Long Day to Darjeeling

 Sweeping out the trash.

 Scenes from the train ride.

 In Siliguri it was raining. This cow took shelter with us and was eyeing the man's cucumbers.

 A view from the mountain road up to Darjeeling.

 Will and my birthday cake.

 The owner of the hotel giving me birthday blessings.

 Delicious.

My new friends.

Thursday, April 12^th.

We finally boarded the train about midnight to start my birthday. The train has six berths per cabin and an upper and a lower berth on the opposite side. I have the middle berth. So, when we all sit on the lower berth my bed is actually the backrest. Therefore, we all have to agree to go to bed before the middle berths can make their beds. I am sharing the cabin with Will and Jen who are on the top bunks, Wayne and Gae who are on the bottom and with an Indian who is on the middle across from me. It is difficult to make your bed with the two sheets and a blanket while kneeling on it. When I got that sorted, I put my little backpack up by my head for safe keeping, got out the iPod to listen to the new Eels disc and promptly went to sleep.

I was up a couple of hours later and made use of the very primitive, old dirty western style toilet. When I used it again in the morning, you could see that the hole went directly onto the tracks and later when we got to a station, there were a couple of guys hosing down the tracks and trying to wash away the excrement. Others were trying to sweep all the garbage up. Neither person really had a place to wash or sweep the stuff to. That is why in the washroom it asks people not to use the toilet while in the station.

At 8:30 in the morning, when we were supposed to arrive in our destination we found we were still 250 km away. So, we put the booth back together as best we could with all the sheets and blankets laying around, and settled into looking out the window, typing, reading and getting to know each other. I actually spent a couple of hours between cars sitting on the step with the door open, enjoying the breeze, the views, contemplating life and the stale urine smell from the toilet.

It turned out to be a very long day of train journey. The train was supposed to arrive in Siliguri at 8:00am but we didn’t get there until 2:30. It started raining as soon as we got there. We loaded up in two jeeps that were waiting (a long time) for us. When I got off the train, I discovered that my other pair of light weight zip legged pants had ripped apart just like the other pair a couple of weeks ago. I had simply worn them out. Now I am down to one pair of pants.

We drove out of town and stopped at a local restaurant because most of us had not had breakfast or lunch because we didn’t want to eat the train food. Then we drove for 3:00 hours up the very steep and narrow road into the hills to Darjeeling. There was a lot of traffic and the drivers were still aggressive. It made the road very interesting, with steep drop offs and little or no guardrails. It was rainy and misty, but the views were still impressive and reminded me of Nepal.

At last, we arrived at our new hotel where we had to carry our bags up about 70 stairs, which was very hard, because we have gained about 2000 metres in altitude. We were huffing and puffing pretty good. The temperature here is almost much cooler and the hotel has to put on heaters.

We got our rooms and then met up again for a ‘tea’. The hotel had made us a cup of Darjeeling tea and Will had ordered a birthday cake for me. It was a black forest type cake. So, we had a little party, but all of us were too tired from the train to do much and Will had a headache. So, tomorrow night we are going to have a beer or two. The woman owner of the hotel gave me a package of Darjeeling tea, a chocolate bar and a scarf and gave me many blessings and best wishes for a great birthday. How nice is that?
The room was quite chilly, but there was a heavy duvet and a heavy blanket on the bed which kept me good and warm.