May Fair Darjeeling

... a time?" Easy for me to say. Matt was in front, His girlfriend, Jess, was 20 feet behind, and I was bringing up the rear. After pausing a few moments, Matt turned and headed back our way. "I can see the whole hillside moving" he said. After discussing it for a few moments, we turned and headed back the way we had come. I was both relieved and annoyed. <br><br>We were two hours from the end of the 21-day trek ...

... whatever their status, i am not talking here about the types of women we see all the time in Goa borrowing babies and begging on the beaches and street.... I am talking real needy poor people who appear to have nothing.have a look at the pics....you see them at every station too and at night sprawled sleeping on the bare platforms........ terrrible ... the little boy carried the baby over to me at one point to show me as i was smiling at him and he got shouted at ...

... In our Taxi was another Irish guy named Gerard from Cork city living in Mallow. The sunrise was nice but the haze prevented good photographs of the Himalayas even though the naked eye could see them. After we returned as far as Goom station where we disembarked the taxi and visited the oldest Buddhist Monastry in the Darjeeling area. The Hotel owner had given me a sketch map and an itenary for a nice walk back to Darjeeling so the ...

... moment. We had some great conversation, everybody except for me got stuck into the Kingfisher's and proceeded to get much happier. I stuck to fresh lime soda and water, and managed to survive a NYE without having one drink at all. I was lovly to wake up this morning fresh and clear (although the Nepalese music booming from the hotel next door tried it's best to give me a morning headache) The two Swedes in our group were surrounded by Australians and they ...

... had been swirling with activity, movement, noise, and smells, less then twelve hours earlier when I had walked home the prior evening. I packed a few last things, ate a little breakfast, and then Will and I left our flat, backpacks on back. We walked to the busiest street near our flat to catch one of the few rickshaws out at such an early hour. It wasn't terribly hard to find one, and we made it to the train station in good time. We met our friends Andrew ...

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... has new meaning to me now. We got a coffee and vegan shake... excellent and they spoke English, with songs like Unchained Melody playing no less. Now I understand why foreigners seek out others and any familiar surroundings. We ate at a very busy restaurant which we took as a good sign that we wouldn't get sick, got 2 thali, 2 1 liters of mineral water for less than $5. It will make paying $7 for a sandwich seem ridiculous. This place is especially nice for Gabe who has ...

... we are 2nd in line on the waiting list- so fingers crossed, in fact we are going to keep everything crossed! Had delicious greasy Yorkshire pudding like things with eggs for lunch- very random and because we couldn't find anywhere that did food that we fancied we ate dinner on the street from a little man making chow mein, we shared it with the cows and drank copious amounts of sweet tea to keep the little boy in business! The chow mien was delicious. We are ...

Darjeeling is great, cold again, but beautiful and very Nepalese. It is a tea growing area, so the hills are covered with green tea plants, which makes for a beautiful view; infortunately not really being tea drinkers we stuck mostly with coffee, but did a tea tasting session. Funnily enough all the teas we liked were the cheap ones while the expensive ones, well they were just not our cup of tea (weak I know). This time for our accommodation we chose a place with reliable hot ...

... demon and afterwards went home to her parental home with all their four children. Durga Puja, majorily celebrated in West Bengal, celebrates her homecoming and leaves opportunity to the wives to visiting their home (some time ago, this has been the only opportunity in the year). Pantels are big sculptures of Durga and the children, and any neighborhood invests big amounts of money to creating the best one. Locals' behavior interestingly doesn't exceed a come-and-see-and go ...