Paul & Luiza´s World Tour

From Siliguri, we take a shared Jeep taxi to Darjeeling, with the driver plus 10 other passengers.  Uncomfortable but going up surely. The views are amazing and, half way to Darjeeling the jeep taxi breaks down, yeah, great that's all we need after 28 hours of horror travelling to get this far!!! All you need after so long n the road is to freeze your butt off waiting for another taxi.  At least we had each other, more like 10 of us, to keep warm.  We get another taxi and get to the hotel which by the way has so many stairs up to the reception and finally our attic room (another 3 flights) that we almost give up - finally defeated.

The hotel is nice and ran by a lovely local Tibetan family. They are very helpful and friendly. All the tourists talk to each other, everyone is so happy to be here. It’s cold and cloudy, 2,134 metres high, amazing views, fantastic food (we’re already totally addicted to momos, Tibetan fare, much like Chinese dumplings, chicken, cheese or vegies for lunch and dinner) and I discover the most amazing ginger tea to keep my soul and butt warm.

The first few days we don’t do much as Paul is feeling sick from the altitude. It should have been me, but somehow I don’t feel anything. People always say that altitude sickness is unpredictable… We try to take it easy and acclimatize. On the 3^rd day, we share a taxi with our new Swedish mates (the same ones from the train station) and go to the very nice Zoo (the red pandas are so awesome, we want to take them home, check out the pics), the mountaineering society museum, and the lovely Tibetan Refugee Centre.  To end a fabulous day, we have some seriously good street food, eating absolutely everything available from the several stalls. We also do the lovely toy train ride, which is also world heritage.

Darjeeling is really fabulous, Ok, it’s cold and very high, but everyone is so nice and polite, the tourists are nice, chilled, normal people, really chatty, the locals don’t stare at you, it’s clean and the views of the Himalayas are just amazing. This place is just great! The mountain people are very gentle, Tibetan/Nepalese looking, so, it’s a diverse experience.  We really enjoyed the Darjeeling experience and, just for a change, decided to stay for a little longer and stay for 9 days. 

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

Before leaving India: Darjeeling - The Dekeling Hotel – quick karma improvement

But wait, there’s more! It’s our last night, after 9 days in Darjeeling.  We have dinner with our Swedish mates and go to the room to pack.  But before we get there, another quick story: a few days before, we noticed a young man, a boy really, helping out at the hotel and the restaurant.  He looks like he doesn’t have a jumper and it’s freezing in Darjeeling.   I ask the restaurant lady if it would be ok for us to buy him a warm jumper and she says yes please. So, we go out and get him a nice jumper with a cool, flashy T-shirt thrown in together as we talked about how hard it must be to grow up never having anything nice or new to wear.  We leave it at the restaurant and a few minutes later, the hotel owner, a nice lady, knocks on our door with the boy, who wants to say thank you. He’s really thrilled. Hopefully we got some more good points in our good karma booklet!

So, a few days later, when we are packing to leave, the nice lady (hotel owner/family matriarch, from what we gather), knocks on our door again and presents us with a pack of very good Darjeeling tea and two white silk scarves, blessed (from what we can understand, by the Dalai Lama).  She puts the scarves around our necks and wishes us a nice journey.

All just because we are good people (hey, her words, not mine). Namaste Baby!  We go back to packing and drift off to to sleep with a nice, warm feeling.  

We've organised a car with driver for a 13 hour trip first to the border with Nepal and then on to Kathmandu.  Tomorrow is goodbye India, after almost 6 months in this crazy country, I’m sure we are going to miss it. Anyway, hello Nepal!