Darjeeling in the Eastern Himalayas, it has an average elevation of 2,045 metres (6,709 ft)

 Kangchenjunga, the world's third-highest mountain Its summit lies at 8,586 m (28,169 ft) in a section of the Himalayas.

In the early 19th century, during East India Company rule in India, Darjeeling was identified as a potential summer retreat for British officials, soldiers and their families. The narrow mountain ridge was leased from the Kingdom of Sikkim, and eventually annexed to British India.

The story of our fifteen-day stay in Darjeeling. We took the train from Guwahati which is our previous blog at https://neuage.me/guwahati

As always (twenty-years + of doing these blogs); Narda is in italics and the other non-italics scribbler is Terrell!

07 April Sunday
Guwahati to Siliguri - 7 hours - leave 11 am - 6.30 pm train on time - our own space for first couple of hours - taxi to The Loft hotel - 700 rupees - dinner there.

Our translator girl and her boyfriend (it will be an arranged marriage, but she is working hard on her parents to make sure they choose him. This is not a given) took us to the Guwahati train station. 

It's a strange mix of cultures. She is at uni studying commerce, she dresses in western jeans, is constantly on her phone and yet she is not allowed to “go out” with him un- chaperoned. So they meet in secret. BTW she is 22 years old.

This is a relatively short journey, 7 ½ hours. We still have a sleeper cabin. I get to take naps. Beats the “chair” trains. We got 2nd class aircon, no first class on this train. That means 2 sets of bunks facing each other, and two across on the other side of the aisle. 

15655/KYQ SVDK EXPRESS

454 KMs. An older train without the extras. I recently read an interesting book “India  in 80 trains”, written by a young female journalist: excellent writer. It chronicles her trip from the southern tip of India to the northern tip and then the same west to east. Lots of great info about the train system and more. From that book I learned that the first two numbers of the name number (in this case 15655) is the year it was built. So that would 2015.

I wanted a clean window so I could take photos/videos, avoid communicating with anyone in my cabin so on and so forth and lucky me who has a wife willing to go outside and clean the window and quick enough to hop back on board before it left the station an hour later.

The usual long train…

I rarely take naps on these things but got some reading done and a few photos out the window.

We are hoping for a clear day to see the 3rd highest mountain in the world, Kangchenjunga at 28,169 feet. (Or 2,586 metres for you modern people) My personal opinion? Heights of people and mountains should always be given in feet.

Anyway, back to the story. We stayed overnight in Siliguri in a nice hotel called the Loft. https://www.thelofthotels.com/siliguri.php This turned out to be a pleasant stay, we had a great dinner and breakfast and walked around Siliguri for a bit.

Next morning we waited at the train station for the toy train for several hours before it dawned on us that there was no train a-coming!!!

We actually had screwed up the ticket and bought the wrong one……..long boring story. (not to worry, I will tell it).

So, we braved the crowd and the jostling taxi drivers and settled on an older one who looked less aggressive. This road, up the Himalayas was narrow, winding and steep going from nice safe ground to 6,800 feet. Which is somewhat higher than our usual Ansteys Hill walks we do here back in Adelaide. At each hairpin bend the drivers would beep the horn on the blind corners, which was all of them. But we made it.

08 April Monday
Breakfast at hotel (Loft Hotel) - walk around neighbourhood - taxi to NJP waited for toy train to Darjeeling realized never came - made mistake bought wrong train - taxi to Rise and Shine - 3700 rupees - got to homestay about five pm bought dinner here - big hailstorm in evening - cold in flat.

Well, as things turn out – it didn’t. We purchased our tickets for the toy train when we were in Australia. How would we know it was the wrong toy train? I was expecting a Tomas the Tank sort of setup like we did in 2018 in Shimla (blog https://neuage.me/shimla)

We waited at the train station for more than an hour. Clue #1 No one else was there. When we booked it there were just two seats left. Where did all the passengers go? Oh, they went on the train that left an hour earlier.

Clue #2 talking to cows standing in the track is not a good omen for an approaching train.

Waiting at an almost empty train station is boring, except for conversations with cows which I enjoyed. There were a few homeless people around, including a woman giving a boy, I assume mother and son, but I did not go over an enquire, a bath alongside the tracks. She would pass us to the water tap, fill up her bucket, pour it over the child, he would soap up, she would go get another bucket of water. As I said it was boring sitting around.

Once the penny dropped that something was not right, we found a station master, surrounded by a dozen aggressively acting drivers all wanting to take us up the mountain on those curvy long dropped roads that Narda is not keen on. How does one pick which taxi person to go with when they are yelling in various foreign languages or perhaps the same one that we have no idea what the syntax to any sentence may be? One looked less aggressive than the others so we interpreted that as maybe he would be slower on the curves and off we went securing our lives in his hands. Obviously, we survived because I am now saying we did but then maybe we died in a fiery crash months ago and I just think I am writing this. We did ask if he could drive slowly. Of course, he said yes or nodded or some sort of action that made us trust him until we got to the first set of curves with a drop off, on my side.

We have a bit of a video at https://youtu.be/x_chL2u6aRY

Day 1 at Rise ‘n Shine Homestay. One of the highest in Darjeeling, and a stunning view. We were freezing and exhausted, so we went to bed. And then the storm!!!!!! At 5pm full on rain (think monsoon, though technically it was not yet) And then the show of all shows continual thunder and lightning, all very close by, winds and LOUD LOUD hail on the tin roof…….causing a temporary blackout The bed was definitely the best place to be.

Next day we had small conversations with folks asking how they went with the storm. They looked at us with an expression that meant “what?” We are now learning that this is the way things are, and it is all very unpredictable. No warnings at all on our trusty “Weather” apps, which labelled it “sunny”.

Rise and Shine. I was cold for a week. Had every article of clothing from my suitcase on and still cold. We asked for a heater but had to have it off by ten pm. Several times power went off as it does all over India. The flat was good – comfortable with a seating lounge area, eating area and good bed. We ordered meals several times which were fine. The location was good and not so good. Good with views of the valley below, never got to see any mountains due to cloud cover for the weeks there. We were near the Peace Pagoda – more of that soonish. Not so good in the sense we had to walk 45-minutes down a narrow two-lane road that had cars almost knocking off the road – no place to walk really. We got caught in heavy rain-hail a couple of times. I won’t do it again but for one off it was well worth it. I think in the summer when mountains are viewable it would be a great place to stay. There is still the problem with walking down the mountain to get to any shops or eateries. Our host is also a taxi person so we could ring him to come and collect us from down in town which we did once.

The Peace Pagoda was a ten-minute walk up the hill from us. Lots of bells and changing starting at about 4 AM. Thanks mates. Not sure if that was better or worse than call to prayers every morning at five or so in Lahore. With several mosques near us we were lucky to have another one start within minutes of the one before. Hint – earplugs do not stop the calls to prayer from their penetration. Neither did the Japanese chanting and bells. Hey, everyone, here is a nearer to God thingy…quiet in the morning.

Peace Pagodas are/were designed to provide a focus for people of all races and creeds to help unite them in their search for world peace. There are four in the USA such as The New England Peace Pagoda in Leverett, Massachusetts. Another one is in Grafton New York which is close to where I grew up in Clifton Park NY and two-hours from where my sister, Susan Moore, now lives which has no bearing on anything. And of course, one in San Fran. They have them in Canada and Mexico too. Peace Pagodas were built as a symbol of peace in Japanese cities, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They have also tossed a few up in Europe, Asia. In Brisbane Australia we have the Nepalese Peace Pagoda (Created by the Kingdom of Nepal for the 1988 World Exposition, Brisbane's World Expo '88, the Brisbane Nepal Peace Pagoda is now a permanent commemorative structure of the Expo. It is located at the transformed Expo site, South Bank Parklands, as you would know.) There is also the Buddhist Temple adjacent to the Peace Pagoda. Also known as Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Temple, this is a two storied white building built in a traditional Japanese style. That is me inside the temple in the slideshow above with my hat on.

And photos of carvings alongside the Peace Pagoda, mainly with elephants and scantly dressed females, two of my favorite whatevers. Non-woke I suppose.

I asked our host whether there were any wild animals in the area where we walked every day and he just, ‘just the tiger and the bear’. Well, that made us look twice at the woods surrounding our home. Lucky for them, the tiger and the bear, they didn’t see us.
Darjeeling Mall, Chowrasta, was a frequent walk, like daily, for us. About 45-minutes down the hill and a huff and puff with stops along the way back up. Quite steep, though after a dozen times we were able to do it almost in one walk. We even had a favourite restaurant one-fourth of the way down.  They didn’t speak English but somehow, we managed to communicate what we wanted. Eggs and stuff. We became regulars.

See my little montage of people in the mall. I used my 300mm lens, one of my favourite ways to capture people without them noticing.

On the way to the Mall there is the Chowrasta shopping street, I think it is referred to as the night market but we never made it down the hill at night - too difficult coming up the road with cars not respecting pedestrians. Narda bought a hat.

We hired our host from our Airbnb to be a driver for the day and went to Tiger Hill. “Tiger Hill is eminently known for its splendid sights of the early morning sunrise where you can witness a panoramic view of Mount Everest and Mount Kanchenjunga together. It lies at an altitude of 2590 meters,13 kilometres away from Darjeeling”. Blah blah blah. We couldn’t see anything. Just some clouds. Also, people go there at three or four in the morning. Well, they are nuts. We got there about ten am and still made it back home for our afternoon nap. Tiger Hill is in the Senchal Wildlife Sanctuary. And yes, there seems to be tigers that wander through here. Senchal Wildlife Sanctuary, set up 1915, is one of the oldest wildlife sanctuaries of India and covers an area of 38.6 km. Apparently, we love the place as depicted in the photo below,

Of course, we didn’t see anything, except for said clouds. There is a large stadium type area to sit in to watch the alleged sunrise. But it was under construction, and I was only able to get partway up to see a few more clouds.

 We stopped at the Ghoom monastery, the first monastery built in Darjeeling. See their webpage, it is kind of OK, https://yigachoeling.com/  They were doing construction work on the place so inside was a bit of a mess. I did buy a groovy little ‘hempseed’ purse, but it didn’t have any hemp in it so I just use it for spare change. We got stuck in traffic for hours getting back. Darjeeling has one road through it – alongside and sometimes in the middle of the road is the toy train. It is quite the chaos. We had lunch at the overpriced but really cool Glenary's coffee shop, on Nehru Road, Glenary's, began operations in 1885 during the British Raj.

The next day we went for a ride with Sanyog, our host. Interesting guy. He is running this home stay with his parents. It's a nice 2 roomed place. Pretty cold at night but that was Darjeeling. We had thick acrylic blankets and wore our day clothes to bed. All doable. He would take orders for brekkie and cook dinner. Great cook. He managed to get Terrell’s sugars down with his mixed veg and onion pakoras.

We did meet an interesting guy while browsing in a store dedicated to photos and displays of the mountains. Really great displays. Anyway we got into conversation about travel with Steve and the other guy whose interest was setting up trecking tours (trekking.com.au). Check it out!

We later met up again at the Glenary Hotel on the Mall (THE place to got to in Darjeerling… not cheap but very nice) with Steve and shared lots of travel stories. He is my age who left Australia because he was bored in the late 70s and has been roaming the world ever since.

The steam train contributes a lot to the local pollution. We asked about it and the thing is that the government or whomever controls stuff believes the amount of people who use the smoky polluting train pouring cash into the economy out weighs the hazardous smoke that even way up the hill would pour through our closed doors and windows. Whereas the electric diesel engine didn’t.

According to Change.org  “For a single trip, 600-800kg of coal is required to be loaded to feed a single steam engine.  The train sends up MONSTROUS amounts of coal-burning-smoke up and out of its chimney four times a day (two and fro), covering the mountain side in soot. There are no rules around entering the train with tons of plastic in hand: irresponsible tourists munch on packets of crisps and sweets and juices and freely throw the plastic out of the train right on to the roads and valleys, adding to an already highly polluted region. Every single person who books a ticket for a Joy Ride on the Darjeeling Steam Engine Toy Train is guilty of contributing to a day’s massive pollution--especially in a pristine place like the Himalayas! There is terrible damage being done daily to the fragile ecosystem of the region as well as to the inhabitants there, both human and animal.” Oops, that’s us. Now back in the land of Oz, blue sky, puffy white clouds, I feel sort of guilty for riding their bloody steam train. I even signed onto their petition, which has already racked up 39 signatures in…ever how long it has been up, probably years. Oh dear!

The DHR operates three trips each day. During peak season, the number of trips increase to five.

Our final day in Darjeeling, well the day before the final day, we worked on getting visas for Pakistan. We had not planned to go again before returning to Australia but then Brendan sent photos of their baby who was a lump a couple of months ago and is now almost sitting up and smiling at about three-months. That is all it took for us to cut our next stay a week short and head to Pakistan. More of that in the next blog. Narda’s visa came through online almost instantly. Mine took weeks and we thought it would not come in time. As I said, more of that in the next blog. Really worth the wait to have me finish it, well this one first, then that, and to see what happenedis well worth the wait.

We tried getting an exchange for our train ticket which was meant for the local Toy Train not the train going up. But we managed to secure tickets for the 7-hour trip back down on Sunday 14 April.

Not the 1st class but we decided to brave it. Turned out to be pretty shitty seats, real small, facing backwards. It was still worth it. 

Narda alerts the world that it is time time to leave Darjeeling

We got a taxi to our homestay - two nights in Siliguri - of course, I am not commenting on the name, Siliguri but one could imagine what silly guru would mean if meaning was given.

Now we are in a beautiful homestay in Siliguru called Newa House. 

New haircut at the local mall.

We also made a decision to return one more time to see our little Arhan’s smile. We needed a VPN because India had blocked the Pakistani website. Brendan patiently helped us turn on a VPN (our Nortons Nanny had blocked it.) I got my visa immediately (visa on arrival), we had to wait a nail biting 5 more days for Terrell’s, who got a full visa. Not sure how that happened.

16 April Tuesday
[diary notes] Siliguri - walk in tea garden for an hour in morning - working on video/photos -nap - walked to city area- past furniture making - lunch up stairs in small café across from Indian Oil on main highway -  dinner here

See our wonderful clip on the tea gardens by our homestay.

And yes, there are large poisonous snakes in the tea garens but lucky for them they did not come across us. An example headline, ‘Huge snake enters New chumta tea estate factory at Sukna near Siliguri. It crawled from the fence and is now inside the factory.’ ‘Sensation prevailed after a 15-foot long poisonous snake was recovered from the premises of Malbazar Engo Tea Garden.’ ‘Two pythons rescued from two different tea gardens’

This was a great homestay. Surrounded by tea gardens. The hosts were great. They told us about a guest that had just stayed there who is travelling the world by herself on motorcycle. Gulsah Merve Yuksel. We have been following her on Instagram and youtube, https://www.youtube.com/GulsahMerveYuksel Really worth looking up or/and following.

April 17

We took a taxi to Bagdogra Airport, hung around in Delhi Airport….some nice food actually, then on to Amritsar…..½ hour in the air….Must have had a tail wind!. I am collecting the cute little tins we get from Indigo…..they label them Nut Case. They might know me better then I do. 🙂

In Amritsar we slept in a dodgy hotel down a dark alley but survived.

Next blog is our last of this trip. Yoga House up in the Himalayas - even up close and personal with the Dali Lama - maybe in a few weeks the end of July we should have it up. Right now we are in our caravan in our front yard as Narda's son, Chris and wife and kids are in our house over from DC for three weeks, and Brendan is here for a couple of weeks down from Lahore, Pakistan...then we are all off to a big house in Normaville for awhile celebrating Narda's 70th birthday. During that time we should be able to finish the next blog.

cheers