Saturday Extra Special Edition

Almost forgot to mention that we (the Darjeeling Tour group) were front page news in today's local Hindi newspaper. Our guides are being a bit cagey about the translation so we suspect that it makes disparaging reference to Grockles.

Saturday 5th March - Heffalump Day

There is no rest for the wicked. This morning's instruction is to pack an overnight bag and be on the bus by 8.30. For a change we pick Boneshaker no. 2 which has much plusher seats but even less leg room. We drive out north east then east along the corridor that links Assam with the rest of India. The traffic is unbelievable - where do all of these trucks come from and where are they going? After about two and a half hours we pull up at the side of the road in an area of scrubby woodland. After a short wait two gangs of men turn up with hand trolleys and we take it in turns for rides along a stretch of disused metre gauge track. In all we go about 2 km and see some bright and colourful birdlife along the way. A couple of our group fancy a shift powering a trolley and are indulged. They manage to break one of them - hopefully not seriously.We move on to some sort of forest encampment where a delicious buffet lunch and free beers are laid on. What a wonderful country India is. We walk down to the river where some of the team including R get their feet wet scrubbing elephants. This is followed by a chance to feed the jumbos (although they prefer to help themselves) and then we all have the chance to ride on the back of an elephant along a jungle trail and then a spell of cross country through the scrub. Brilliant!
We still have quite a distance to cover to the Widlife park lodge where we are spending the night. We rejoin the main highway as it gets dark and are treated to the wildest driving exhibition so far as we run the gamut of broken down vehicles, craters the size of (small) houses and stretches of road that are just not wide enough for opposing streams of juggernauts. We even passed a bus overturned in a ditch!
Eventually we get there, nerves shot and ready for several drinks. It comes as no great surprise that the bar sells only super strength beer(8%). We are shown to our rather basic chalet which will not be receiving one of R's much sought after rosettes, but which will do for a quick night's kip as we have to get up at 5.30 for the jeep safari. Supper was another buffet - OK but who cared after such an action packed day.

Friday 4th March - Back down to the Plains

Our last breakfast at the Windamere is followed by a gentle stroll through Darjeeling. At last R finds the shops that she is interested in open for business. Having made various merchants rich men we proceed in an orderly fashion towards the railway station where the 10.40 a.m. Joy train to Ghum awaits us. Because this is a service train rather than a charter we all have to have allocated seats. Orderly boarding is not assistede by the ladies selling shawls who crowd into the tiny carriage and are very persistent.
Our seats are in the rear facing observation car so we get good views of Darjeeling as we climb and we are simultaneously bombarded with tiny specks of coal as B Class no. 804 "Queen of the Hill" hammers away towards the summit. A splendid piece of North British loco building. We paused for 10 minutes at Batasia loop where many of the classic DHR photos are taken showing the Himalaytas in the background. For us it was not to be so we will have to photoshop them in later.
At Ghum we had a quick look at the rather sparse DHR museum and then it was onto the boneshaker coaches for the trip back to Siliguri via a different route. This took us along the ridge that is the India-Nepal border and was rather better maintained than the way we went up. We passed through many colourful villages and saw how the locals travel. Arriving back at the Cindrella felt like coming home.

Thursday 3rd March -

This morning we take a short, but exciting jeep ride to the Happy Valley Tea Estate, on the mountainside just below Darjeeling. We are shown around the factory and then part of the tea plantation by a lovely man with a unique interpetation of the English language. We are then passed over to the madame of the estate tea house who claims to be 71 years old. The tea must have excellent preservative qualities. She is a very sharp operator and succeeds in selling most of us some tea at 3 times the going rate elsewhere.
The jeeps are due to take us back to the Windamere for a pukka lunch but we run into a total traffic snarl up at the bottom of the town. Apparently there is some kind of student demo going on and we are advised that it will be quicker to walk. The demonstrators are nearly all in school uniforms and marshalled by their teachers. They are campaigning for a free Gorkaland state within India.
The walk from the bottom of the town up to our hotel certainly saps the strength so we opt for an hour's snooze after lunch. When we wake up at 4 p.m. we discover that we haven't missed much as the shops had shut in support of the protest. At 6 p.m. there was an exhibition of local folk dancing in the hotel garden - a lot more interesting than it sounds.

Wednesday - Room at the Top

An extremely disturbed night as we were both worried we'd sleep in. The alarm went at 3.30 and a beary eyed bunch gathered on the car park to board 4x4s for the 45 minute drive to Tiger Hill. The road was extremely twisty and narrow and it was very cold and dark. Even though we were both wearing several layers of clothing the cold was intense and made R very grumpy. Our guide bought the super deluxe tickets at the entrace which gave us access to a viewing room. The all-round windows were not really big enough for sitting and seeing everything and most people stood at the windows. As the sun rose we were all hoping that the cloud would part and give us a view of Everest and Katchangunga, but it was not to be. We drove back to the hotel via one of the Buddhist monasteries in Ghum where we were treated to a demonstration of horn blowing, not terribly tuneful.
Back at the hotel R went back to bed while D had breakfast and then walked back down to the station to watch and photograph. The idiot manages to drop his new camera which is hit by a car and wrecked. Oh goody. At least we packed a spare. Things get a little worse when D wakes up after a lunchtime snooze to find his arms covered in small blisters. Is this a reaction to the anti-malaria pills? After lunch R headed off with some of the group to visit Hayden Hall, one of the Darjeeling Society's charity projects. D had another snooze and caught up later. We were shown round the creche, workshops and classrooms by Noreen, a very charismatic lady. We met children, staff, mums and dads, it's a terrific cause and they do it very well. Ended up in the shop of course, lots of buying went on! On our way back we spent half an hour on the internet looking up the details of our insurance cover. Meanwhile the blisters had disappeared and been replaced with a blotchy scarlet rash.
Heartless R refused to photo the evidence and went off for dinner leaving D to suffer. She did return with another member of the group, Fiona Ford, who is a GP. The diagnosis was an allergy probably caused by dust and an anti-histamine tablet and a bottle of beer were prescribed. These worked quite quickly. In the meantime the suffering continued as the television showed Ireland beating England in the ODIs.

Tuesday 1st March - Darjeeling at Leisure

After breakfast, which is definitely British rather than Indian, R goes to look at some of the shops and stalls while D goes down to the station with the rest of the boys to take photos steam engines. There are three to choose from plus a smelly diesel. There is lots of seemingly pointless activity before things really come alive with the departure of both of this morning's trains within 25 minutes of each other. Once the excitment had passed the trainspotters wandered back up the main street and stopped for tea at Glenary's, a Darjeeling institution. Briefly the clouds parted to give a splendid view of the snow covered Himalayas. R spent time on the terrace sketching and read prior to lunch. Lunch was set up similarly to dinner (i.e. five courses) the starter was a most delicious beetroot soup.
In the afternoon we visit the zoo and the Himalayan Mountain Institute (HMI). The HMI has a splendid relief model of the Hymalayas and buttons can be pressed to light up significant features. The zoo is on a small scale but has Bengal tigers, leopards and red pandas. We both liked the pheasant collection, very exotic. It was fine as zoos go, but R still feels sad that large animals are caged.
We walked back to the hotel, which is no mean feat as it is a steep uphill climb all the way, R felt she deserved a bit of cake with her afternoon tea as a reward. A bit of cake soon turned into a plateful' We all gathered for a drink at the bar and then an early dinner as tomorrow we are all getting up before sunrise to travel to Tiger Hill to see the dawn over the Himalayas.

Monday - Onwards and Upwards

A more leisurely start today as we need to pack for our move from Siliguri(408') to Darjeeling. We travel by a fleet of 4x4s which drive in convoy through the murderous Siliguri traffic. After a few miles we start to climb out of the plain and up into the mountains. The road twists, turns and climbs steeply admist the pot-holes. At one point a bunch of locals are charging a toll, allegdly for the road maintenance fund. The views are spectacular and vertiginous.
At Kurseong (4864') we rejoin the Hill Cart Road and the railway. There is intense activity at the shed as they prepare no.786, Ajax (built 1904 in Glasgow) for our train. Kurseong is a busy little town, but the first place in India that we have seen many flies. We play safe and have bags of crisps for lunch.
As we stroll along the main street a strident hooter announces the arrival of the diesel hauled service train from Darjeeling. Kurseong station is actually a spur off the main line which means that all trains have to reverse, either in or out. With the service train out of the way, and the parked vans cleared off the line from the shed our loco was coupled up to our two coach train and reversed us out into the High Street. We set off in grand style, whistle shrieking. The concensus was that 786 was in better shape than 788 had been yesterday, with fewer obvious steam leaks.
It is indicative of how hard these locos work that we had three water stops in a 30km trip. One of these was at Sonada station, on the street right in the middle of the town. D was taking photos when a voice shouted "Look, it's Dave Watson" It was the GCIRC guys on their return jeep journey from Darjeeling after they had been on the train to Ghum, India's highest railway station (7404'). What a small world. It was soon our turn to visit Ghum, the summit of the line, where there were spectacular views across the valley to Darjeeling. The line descends so steeply into Darjeeling that there is a 15 kph speed limit and a brakeman stationed on each coach.
We pull into the station where the cars await and then drive off to the Windamere Hotel. The town is built along the sides of a steep ridge and the Windamere is right at at the top. We are served an old fashioned afternoon tea in an old fashioned parlour before being shown to our room in the Betty Tumility annexe. As we unpack a man appears to light our coal fire, which is soon blazing merrily. Dinner is quite formal and rather oddly has two main courses, one British and one Indian. The food is good and the evening flies by before we return home to our real fire.