Kalimpong and Darjeeling

Trip Start Jul 28, 2007
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21
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Trip End Nov 10, 2008


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Monday, December 24, 2007

From Sikkim I went to Kalimpong near Darjeeling.  This is another place from which you can get a view of Khangchendzonga.  And again, there are lots of monasteries.  There was a Caroll Festival with an Hindi Jesus story and some signing and dancing including 3 guys from  Fiji!  They were very populair with the Indian crowd!  The population being mainly Nepali they were signing and dancing in Nepali.  It is actually difficult to know where some of the people are from.  Some of the women wear Nepali necklaces with India clothes.  In Kalimpong I went to see a Bollywood movie that had been released the day before for less than 1$!!!  But you should have seen the state of the seats, terrible!  At least even though it was cold outside I didn't freeze which is better than going to the movies in Singapore!  I now have a favorite Indian actor (Akashy Kumar), quite cute, so I had to see the movie even though I couldn't understand a thing.  I came out of there at 7h40 and the whole city had shot down!  I had to buy a bag of chips for dinner (really just an excuse to eat my favorite snack, I could have had dinner at the guesthouse).

Darjeeling used to be a British hill station and is well known for its tea.  It is a very buzzing place.  The whole city feels like a bazzaar, there's people and shops every where.  The traffic and noise are terrible, but the view is wonderful.  From here you can see Khangchendzonga and if you get up early to go to Tiger Hill for the sunset you can see the whole Himalaya range.  Unfortunately, I chose the wrong day to get up and Everest and the other mountains were covered by clouds. You should have seen the crowd!  People go at 4am for the 6 o'clock sunrise.  Now I know why!  It was impossible to have a spot to see something even though the sky was completely fogged!  There were so many people, probably 100 jeeps, I am not joking!  It was worth getting early just for that.  They didn't exclaim as loud as the Chinese when the sun actually made an appearance, but some people had already left by then.  I took a lot of pictures of the nice fog!!!  Lukily I was able to see the sunrise from around the city (without the Himalayas) on a different day. 

There are nice restaurants here one of the reason why I came here for Christmas.  I had breakfast with a view of the mountains every morning before it covered up around lunch time.  I went to the zoo to see the lovely red pandas (did you know that they sleep with their tail wrapped around their head!) and inside the zoo is the Himalayam Moutaineering Institute which is quite interesting and has lots of stuff on Everest. There is also a toy train that goes from Darjeeling to Ghum.  It runs with steam and crosses the main road several times so cars and pedestrians must stop to let it pass!  It is so slow, I was walking faster than the train!  There is some nice trekking to do around Darjeeling, but it was too cold.  Might have to come back again.....
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