Our Trek Gets Underway

As we arrived in Dhodrey our Jeeps were unloaded with their contents going two ways: humans and bears, plus daysacks, to a village house for lunch, and yellow Exodus bags to our luggage carrying mule train.

Although it was only 11:30 a.m. packed lunches were produced, prepared by or trek chef Manilal. We were all given a cardboard box and it was exciting to open them up and see what was inside. It was quite a feast: a potato, a hardboiled egg, cheese sandwiches, cake and a chocolate bar. There were also cartons of mango juice which weren't too popular with us, but went down well with the local children.

After lunch we were all raring to go and here some of us are at the starting line ...

... Yorkie was still inside, hoovering up the lunch leftovers and living up to his nickname of the Piranha.

We left the village, admiring some of the mooli crops and crossing the local football pitch before starting an easy ascent through woodland.  We had a fine trekking leader in Kundan who you see in the red jacket. He seemed hardly old enough to have left school but he was very good and looked after us well. Our group leader, Dilip, is crouching down in our picture; he was also an excellent leader and very good company.

It wasn't a hard afternoon's walk and we had plenty of time to enjoy it and the views that started to open up as we climbed. We soon left the trees behind and climbed, on a good path, through scrubby grassland. Our female minder had the claim to fame of being the only member of the group to pick up a leech on her knee. Fortunately it brushed off easily (she later found a second one on her boot, but that was the end of them, as we had climbed too high for for any more leeches).

As we climbed onto a ridge, not any old ridge but the Singalila ridge we were going to follow on our trek, we were almost immediately in the village of Tonglu (3036m) where we were to stay for the night.

Our blue tents were all pitched and ready for us to move in. The cook tent and our dining tent weren't far away.

 
We spent most of the remainder of the day drinking tea and eating, then because it was cold and dark and we'd had lots of fresh air, it was early to bed for us.

Lots of love, George, Yorkie and Gio xxx

Heritage on Wheels

We were awake and ready to leap out of bed when we heard the call of 'Mountain View' at 5.15 a.m. Being bears we don't have to dress, so we were up on the hotel's sun terrace before our minders, drinking in our first view of Kanchenjunga.

It was very exciting especially as the view changed every few minutes, as it got lighter and the sun moved round the horizon, painting the mountains pink. It wasn't worth going back to bed afterwards, as we had to pack before an earlyish breakfast, so we could leave at 7.30 to walk down to the station,  where we would catch the toy train of the Darjeeling Mountain Railway.

The railway was completed in 1881 and built to exploit the difference in the price of potatoes between Darjeeling and Silguri. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was built with a narrow gauge of just 2 foot to allow it to follow a tightly twisting route through the hills. The raised track now runs along the edge of the only road into Darjeeling, which is very narrow and very busy, making for a fun journey as you mix it with all the traffic.

Four diesel locos handle most of the scheduled services, but there are still some British built steam engines which take tourists along a 10 km stretch of the railway between Darjeeling and Ghum.

We were lucky to be able to travel on a train pulled by one of the characterful blue steam engines - Blue Bear would have loved it, especially the fact that the engines are blue like him. It was a slow journey at a speed of no more than 12km an hour, with numerous stops for cars parked on the line which had to be moved, and similar.

We had one official stop for about 10 minutes at the Batista loop where there are beautiful gardens and a memorial to Gurkha soldiers of the Indian Army. Close by stands a sculpture of one of the soldiers, appearing behind me in my photo ...

At Ghum station we left the train and our jeeps were there waiting for us. We climbed aboard and set off for the village of Dhodrey, the starting point of our trek. How exciting!

Lots of love

George, Yorkie and Gio xxx

To the Queen of the Hills

The next day, day 1 proper of the holiday, involved some more travelling. We had a civilised, post breakfast, departure from our hotel, for Delhi airport's domestic terminal, then a relaxing flight up to Bagdogra airport. This serves as a military airport so no photos were allowed ... we'll therefore move swiftly on to our journey from the airport up to Darjeeling.

We travelled in jeeps as we had a big climb into the hills to do, on poor quality roads. The first few miles were on smooth wide tarmac, as you can see from our picture below ...

... so we bowled along, keeping an eye out for elephants crossing. We saw the warning signs, but not the elephants. We suppose that was better than hitting, or being hit by, one.

As we started to climb into those cool green hills that so attracted the British colonials, it started to get cooler and our pace slowed due to lots of hairpins and a narrowing of the road. We stopped for a break at a restaurant with a view at Kurseong, and tucked into a few shared plates of delicious momos (steamed dumplings for those who haven't tried them).

It was dark by the time we arrived at Darjeeling. Our hotel, the Himalayan Resort, was quite new but had bags of lovely character. How's this for a fine room ...

... don't worry, we haven't suddenly joined a convent, we're wearing the Buddhist prayer scarf we were presented with, on arrival, along with a cup of tea (Darjeeling, what else?)

The corridor outside our room was equally splendid with lots of beautiful wood panelling ...

... can you see us relaxing on the settee?

As we had arrived in the early evening, we didn't get much further than a local restaurant a 10 minutes stroll away. We also had an interesting briefing telling us what we would be doing the next day. We were getting very excited as we had the start of our trek to look forward to, as well as a ride on Darjeeling's famous toy train.

We found a picture of the toy train outside our room. We sat in the plant below gazing up at it and anticipating the delight of the next day.

We didn't stay up too late though as we were due to have a wake up call the next morning, at just after 5.00 a.m., for our first 'mountain view'.

We'll share this first view with you next time.

Lots of love, George, Yorkie and Gio xxx