So in brief our journey started in the Sunderbans at 10am 5/2/12: 10 min walk, 45 min cycle rickshaw, local boat, 3 hour jeep ride, taxi, overnight train to NJP, jeep ride to Kurseong, toy train Kurseong – Darjeeling arrive 6/2/12 - 6pm. All went relatively smoothly.
2nd class night train not as comfy as Thailand but ok. 2 hour jeep ride not at all scary and had beautiful views as we made the steep climb up through the tea plantations.
Had a few hours in Kurseong before getting the narrow gage toy train to travel further upwards to Darjeeling. From Kurseoung onwards everything is different. The people look very different (more Tibetan / himalayan) everything is more chilled, the people are quieter and less frantic, the food is different, there are Buddhist prayer flags everywhere and it is cold! Feels like we have left India (there is a drive to be independent – Gorkaland is written everywhere on shop fronts etc).
We checked into our lovely Tibetan run hotel which is lovely and feels like a ski lodge. We arrived just in time to see the view from our room – a brief glimpse of pink sky disappearing behind the Himalayan mountains and the light fading on the higgildy piggildly city clinging to the side of the mountain.
After 4 days of not washing a hot shower was most welcome! Had a lovely Tibetan dinner in the restaurant downstairs.
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