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
2 comments:
That must be a room to remember when camping in the rain!
Looks very luxe!
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