darling darjeeling

Tues Nov 29 – Thursday Dec 1

Our train got in at 8am but it was a three hour drive in a jeep with eight other people (plus the driver) to get to our destination. 

We arrived in the cozy little mountain city of Darjeeling with a full day still ahead of us.  I just loved this city right from the start.  It was fairly cool this far north.  Everything seems different here.  The people look really different, they dress really different and there’s just a really unique feel about the place.  Every little shop is selling all kinds of fantastic knitted things.     

We took the Toy Train that evening.  It’s just a small train that goes around the city.  Unfortunately it was super over cast and cloudy so we couldn’t really see much outside the immediate city but it was still really fun.  It’s a really quaint place.  The brightly painting buildings speckle all over the hills. 

There are a lot Tibetan Refugees in Darjeeling.  There are tons of Tibetan restaurants.  Darjeeling is famous for it’s tea plantations so every second shop sells “world famous tea.”  I almost wished I was a tea drinker! 

N felt really lousy in the morning so I went off wandering on my own.  I decided to set off in a direction that we hadn’t yet explore and ended up way outside of the city.  I did find the zoo so I went and checked that out.  Among other things, they had a very friendly bear, some tigers and a bunch of red pandas.  Then it was still about an hour and a half walk back, up hill.  I really got my work out that day!

In the afternoon we went up Tiger Hill to try and get a view of the big mountains but again the weather was bad so we couldn’t really  see much. 

The shops all close fairly early, just as it’s getting dark because the shop keepers pack up all their merchandise and carry it come with them each night.  They use these straps which they lift using their foreheads.  It’s really insanely impressive how much they lift this way.  Anyways as a result there’s not much to do in the evening.  So we decided to go out to a movie.  And there just happened to be a really nice little coffee shop outside the theatre that we sat at while we waited for our show to start.  It was a really lovely little date before we head off.  

We had to leave this morning so we thought we’d try and get one more shot at seeing the famous Himalayas.  We left for Tiger Hill at 4:30 am!  Everyone goes that early to see the sunset.  It’s totally packed!  There are about two hundred people standing out in the chilly dark morning anxiously waiting for the sun.  It was nice but I’m not sure if it was worth the sleep deprivation.  We stayed way longer than most people hoping that the clouds would lift and sure enough after almost everyone else had left the clouds dissipated and there they were!  We could see just a tiny little tip of Mt. Everest.  And Mt. Khangchendozonga WOW!  It’s enormous!  It’s the worlds third largest peak standing at 8598 meters high.  By comparison Mt. Everest is 8848 m high.  It seems to just shoot up out of the hills way above everything else.  It was really impressive.  We were so thrilled that we actually got to see it before we left!  That was really amazing! 

Tomorrow evening around 6pm we will arrive in Vijayawada.  We are all jitters and excitement.  We are really looking forward to meeting the Ebenezer family and settling into a permanent place after being on the go for these past weeks.  We look forward to getting to work!