Chumbi Residency Hotel Sikkim

... often I catch myself sitting there thinking quite intently about how happy I am. 'I'm so happy. Look at me, sitting here, thinking about how happy I am! Just look - look, right now! I'm just sitting thinking about how happy I am! Huh. How about that.' It's like a holiday from my neuroses, how brilliant! Kolkata is a great place, but it's excaberating my usual anxieties to somewhat alarming levels. I have to confess to indulging in a few ridiculous and catastrophic mind tangles ...

... and either fried or steamed momo's. I went there for breakfast this morning and had the most incredible Tibetan bread (either a crispy puffed bread made with flour and oil or - like at Kunga's - the most divine sweet damper-like round of just-cooked dough) dipped in curd. I had the Tibetan noodle soup there a couple of nights back and couldn't believe noodles could taste so good. A group of travellers from my hotel and mysefl also ate there for dinner one night and we ...

... folding and refolding every item in store. It doesn't make a difference what time of day or night it is, vendors will just tell you any rubbish to try to get more money out of you. Ridiculous! I also really really don't like haggling! How do you ever know the worth of anything that you buy? It may all just be rubbish, you just don't know. I'm not very good at haggling either, which doesn't help. A ghat is just a series of steps leading down to ...

... lie when it comes to salary and marital aspirations). They buy me a pastry and fend off the leprosy beggars who take control of the station, and tell me that I am a guest in their country so I do not need to thank them - it is their pleasure to do this for me (one of my favourite Indianisms, and one of the reasons that 'please' and 'thank you' are not commonly heard). Soon enough I breezed off to my first class carriage and was befriended by a shoe-shine ...

... have walked around more to check out some of the sights, but the weather was awful the whole time I was there, so I was content to hang out and read. The first day I was in Darjeeling, I thought I'd see if I could find a piano to play on, so I headed to the Elgin Hotel, the poshest place in town. The hotel was formerly a private mansion, built in the 19th century, and the colonial decour is beautiful. When ...

... I will go to Tescos, buy some Tesco value cakes, leave them out for a few days to go stale and brittle, and then p**haps store them in a tramp's und**pants for a week for added authenticity. Yet ev**yday we went back. I think it was that ev**yday I hoped that it would be diff**ent, but it nev** was. We did do oth** activities besides eat at Glenary's howev**. We visited the small but well-presented Darjeeling zoo. H**e we managed to catch a glimpse of endang**ed Tibetan ...

... I don't know if I was tired or cold, but I felt like it tasted amazing. I played with the kittens until we headed out at about 8 am. Headed towards Sandakphu (elevation 11,929 ft/3636 m). Now, don't be fooled by the elevation change numbers. Although it seems like there was less, really the second day was considerably harder than the first. For the first two hours it was down hill along the ridge. It was ...

... ve mentioned before. Now I've complained before about India, and its true that nowhere is anything as easy as it could and should be. Its a difficult and sometimes tiring place to travel, wonderful and interesting but difficult. Lots of nice people but also a lot of rudeness, much of it cultural, more of it just being ignorant and rude. The local people in Darjeeling seemed very nice, probably something to do with their Nepali heritage, but the tourists were horrific. They ...

... while on an Elephant. The cycle ride was fun as I have not been on a bike for years, so a 20km round trip resulted in a numb bum ouch. The border crossing was simple but had to wait on the Indian side while the one immigration official decided to take a mid-morning break, just something I have gotten use to. The trip up to Darjeeling was good, a simple bus ride from the border and then a shared jeep for the 7,000 ft climb. The weather has been kind ...