Dorje-ling

Sign at Darjeeling...just so you don't get confused.


I wrote previously that the quiet room at the railway station was only disturbed by the occasional train - not so as it turned out. A big storm even by Himalayan standards came through at night, and I read in the paper that 70km winds took down many trees, killed one, and stopped 65% of all electricity in the region. The room we were in was large and our bags were a good 15 feet from the door, but so much rain blew under that our bags were still dampened - luckily the camera, lenses and related manuals were all in plastic bags inside. We took a crowded jeep taxi over the worst roads I've seen in India - worse than any of the bush tracks in Eastern Victoria, and then climbed...and climbed. Darjeeling is 7400 feet, higher than any land point in Australia, and quite chilly, felt even more so after the heat of Kokata. The Anglicised name Darjeeling came from the Tibetan name of this post, and we woke this morning to the sounds of long horns, cymbals and drums from the nearby Tibetan Gompa...then of course the constant sound of tooting car horns which does not let up until late at night. Darjeeling has 350,000 people which makes it larger than either Hobart or Wellington as I understand it. Perched up on a ridge top it was never designed for traffic of any sort much less the totally unregulated shambles so characteristic of India. Yesterday afternoon we walked a lot and have identified where one of aunt Grace's photos was taken from - it is some distance so we will walk there this afternoon. All government offices (as well as such things as the 150 year old "toy" train) are indefinitely closed from today - including Sir Ed's Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. Weather is cloudy and I do not expect we will see anything of Kanchenjunga until we are in Sikkim - clouds and mist swirl around the ridges here. If you are reading this Pete, I thought of you when checking out the Darjeeling tea shops - there is some fine looking leaf here. Incidentally, the botanist among us here spotted some fine looking leaf growing at the last town too.