Himalayan Magic

So after that hysterical 24 hours we were more than ready to get settled and enjoy life in the mountains for more than just a few days. Darjeeling is truly a magical little place. It was a whirlwind start to our week there, having to drive around at 1am, hooting loudly as we drove around the streets to try and signal hotels to open their doors for us, eventually settling for the night in the less than satisfactory, filthy Hotel-Tower-View (though I can say it's location was fantastic with wake up views soaring over the mountains and beyond!) As soon as the sun came up though, we were out and sought refuge in the beautiful and as the name suggests peaceful Hotel Tranquility with equally lovely views and very hospitabe staff.

This is the first fun fact about Darjeeling that we quickly figured out: as lovely as Darjeeling is - at 8/9pm the town shuts down and when I say Shuts down, I mean the lights go off, the restaurants, pubs, shops and hotels close their doors and not a peep can be heard from a single soul (except for the stray dogs sorting out turf wars!)

In fact Jessie and I had quite a panicked but hilarious incident on our second night in. We decided to head down to the local Tavern for a beer or three after dinner. All was going well and we were delighted that at 9 o'clock (closing time) the pub owners allowed us to stay in the bar until we were done and just to shut the doors on our way out. We stayed for another 2 hours or so chatting away with a couple more drinks not suspecting that we would be running into some slight hours of operation obstacles later on (not realizing just yet, that Darjeeling transforms into Ghost Town after 9!)  Upon finishing our beers and merrily skipping up the hill, in the pitch darkness we started to notice how incredibly quiet the streets were and were welcomed at the foot of our hotel to a giant metal gate that had been locked over the front door. A little dumbfounded, we started to knock on the door, assuming that there must be someone on call to let in the late night arrivals especially since, nowhere in the hotel was there a sign warning us of any kind of curfew. Now, starting to get a little panicky (which was translated by our brew/altitude-induced state, into laughing rather hysterically and searching for pebbles to throw at the room windows), we frantically began searching for the phone number and managed to haul a couple of kids who drove by in a car over to lend us a phone. Eventually, after 5 or 6 phone calls a sleepy voice answered and we were told to run around to the back door. Breathing sighs of relief we dashed around the corner, expecting to find a very easily accessible entranceway. Instead what we found was a 50 degree angled mossy, wet slope with a 4 foot Nepali lady waiting for us at the top. Now if we weren't already in hysterics (which we were!) this made us almost fall over from laughter stomach pains. After multiple attempts at the slope and the imminent sliding back down again (even after we took a run-up!), Gripping the unanchored poles that came out of the ground to no success, the last resort was that the tiny barefoot woman (who came up to about my chest) came out into the cold and whipped us both to safety with seemingly no trouble at all. How she did that, still remains a mystery. We surged into the back door and collapsed onto the kitchen floor, all three of us unable to breathe from laughing so much. I think it may have been the funniest thing to have happened to that lady in the entire time she had worked there, because the next      morning, when we greeted her, she could barely look at us without bursting into fits of giggles.It was a seriously brilliant orientation into the Darjeeling style: "Early to sleep, early to rise" to quote a local jewelery store owner that we met.

And so, our week in Darjeeling followed suit. We arose as early as 3am, one morning to what appeared to be a clear night sky, and ran down to the clock tower to catch a share-jeep to Tiger Hill, a famous viewing spot for watching the sun rise over the Kanchenjunga Himalayan Mountain Range. Kanchenjunga is the world's third highest peak. Supposedly it seemed that we had the clearest morning weather for months in the area and it was just absolutely stunning. We found ourselves a nice spot on the balcony overlooking hills that stretched for thousands of miles and drank hot Chai waiting for the sun to make it's grand appearance. As it rose, the sky glistened with the clouds and the hills in about 20 different shades of yellow, orange, grey, purple, green, white and blue. It just seemed to go on and on and on, AND THEN just as we thought we had seen it all, out of the corner of our left eyes, the clouds slowly shifted higher and the pearly white Himalayas came into view. I apologize for my incapability to justifiably describe how beautiful this was: One second we were watching over millions of mountains, thinking to ourselves how breathtaking that view was alone..and then as if it was a theme park ride that just kept getting better and better building to the climax, the majestic peak of Kanchenjunga pierced it's summit through the clouds and the rest of the snow covered range unfolded before our eyes, reflecting the sun over all the land that lay before us. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life. I kept looking away and peeking back, just to check that it was actually there and not a fragment of my imagination. We left Tiger Hill and drove down the windy road back to Darjeeling, still mesmerized by what we had just seen. Our driver stopped along the way at a Buddhist Monastery nestled in the hill and so we had a short(ish) walking tour with a couple of monks and also took a walk around the hill to catch some more views of the Himalayas in the perfect weather.

Darjeeling was an incredibly relaxing stop on our trip. We had planned on doing a few more mountain related things like rafting and trekking but aside from our perfect day on Tiger Hill, the weather unfortunately did not allow it. But it didn't ruin anything: we shopped A LOT at the cute market stalls with adorable tiny Tibetan ladies, we drank a lot of tea and read books in the cosy coffee shops, we ate scrumptious home-made meals at Sonam's kitchen - the best spot in town, visited the Himalayan Zoological park and the Everest Museum where walking around we mostly made jokes about how we would die if we ever attempted that mountain, it looks so hazardous, even for the pros. We also had some cakes and muffins made for us by the mysterious 'cake lady' - an Irish woman who rocked up in Darjeeling a few years back and decided to start her own business making cakes for delivery. We met some fantastic locals and played around with some funny kids in the streets and even drank a few bottles of wine in the daily power cut in our room (woooaaaah, rebellious aren't we?)

We were sad to leave the relaxing little hubbub that we had become so familiar with but also excited for the second half of our trip in South India to begin. We took a hilarious, bumpy share-jeep with a carload of precious old-Tibetan grandpas down the mountain to Siliguri and then hitched a horrific beyond description 12 hour sleeper bus Kolkata way. The drive was so bumpy and curvy that in our sleeper beds we were constantly thrown around the place and it was impossible to get even a wink of rest. We were dropped off on the site of the world's biggest rubbish heap and so by the time we reached our fancy hotel in the hideously hot city, all we wanted to do was enjoy the air-conditioning, room service and cable TV (We had also been hoping for a hit shower for the first time in a month but sadly that was asking a bit too much.) We had a glorious farewell dinner, cocktails inclusive for Kate - who would be leaving us for the States the next day, and watched Home Alone in bed together for the last time. We spent the next day in a clean and comfortable shopping mall, eating subway sandwiches and watched a Bollywood movie - which was a bit of a sham because it was set in Australia, had only one dance scene and was a bit of an unoriginal version of 'Step Mom' (even though we still balled our eyes out!) We took Kate to the airport and then ran like wild to catch our train to Chennai on time.

We have been in Mumbai for the last 4 days with Jessie's friend Vinay and his family. (He is a Bombay local but moved to Canada 6 years ago for University.) It has been an extremely special few days and although I will write more in detail when I come to this part of the trip. I would like to thank him and his beautiful family for being the most wonderful, hospitable people we have ever met. I know that our time in Bombay would have been exceedingly different had it not been for them and their incredible open hearts, cooking us their traditional food, showing us the places they love and introducing us to all of their lovely friends, traditions, festivals and culture. Thank you, thank you THANK YOU!!!

Lots of love and you'll be hearing from me again soon with tales of our South Indian adventures (this time however, the feeds will be coming Directly from THAILAND and very possibly Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos..depending on when I get a chance to write..<3

Sending smoooooooooooooooooooooooches xoxoxox