Darjeeling October 17th to 21st

Darjeeling was initially not in my radar but after talking to a fellow traveler I decided it would be a nice change of scenery. This town is famous for its tea plantations and so the landscape was something I felt was worthwhile travelling for. Luckily it was, as the journey to get there was quite a challenging one. My british friend Sam decided to tag along for this part of the trip. We started off with a 14 hour train that was 3 hours late making it a 17 hour journey and we nearly missed it as we did not hear correctly the platform announcement! Not something you want at 1 am in the morning 🙂 The second leg of the journey was a 3 hour 4×4 journey to the mountains which to be honest was quite ok. Our arrival time in hostel was quite lucky as we found out that the hostel has a curfew policy and thus shortly after our arrival we were locked in. Not the best hostel in the world I must say…

I really enjoyed my stay there due to its natural scenery, peacefulness and ethnically diverse people. Given its location, next to Bhutan, Nepal and China, the ethnic mixity is incredibly rich. Because of this, people even mistook me for a Nepalese or Indian!

Streets

Local fish monger

Chowrastha Square

Mahakal Market

Mahakal Mandir hundu temple

So many monkeys! They moved around using the flag ropes as highways.

Looking for TLC?

First cemetery in India.

Washing of uniforms in house next to the football field

Teacher’s private quarters. I bumped into Kiran while wondering around who then kindly offered to show me around. Hope to meet him again!

My local barber 🙂 Got my moustache and beard trimmed.

Toy Train

2 trains are running, one a diesel and the other a steam engine

The photo does not really show how tiny the seats are! Luckily I am not too big…

Tea Plantation

Beautiful tea plantation landscape. The tea plantation visit was really interesting. Apparently there is white, green and black tea and they all come from the same plant but go through a different production process. Never knew…