The Hill Station of Darjeeling

Our overnight train ride to Siliguri had a couple of interesting events to relate. We shared bunks with a couple of experienced travelers from New York. These 2 women had been to India a few times each, and they had been here on this trip for 3 days already. I guess that previously they had both been sick from eating tainted food. They were very cautious, and they wondered the wisdom of our choice to eat the dhal and rice served on the train. They chose to go hungry. In fact, one admitted that she had not eaten any Indian food yet on this trip. She had been surviving for the previous 3 days on a bag of granola and dried fruits!

Throughout the ride we were approached by beggars, the 2 most pitiful ones were a boy that had lost his foot and the wound was infected and swollen and red. It was terrible to see, and heart rending to watch him as he scuffed along the floor, unable to walk. One of the other beggars, was an 8 year old boy who came around at midnight and swept the floor. He then asked for a rupee (2.5 cents). We had to wonder what sort of terrible situation he was in that he rode cross country trains at midnight and had to do this for a living.

From Siliguri we hopped in a shared jeep going up to Darjeeling. This was a mountainous and windy road. There is the option to take a narrow gauge (about 2 ft wide track) train up to Darjeeling. It travels along the road for a good bit of the ride, weaving across the traffic about 100 times, just like a bus might. In order to be able to ascend the steep grade, which is as much as 1:25 at some points, the engineers back in 1881 incorporated a couple of tricks, such as making the train go around loops at mountain ridges that allowed 5 or so feet of elevation climb in a circle. Another trick was to have the train do Z-reverses, where it zig zags forward and backwards up a slope. There are 6 Z-reverses and 3 loops by the time the train reaches the world’s second highest train station at 2257m at Ghoom. That train ride takes about 9 hours, so we opted this time for the 2 hour jeep ride.

Darjeeling was a refreshing place to stay after the heat in Delhi and Varanasi. Unfortunately we were there during the monsoons. While we did not get rained on much, the spectacular views were generally obscured by mist. And our clothes were moist for the entire 12 days, which made some of them mouldy. I washed them in the sink as we had done for most of the past 6 months, but they never fully dried. We gave them over to the hotel laundry service, but they came back still moist and the mouldy smell was still there!

We stayed 12 days because it was peaceful, the air was clean and cool, and because we both got sick again. This time it was diarrhea and fever, which was cured in about 5 days with antibiotics. We enjoyed the various restaurants and became addicted to the Nepalese momos (wontons / dumplings), Tibetan fry bread, and thengthuk (a thick noodle soup). Life was good again as we wandered up and down the hilly streets and did some great people watching. In the mountains the people were far less pushy and demanding than down in the hot cities. We relearned that sometimes when people come to talk to you, it’s not always that they want your money.

One day we visited the botanical gardens which included a cannabis plant in it’s herbal plot. Amazingly the plant was not picked clean of all foliage. That afternoon we had high tea at the classy Elgin hotel. It was as you might find in Scotland, damp and grey weather outside, but warm plush seats and finger sandwiches and Darjeeling teas inside. It’s no wonder that the British established this town as a hill station, it has just the right weather and flora to remind them of Scotland. A big difference might be the monkeys… Erin surprised one and he puffed up his chest and threw out his arms to appear big and intimidating. She laughed, but he thought he looked pretty tough.

One of our highlights was the train ride on the narrow gauge steam train, affectionately called the Toy Train. We only took it for a total of 10 miles, to Ghoom and back. That took about 3 hours due to the windy path that train follows. And we got derailed once. The derailment happened almost immediately and only took 30 minutes to right. I suppose that this must be frequent based on the crews quickness to get us back on track. They found a large wood block or track tie and used it as a lever and jumped up and down on the end to lift the car while some pedestrians pushed sideways on the car.

The Himalayan zoo in Darjeeling is a good zoo, not as depressing as many zoos can be. The cages are a good size and there is a good range of animals from the region. There are bears, pheasants, red pandas, newts, snow leopards, cloud leopards, siberian tigers, wolves, and red deer just to name a few. Those red pandas are cute, and the leopards are beautiful.

One day we visited the Bhutia Busty Gompa, a Buddhist monastery. It was locked but a caretaker opened it up and let us wander freely. The setting was surreal, an exotic building on the hillside, surrounded by rich forest, a heavy mist shrouding the banners of prayer flags. Quite atmospheric. This Gompa contains the original Tibetan Book of the Dead. We did not see it during our wander around, hopefully it is well locked up.

Downhill from the Gompa is a Tibetan Refugee Self Help Centre. It is a great workshop that was established in 1959. You can watch the elderly Tibetans hand making carpets at the loom, spinning and carding wool, and carving wood. The proceeds go toward strengthening their community, and based on the lack of young faces in the center, it will not be around much longer. This part of India has heavy roots in Nepalese and Tibetan heritage, and that can be seen in the locals faces and crafts.

We did not pursue any attempt to watch the sunrise from Tiger Hill, a popular tourist attraction. This involves getting up at about 4am and checking the weather for a clear day, and then running down to the main road and hailing a jeep to drop you at Tiger Hill. Probably there is a steep climb involved at Tiger Hill. Honestly, Erin and I are way too lazy to get up so early and start hill walking, especially when we convinced ourselves that the odds were that it was going to be too misty to see anything! The views of Mt Khangchendzonga are spectacular whenever the mist clears, and we got to appreciate it a few times during those 12 days, as well as in the next weeks in Sikkim. Mt Khanchendzonga is the highest peak in India, the 3^rd highest in the world, and it’s name comes from the Tibetan words for Big 5 Peaked Snow Fortress.

We eventually had to pull ourselves away from Darjeeling and the lovely whistle and smell of burning coal from the Toy Train. We secured a pass to visit the border state of Sikkim and hailed a jeep heading that way.