Friday April 18th – Saturday April 19, 2008
So Friday morning we got up early and waited around til 9 when we were scheduled to leave for Darjeeling. Our SUV arrived and we pilled in. Pastor in the front passenger and dev and I in the back. Our driver was a local to the mountain towns where we are heading and has 17 years as a taxi driver under his belt, and that’s taxiing from Suliguri to Darjeeling on some of the steepest and tiniest roads crowded with trucks. Our driver had graduated from the Bible College I was staying at a year before and was now working in the area and being the official driver of the Campus. Our trip started of pretty tame just driving up through some quite hills covered in tea plants, but it got crazy quickly. The roads started getting bad and in need of repair and we were being bounced the inside of the jeep. Pastor up front just fell asleep and didn’t come out of his coma til our first stop which was Mirick a nice little town half way to Darjeeling and it strangely reminded me of my Grandparents village of East Kirby. Except it was full of Asians and Indians instead of wellie boat wearing, woolen covered, aristocratic farmers. Here we rode horses b/c Dev had never ridden a horse and I thought that was outrageous. After posing for pictures on horses we had a spot of lunch. Lunch consisted of a chicken club sandwich for me and curry for the rest. When you think chicken club, you would usually think slices of chicken maybe strips, bacon, lettuce, cheese, tomatoes and a dab of mayo, BUT here in Mirick a chicken club is 4 layer monstrous sandwich comprising of layer one: egg over medium, layer two: tomato, cucumber and butter, layer 3: shredded chicken of questioning origins, layer 4: cheese and tomato ketchup. After being totally shocked I chomped it down and it was delicious. Back on the road heading into the Himalayas I realized things around started getting really cold and steep. I love cold, I havnt had five minutes in three weeks where I haven’t stopped sweating so this was really nice. We passed thousands of acres of Tea estates and even saw a huge TAZO tea company sign welcoming me. I took a mass of pictures as we ascended into the clouds and when I say clouds I really mean it I’ll show you the video where we couldn’t see 5 feet in front of us but our driver said he knows the roads and continued to drive like a maniac through the fog with sheer vertical cliffs that go on for miles to our right. When we emerged from the fog we weren’t very far away from Darjeeling. When we got to Darjeeling we drove around trying to find a hotel and finally got a great deal b/c the pastor we were with haggled the price down by half! Then we drove down the bottom of the Valley to walk around Gagamaya Park, which is a pretty little garden, and with a river running through it and a lake at the bottom. We relaxed and enjoyed the scenery then we met some people who worked there and had tea and chatted for a while. After the drive back up the valley it was getting dark so we went back to the hotel and freshened up. Dev and I went out for a walk around the city and through all the tourist markets and strange shops. After we walked around for a while we were getting hungry so we stopped at a Tai restaurant for dinner. While at dinner I met a father son and son team who were in Darjeeling and the surrounding area to do a bit of hiking. They were from Sussex right near London and they were all strangely tall. We talked with them for a couple of hours then found our way back to the hotel and turned in.

In the morning we were woken up at 3:45 so that we could get ready and jump in a taxi that was heading for Tiger hill; an amazing viewing point for the Himalayas and the sunrise. Dev and I hopped in the front of this SUV taxi and there were about 8 other people crammed in the back. We drove up to Tiger hill following a huge parade of taxis. When we finally got up near the lookout all hell had broken lose. Cars were everywhere, everyone was honking their horns and getting angry so Dev and I got out and legged it up the hill to get a good spot. The view WAS really amazing, looking north you could see Mt Everest and the peaks of the Himalayas and East was the burning sky getting ready to shoot up the sun. The place was crowded and when the sun peaked over the mountains everyone cheered and yelled until the sun had cleared the mountains. The peaks caught the sunlight and look beautiful. Thousands of cameras started going off and people scrambled to get the best shot. When the craziness died down Dev and I walked down the hill a little ways to get some other really good shots of mountains in the morning. Our taxi was really hard to find in the chaos. I thought that was it and he was going to take us back to the Hotel but instead he took us to a famous Buddhist temple and then to a war memorial for the Gurka soldiers and the Soldier was even carrying a FAL. We got back to the hotel around 9 and showered and checked out. We got directions to a museum and started walking but we got lost a couple of times and ended up at a boxing gym once and a deadend with a b&b the other time but eventually got there and what was said to be a museum was in fact a zoo and the HMI (Himalayan Mountaineering Institute). We wondered around the zoo looking at awesome animals then checked out the HMI museum and took a picture with Tanzing Nargay the first man along with Sir Hillary to be on Mt Everest. This took up most of our day so when we finally left the zoo and institute we met up with our crazy driver and left Darjeeling. It was sad leaving Darjeeling I liked that place a lot. When we got back to Siliguri I just passed out.