pretty loud. He had been travelling and living out of the UK for around 20 years and I was later told that he spent some time in a prison in Denmark for armed robbery! I don’t know how it happened but the conversation steered onto the general hippy bullshit that you have to listen to in all of India (I’m sure Ahmad has covered this in previous entries). The scouser and another guy from San Francisco were leading the discussion and it got pretty ridiculous pretty quick. I can’t remember exactly what was said but it involved people having crystals in their skulls, people living like robots because of their computer brains, why trees are more important than people and other bullshit. It got so ridiculous that I couldn’t listen to it anymore at which point the scouser started getting really obnoxious and shouting his views at everyone. He asked me what my job had been at home and when I told him he said it was a waste of time! He said that people who had been sexually abused as children deserved it because they did something wrong in a previous life! I told him he was talking shit and he left shortly afterwards saying ‘Bye Laura the girl from Probation who knows jack shit’!!
Soon afterwards that bar closed so we bought some beers and headed to the American guys hotel with Max and some German guys. We got kicked out of there by the hotel owner and headed to an empty market stall. By about 12am we were pretty tired (our stamina has waned somewhat!) and decided to head back. India is full of stray dogs and Darjeeling is no exception however, after about 9pm the streets belong to the dogs in Darjeeling because there are literally no people around. During the day they are quite sweet and will let you stroke them but at night they become dangerous. We had to walk back in the pitch black listening to dogs growling and snapping their teeth together – it was the most scared I have ever been and I thought we were going to be attacked. A dog we had stroked earlier that evening also decided to follow us home (in a nice way) but this just attracted more attention from the other dogs! We had to walk really slowly but our instincts were telling us to leg it – pretty nerve racking I tell you.