The Wanderer Me : Oh Darjeeling!

An unplanned trip...spur of the moment! Sophie & myself just decided over a cup of tea from a pavement chai wala! (near Mother Teresa's home) to buy a ticket and just go!! It's been an adventure and we loved every minute of our time here!

Just 2 days prior, we booked our train tickets from Kolkata to Siliguri on Tatkal Scheme. (Tatkal - This is a ticketing program established by Indian Railways. The scheme is used for booking journeys at very short notice.) The train's departure time around 7.30 pm......and till about 7pm....our tickets still hadn't got confirmed! But nothing was going to stop us from travelling that night. So we cancelled the train tickets....called a Bus Service company......and just made it on to their last trip for the day!

Kolkata to Siliguri.....it was an overnight journey. We were to have reached by 9-10am the next morning. However we hadn't considered Indian roads and traffic! We reached Siliguri late afternoon...about 3-4ish! Our journey wasn't over yet.

From Siliguri we took the local "sumo" taxis (it's an SUV which takes about 8 passengers) to Darjeeling. This was around 5ish in the evening and about 9pm we were dropped at the middle of the Darjeeling town...taxi stand. From there...in the cold, we trudged with our backpacks looking for a hotel! Yes, we hadn't pre-booked as we thought we would be there in the morning and plenty of time to search for one. Talk about going with the flow and a travel companion who was just game for anything and was just as understanding and adaptable to the situation! Merci beaucoup Sophie!

We checked in to a hotel. Went out for some dinner. Met up with 2 other travellers who Sophie befriended in Kolkata. Made plans to see the sun rise at Tiger Hills the next day. Life's beautiful!

Here's some photos from this trip.

A view of the Darjeeling town from somewhere close to the Japanese Temple.

Another view of the Darjeeling town from the Rope Way.

Yet another view of the Darjeeling Town from down the Mall Road on the way to the zoo.

Kanchenjunga view from the War Memorial.

Brrrr! It was frickin cold!! Subhoshish & Sophie. Woke up real early to leave by 3am to catch the sunrise at Tiger Hill.

Awesome view to start the day with! Dawn breaking over Kanchenjunga....the reflection of the sun seen over the mountains. View from Tiger Hill, Darjeeling.