2/25,26,27,28 & 3/1

Darjeeling and Gangtok.
Day 1: The bus, the jeep and the frightening man
The long awaited entry (be prepared, the entry may be as long as the wait). The trip began on the morning of Ash Wednesday. Hannah stayed at SWI and we woke up at 6am to attend Ash Wednesday mass at the Missionaries of Charity Sister’s home. We took a rickshaw, because it was the only thing visible on the street at that hour. Puthumai had told us that the MC Sister’s mass would be in English, so we should attend there instead of at SWI. Upon arrival we learned that mass was in Begnali because the oldest kids from Chonditola were in attendance. I wasn’t upset that the mass wasn’t in English, mostly I was just excited to see the kids. After mass we went to SWI, grabbed our already packed bags (besides me, I always have last minute packing to do) and caught a bus. Catching the right bus here really is a science. You want a Government bus, because they will go faster and stop less often than the private buses. But you don’t want to tell the private bus drivers where you are going, because if you are going where they are going, they will all but force you into their bus. The rest of it is just luck, because if two Government busses are driving near each other, the one behind will intentionally slow down, in an attempt to put space between himself and the other vehicle. This way there will be passengers for both busses, even though the stops are the same. Good thing we had Puthumai, and he is well-versed in traveling by bus. We found the right one, got seats (that weren’t too far back) and we were off. The bus ride was from 8am to 12:30pm, with a short stop for tea. Hannah was sick from the day before still, so we made sure that she didn’t eat anything that would upset her stomach yet again. When the bus arrived, after we all had a short nap or two, we met Puthumai’s friend who tastes tea for a living in Siliguri. He took us the Sikkim permit office, because Hannah and I needed permits to enter into the Sikkim state and to spend two days in Gangtok. After filling out the permits we went for lunch, to a restaurant with Western food on their menu. We sat outside under an umbrella, and I was more than shocked to see Hamburger, Sandwich and Pasta on the menu. The toilet was also Western and really nice, with is a rare find on travel. Hannah had chicken soup, while the rest of us shared chow mien, fried rice and chili mushrooms. We were on the road shortly after that as Puthumai and his friend escorted us to a jeep, took our luggage and told us to sit in the front seat. We were happy to be in the front seat, because we had the best view although Hannah was a little squished, she sat in the middle and although there is plenty of seat space for three people there isn’t enough leg space because of the shifter. We took pictures out the window the whole ride up (which probably made us look like tourists, which I guess for the first time we were). The hills were beautiful and we climbed up and up and up for about 4 hours. By the time we reached the top it was raining and I can’t tell you how refreshed my soul was to feel the rain. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed it, until I head the droplets and felt them on my skin. I was instantly happy (the kind of happiness a sunny day in Seattle brings) and Hannah thought I was being completely ridiculous and should close my window. The driver had a tarp, so luckily our luggage didn’t get wet, and by the time we reached Darjeeling the rain had stopped. The driver was very nice and asked us where we were going. We took out the make-ship map drawn by Puthumai, with no street names, only a drawing of two streets diverging and the name of the place we were staying. The driver asked what streets were in the pictures, which of course we had no idea. Then we attempted to pronounce Di-vi-vani and luckily the driver understood us and drove us practically to the front door. We walked into the building and were instantly met by Cosmos, the caretaker of the establishment, who checked us in and showed us our room. Our room was on the Indian second floor, the American third floor (here they call the American first floor the ground floor). We quickly learned that stairs in Darjeeling were twice as steep as they were wide, a difficult task to maneuver with such large Western feet. Our room was nice, it had two beds a desk and a small dresser. There were two windows in the corner and although they closed they did no seal, so you could feel the breeze if you stood in the corner. Oh yea, I forgot to mention; it was freezing in Darjeeling. Everything here is in Celcius, which I gave up trying to understand long ago, but if I had to guess, and I think my guessing would be pretty accurate, I would say it was in the low 30’s for the morning and night and maybe reached the mid to low 40’s when the sun was out. Now let me remind you that the weather in Raiganj has been sunny and warm for weeks, with temperatures that must be in the 90’s during the sunny hours. So needless to say Hannah and I were cold, very very cold. Our first act in our new bedroom was to move the beds into the corner that was as far away from the windows as possible. Then we checked out the bedroom, which was an Indian-Western toilet. It was a Western toilet body, but under the seat there were places were you could put your feet and squat if you prefer the Indian style. I like to say that it looks as though an Indian and a Western toilet had a baby.  After unloading our things and putting on all of the clothes we could fit on our bodies, we went out to find dinner. It was dark by then, around 6pm, and we quickly learned that Darjeeling closes around 7pm. When I say Darjeeling closes, I mean that every shop is closed and everyone goes home. It is cold and dark and there is no reason to be out. Unless of course you haven’t eaten dinner. In Raiganj we usually eat dinner at 8pm so eating at 6:30pm was really early. We were searching for hotels or restaurants to eat in, with very little success. If you know me well, you know that I am scared of the dark. Perhaps irrationally at time, but it is what it is. So as we were walking down the dark unknown streets of Darjeeling, I was a little (perhaps more than a little uneasy). Hannah decided that the path we were on wouldn’t have any good places to eat, but that we should go down these stairs she found. Now if these stairs were in America, they would be a dark alley with steam coming from a gutter and a rats rummaging through garbage cans. I was obviously hesitant, but I rationalized that the sooner we found somewhere to eat the soon we would be home. So we began down the stairs, holding desperately onto one another because it was dark, scary and the stairs were steep as hell. About a third of the way down the stairs a man comes up behind of and makes a noise which I can only call the Indian equivalent of ‘Boo.’ I yelped and tripped and Hannah looked back and said to this man “That’s not funny!” I was scurrying down the steps, trying to get as far away from this man, who I assumed wanted to take our money and valuables, while Hannah was chastising him for scaring us. When I finally turned back I saw that the man was laughing and that Hannah had been right to scold, he didn’t want to steal from us, he only wanted to taunt us. He must have thought it was funny to tease the obviously afraid foreigners. Regardless of his intent both of our hearts were racing by that point in time. Once we found a clean looking hotel that was open we stopped in and tried to order dinner to go. Unfortunately this was misunderstood and we ended up just eating at the hotel. We had fried rice, dal fry, roti, and potato pancake. We had two sodas, with straws and out total bill was under 3 dollars. Content and full we headed back to the hotel (which really isn’t a hotel for anyone to stay at, it is a religious mission of sorts, kind of like DDC). On the way we stopped at a bakery, yes a bakery that baked bread, and Hannah bought a loaf of sweet bread while I bought 15 cookies each of a different variety to snack on. We arrived safely back at the hotel, with only a small confusion on where exactly the hotel was. On the last minute of the walk home we ran into a man who was also staying at Di-vi-vani. When he asked where we were from and learned that Hannah was from Germany he was thrilled and wanted to talk to her about an address where he could send rosaries to be sold. The funny part was that Hannah couldn’t understand his English and had no idea what he was talking about. She also didn’t know what a rosary is, because that is an English word she hasn’t yet learned. He wanted to continue talking to her, and she said that we were tired but that if he found us at breakfast we could talk them. We both giggled up the stairs, as we had no idea what he wanted and hoped that we wouldn’t see him at breakfast again. Neither of us took a shower, as the air was frigid enough without being wet. I washed my face, and my fingers nearly froze because the water was so cold. Once bundled up and under the blankets we chatted for a while and drifted off to bed sometime before 10pm.
Day 2: Walking, walking, walking, walking and more walking
The alarm went off at 7:25 and breakfast was at 7:30, perfect timing on our part. We had chow mien, egg and bread for breakfast. The man from the previous night was nowhere to be found, and for that we were grateful. We also had tea for breakfast, and I have to say it was some of the best tea I have ever tasted. The bread was similar to the sweet bread from the night before and there was strawberry jam, which appeared to be homemade. We enjoyed breakfast and ate a ton, planning on skipping lunch and taking another early dinner. Cosmos came down during breakfast and brought us a list of all of the places and things to see in Darjeeling. The list included 10-15 things and we were thrilled, because we both had no idea what we were going to do in Darjeeling (poor planning on our part). We discussed with Cosmos the proximity of the locations, and decided that today we would tackle the walking locations and tomorrow we would reserve a vehicle and see the rest of the list. Short tangent about Indian directions: In India if you don’t know where you are going you ask someone. It is really simple actually. If you are driving you roll down the window and if you are walking you just stop and ask the first stranger you see. Tangent complete. We didn’t know where any of the locations on the list where, and we didn’t know where to buy a map, so we opted for being Indian and asking for directions. Cosmos told us to take shared taxi from the bus stand and start at the zoo, from there everything was supposed to be pretty close.
We bundled up, still cold, having been cold most of the night, and walked up the hill from Di-vi-vani to find the bus stand. It wasn’t to difficult to find, it was the main street in town with all of the vehicles on it, and we found a shared taxi for 7 rupees each. We were dropped off in under 5 minutes and standing at the bottom of pathway leading up a hill with an arrow that said zoo. So we started walking up the path. This was our first experience with a hill in Darjeeling. For those of you from Seattle, I will make a comparison. The hills in Darjeeling are as steep James Street (on the downtown side of broadway), expect when you reach what should be the top, there is a turn and then the hill continues. We managed to find the zoo, which was closed on Thursday (bummer) and Hannah thought we should walk uphill more, don’t ask me why she thought this, or why I agreed. We walked uphill for about 10 more minutes until we were both huffing and puffing, until we finally asked a man in a hill-side shop which was the places on our list were. He pointed downhill and we headed back down towards the zoo.
Tangent: When I say that Darjeeling is built on hills, I don’t know if you fully understand what I mean by that. On the main street there is a steep uphill on the right side and on the left side there are houses and shops. If you stand near the houses or shops you see that they are built on stilts and that the hills plunge straight down. If you want to walk anywhere but straight on the street you have to find a staircase of a path winding up the hillside. If you look at the view behind the houses it is like looking at a natural landscape painting, hills, more like mountains everywhere. It is really beautiful.
We continued to ask for directions on our way down and shortly thereafter we stumbled upon the next site on our list. It was a Ropeway, kind of like a ski-lift but with little containers to sit in instead of chairs. The rope went straight down the hill and I bet the view was amazing, but unfortunately it was broken. We later learned that it has been broken since sometime in the late 90’s. Our next stop was a large rock, which was pretty impressive, and we were proud to have stumbled so quickly onto another one of our stops. Next on the list was a tea garden called Lebong. We walked and asked a few people where the tea garden was and they kept pointing us downhill. By this time we were on the main road slanted downhill and the walk was pretty enjoyable. We stumbled upon a road sign that said Lebong 7km. I still don’t have a complete understand of km to miles conversion, so I kept walking without thinking too much about it. Plus we were going downhill and having a nice chat. When we finally reached a sign that said Lebong 2km we decided to quit. We had already walked 5km and the tea plants were everywhere. So we stopped, admired the view and the tea plants. We sat for a few minutes and had an orange (packed along for a snack). We also had a quite amusing incident with a large bush that seemed to be moving; I was pretty freaked out, until we realized that there was a man who was carrying the bush on his back. After that we felt bad, and didn’t laugh anymore about the moving shrubbery. There were workers in many of the tea gardens who had baskets on their backs supported by a piece of cloth that went under the basket and then over their forehead. Many people in Darjeeling carried things this way, and I couldn’t help but think how awful that must be for your back (probably just as bad as bending over in the rice paddies).
We had decided to stop at the 2km sign because we had also seen a sign for our next stop, a Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Center. The sign pointed up a hill off of the main road, and we decided to begin the climb, little did we know what we were getting ourselves into. We saw blue bamboo along the way which was pretty cool and then we ran into a few young men who were really nice and told us that the Center was closed for the Tibetan New Year and that we would have to come back in 5 days. We said thank you, and asked if Chowrusta, the last item on our list would be up the hill or not. Chowrusta was a shopping center, and we were excited to find it. They said it was up the hill, and we would just have to keep walking. So we walked, and then we found the refugee center, which looked very nice, and we met a woman who mimed to us that the center would be open after four nights sleep. We kept walking uphill until we can upon a family, we asked the woman for directions and she said that Chowrusta was up the hill probably about 10km. Hmm, that was a little discouraging, and I know had a much clearer idea of how long it took to walk 5km and the hill we were walking up was only getting steeper. Hannah and I convinced ourselves that we would find vehicles on the road and that we wouldn’t have to walk the whole way. About 20 minutes later, we were pretty sweaty and definitely out of breathe. We asked a man passing by if any vehicles come up this road, he said no and laughed at us. That was slightly discouraging. We asked him how far to Chowrusta, he said only about 5 minutes more walk. That was encouraging. So we kept on walking. About 10 minutes later we started hiking up some stairs and decided to sit and snack on sweet bread and cookies, we also brought a water bottle along (perfect planning!) After sitting, shedding some layers and cooling off (we were both pretty pink in our cheeks) we headed back up the hill. We were climbing more stairs now and the area was becoming more and more residential. We kept asking for directions and kept getting varying stories, it would take us 10 more mintues, only 3 more minutes, 2 km, only 20 more minutes. But we had already hiked so far we were determined to find this market. Finally we reached what appeared to be the top, where the street flattened out and after a few correct turns we found the market. We spent the afternoon marketing, bargaining and even stopped for a short tea break. When we decided to head down, we stopped in a shop, purchased a chocolate bar and asked the shop owner how much we should pay a vehicle to take us to Di-vi-vani. You see we had spent the afternoon bargaining and we were not about to pay the outrageous 100 rupees that taxi driver had said a share taxi would cost. The shop owner called out his son, who told us it would cost about 100 rupees to take a vehicle back, but that if we went down the stairs on our left we would be there in 5 minutes walk. I was skeptical at first, I mean come on, how many people had said ‘Oh only a 5 minute walk’ that turned into a hike uphill lasting about 45 minutes probably spanning 4 km. But at least this was downhill and we really didn’t want to pay 100 rupees each. So down the stairs we climbed. After the first stair case we asked another shop owner, and he pointed down another staircase. After that staircase we asked another shop owner, he pointed down the road and said ‘Only a 5 minute walk.’ Still skeptical we began walking. You won’t believe this, I still don’t understand how it’s geographically possible, but within 5 maybe even 4 minutes we arrived at Di-vi-vani. We rested for a few minutes and then we were off again to find a place for dinner.
During the span of the day we had unfortunately lost Cosmos’s very nice list of places for us to go, and I had rolled my ankle, which was by that time pretty puffy and bruised. So on the way to dinner to stopped at the Pharmacy and bought an ankle wrap. We asked Cosmos if we would need a list for the coming day, he said that the driver knew where we were going so it was no big deal.
We had stopped in on a restaurant the evening before that looked good but they had been closed. Since it was earlier we decided to check there first. Luckily we found that the restaurant was open and we sat down for dinner. We ordered chicken chow mien, vegetable momo, chicken wai-wai and an egg roll. Hannah ordered the wai-wai, we both had not idea what it was, but decided to be surprised. Momo is a specialty of the North; it is similar to a wonton, except it is usually steamed. The chow mien was really good as were the momos (which were probably my favorite food from the whole trip). The wai-wai was like top ramen with some vegetables in it, and Hannah enjoyed it (especially because we were so cold and the soup was really hot). My egg roll was a tortilla wrap filled with egg, vegetables and brown sauce. It was really good, but nothing like what I expected. We left feeling more than full and ready for a good nights sleep. On the walk home we bought another loaf of sweet bread, for a snack tomorrow morning. We went to bed shortly after arriving home because it was cold, dark and we were getting up early.
Day 3: The day that felt like 3 days
We awoke at 4am because we were going to see the sunrise over Tiger Hill. Cosmos had helped us arrange a vehicle that would take us to the sunrise, and also show us the other notable sites during the day. We woke up, groaned, put all of the clothes we brought with us on, and decided to wear the blankets from the bed around our shoulders too. It was so cold, when we first woke up we could see our breath as we lied tucked under our covers, and we knew that although the sunrise would be beautiful we should prepare for the cold if we wanted to enjoy it at all. We crawled into the vehicle around 4:30 and drove uphill for a little over an hour until we arrived at Tiger Hill. We had to purchase tickets (typical tourist site protocol) and they ranged in price from 10-40 rupees. 10 was for standing outside and 40 was for the super deluxe lounge. Not wanted to be wasteful or seem like rich tourists we bought the 20 rupee tickets which we for the general lounge. The good news was the lounge had a balcony, which meant we could see over the crowd, but the bad news was that the windows were broken, so the lounge wasn’t much warmer than standing outside. We only had to wait for about 15 minutes (enough time to enjoy our bread) before the sun rose from beneath the clouds. It was break taking. We could also see K2, the second tallest mountain in the world, a part of the Himilayas. Both were spectacular, and even though we were tired and cold we were both really glad we weren’t warm in bed and missing the view.
Then we went to a Buddhist Monastery and to a War Memorial. Both were cool, although it was funny to see the same tourists at the sites at the day progressed. We went back to Di-vi-vani for breakfast and enjoyed the sweet bread and egg. We had a while before the driver was ready so we went and saw a cool Botanical Garden near the hotel. Although we spent about 20 minutes searching for the garden that you could very clearly see out the window of our room. There were quite a few hills to see the Botanical Garden, so we mostly just scanned the flowers from the top and goofed around taking some pictures. The rest of the morning and early afternoon we spent visiting different sites. First we went to a Buddhist Monastery next to a Japanese Buddhist Temple, then a rock garden, then a beautiful natural water site. We did quite a bit of driving and continued to be impressed with the Darjeeling drivers’ abilities to maneuver the hills and avoid the cliffs. After arriving back we unbundled a few layers and went to the taxi stand. We reserved our tickets for the next day and found a shared taxi to the zoo. The zoo was open, although the foreigners ticket price was a bit steep. We decided to go anyway and enjoyed seeing the yak, the leopard, the tigers and the black bear. There were other creatures there, but these four were the most notable. Unfortunately I rolled my ankle again while walking through the zoo. Luckily there was a bench nearby and we had a papaya in Hannah’s purse. We sat and ate the papaya while changing shoes (hers are hiking boots with more ankle support). I limped a little the rest of the day and winced when we went down stairs usually going one foot at a time like a small child, but I am not one to let my clumsiness get in the way of an adventure.
We tried to flag down a car on the street (nothing was labeled taxi or not) but no one stopped for us. We walked a short while and found a shop where we asked the owner if she knew how to stop a taxi. She was very sweet and brought us to the side of the road and stopped a car for us. As we sat down in the car and told that man we would like to go the big bazaar (another story to come), the thought began to creep into our minds that this might not be a taxi. It might be someone’s personal car. It was a jeep, like most of the cars in Darjeeling, but the driver said we only had to pay 5 rupees and no one else was stopping to ask for a ride. The driver and his front seat passenger drove into the main town area, where the taxi stand is, and pointed to a beef market, saying, bazaar. We were both well aware that this was not the bazaar, but decided it was best to get out of the car and walk the rest of the way. We were both laughing by that point, and as the car drove off we were both pretty sure that it was not a taxi. We asked around and were told that the big bazaar was up by Chowrusta. We took the short route and stumbled upon the most American looking thing I have seen in India. There was a large building with the words Big Bazaar on it, it looked like a shopping mall. You see Cosmos had told us in the morning that we should go the big bazaar near Chowrusta and we both assumed that the bazaar was like a big local market that only happened on Fridays. Boy were we surprised to see a shopping mall. We entered through the security gates and left shortly after. It was too strange to be in a mall, and neither of us felt comfortable. We walked back over to Chowrusta and went to a few shops and stands we had missed the day before.
Then we found a shop that sold more wonderful baked goods (I had a scone!) and we also bought some chocolates. Then we sat down on the steps of a closed shop and people watched while we snacked. Ok, I’ll be honest, we weren’t people watching, we were white people watching. Its not that we aren’t interested in the Indians, but we are not used to seeing white people in Raiganj, and I guess we have become like local Raiganj folks, we stare at white people. We kept trying to guess were they were from and what they were doing there. There were quite a few who looked as though they hadn’t bathed in weeks, wearing what can only be described as hippy clothing. We decided that maybe along with tea, they grow other crops in Darjeeling that are desirable for dreadlock and hemp wearing folks. (although please don’t take this as judgmental, it is just an observation)  After sitting and laughing for about a hour we headed down the street to find dinner. We ended up going to the same place as the night before, it isn’t that we aren’t adventurous, its just that it was soo good! We had all vegetarian, chow mein, momos and one other dish, which I don’t remember the name of, but ended up being a soup. After dinner we walked home, stopped at the same pharmacy and bought some pain cream for my ankle. The pharmacist said that I really should go and see a doctor, and even told us where we could go to find the doctor, but I was not about to go to another Indian doctor just to be laughed at. We went back to the room, wrote our postcards, and then after the lights went out, sat in the candlelight chatting and reading.
Day 4: Monkeys, Momos and MC Sisters
We got up early, packed our things and had breakfast. Then we caught our jeep up to Gangtok. We left 45 minutes late and there was incense burning right into our faces as we were waiting in the vehicle. I was also sitting in the middle, where the shifter needed about 90 percent of my legroom. All things considered though we were in a pretty good mood. The drive was pretty uneventful, besides for the monkeys lining the sides of the streets and the stop at the beef market, where cows legs were leaning neatly against the way. We even managed to deal with the Sikkim foreingers registration office on our own. We arrived at 1pm and waited for a little bit for Puthumai to pick us up at the bus stand. Then we went to the Missionaries of Charity house, and had lunch. The Sisters were very welcoming and fed us wonderfully. Our first stop after arriving was to the permit office to get permits to visit Chungu, the area we would visit the next morning. It is restricted by the military as it is close to the China border. After that we spent the afternoon at different sites, a lookout tower, a Hindu temple, a flower garden, another lookout tower (the views in Gangtok are amazing) and finally a really cool waterfall area. In the evening we stopped at an outside market, which had nicely paved streets, and shops where you could go inside. The overall level of development in Gangtok was different than in W. Bengal. There was not as much littering and spitting in the street, and there were signs everywhere about not driving when drunk, driving safely and not littering. We were told this is because Sikkim was the last state to join India and still has retained many freedoms that the other states do not have. We went back to the Sisters place for dinner, and they made us beef momos, which were wonderful! I must have eaten at least 10 of them; they were so good. Then Hannah and I went up the hill to a hotel that we would be staying in. I was off to bed shortly, there was no water, so no use in showering (water here is like power, sometimes it comes and sometimes it doesn’t). Hannah went in the hall and spoke with her mom for a while. There were some girls in the hall who came to the door twice after she returned. The first time they pretended as though it was a mistake and the second time they asked if they could make a friendship with her because they were bored. She told them honestly that she was exhausted and when they suggested meeting in the morning Hannah told them we were leaving at 6am. We both slept well that night, as it was warmer and we were exhausted.
Day 5: Indian snow
We woke up at 5:45 and packed quickly. We had to be at mass at 6am and we had a 10 minute walk down the hill to the Sisters place. We arrived only a few minutes late (Indian time) and then sat for mass in English. Afterwards we had breakfast, which was pancake like flatbread with beans in sauce. Then we loaded up in our vehicle and went to pick up our permits. They weren’t ready because the government office that issues them had opened late that day. So we waited and left an hour late. After a two-hour drive up, up and up we were amidst Indian snow and yaks. It was freezing, but we were all so excited to see the area it wasn’t the most pressing thing on our minds. We walked around for a while and played in the snow, admiring the half frozen lake and the huge mountains you can see when the clouds shifts. The yaks had been domesticated and were available for riding, although they were very very expensive. The whole time we were being careful not to slip on the icy snow and also to avoid the massive piles of yak shit. After an hour of playing in the snow (something I never expected to see in India), we headed back down the hill. We had some hot wai-wai before leaving and we were all full and somewhere near warm. The drive down was uneventful, although the huge cliffs, snowy roads and unknown driver were a little unnerving, we reached the Sisters place safely and after packing being ferried to the bus station we were off. We took the first Western vechile I have been in to Siliguri. The driver was from W. Bengal, so he had to leave that night, so the price was cheaper. The car was a Toyota, with windows that sealed, seats with headrests, seatbelts, and sufficient legroom for longer Western legs. Hannah and I were both pretty excited. After reaching Siliguri we took a bus to Raiganj and reached sometime around 11pm. We were all tired and went straight to bed. Overall, a highly successful trip.
Sorry for the length, I got verbose somewhere in the middle, no, it was the beginning that was long, sorry 
Sending love