I thought I would try and update the blog as haven’t written for over a week. What better time to do it than whilst Matt has his first shave in 6 weeks. I could be writing a novel here :) Short version: The trek was amazing. There were bad points, there always are with us two. But the result at the end was phenomenal. The views at sunrise across the Himalaya mountain range spectacular, breathtaking. ...
The sun came out today. Hooray! At 3pm after umming and ahhing and umming some more in our worse than normal indecisive manner, we finally made a decision to go on the trek. At 3.05 as we left the hotel, it started raining. Half hour more of deliberating and we thought sod it lets go. Even if it’s raining its what we have wanted to do the whole time we’ve been in Darjeeling (apart from the toy train of course). ...
“A number of rewarding and picturesque treks are accessible from Darjeeling. October and November’s clear skies and warm temperatures make it an ideal time to trek…” says the Lonely Planet. We wouldn’t know. For the past few days we have wanted to go on the Singalila trek where you can walk to a height of 3600m at Sandakphu and see the top of Everest clearly but the weather is beating us. The rain has followed us from the UK and it won’t go away! ...
I’ve just found out that Karen’s Nan is being given print-outs of this blog, so a big hello to you from India! After the first few days I was almost ready to just get on a plane back home again. The people were rude, and the city was filthy. I’m over that initial culture-shock now (realising it was basically just Delhi) and am now really enjoying India. It’s a mad place, there’s no escaping that, but we’ve met some lovely people and already experienced a lifetime worth of bizarre events. ...
Varanasi has been our most surreal experience yet in India. More tuk-tuk touts than you can shake a stick at but a very spiritual and dream-like place. Paul van der Werf from the train joined us and we made our way to Chaitanya Guest House in Assi Ghat which is the most southerly ghat in Varanasi and was very pleasant. There wasn’t the same amount of hustle and bustle here as in the old city which Varanasi is famous for. ...
We will put more photos on our blog as soon as we get a quicker internet connection. Currently sat in our hotel room in Darjeeling and using the sim card for access and its so painfully slow I may cut off my right arm rather than wait any longer for the photos to upload.
Day 4 in Delhi Off to Varanasi today so suddenly thought we ought to do some sightseeing. We chose the Lotus temple and it’s definitely worth seeing. An amazing bit of modern architecture which we think is almost as “wow” as the Taj Mahal. It looks like some kind of futuristic building set amongst green gardens and palm trees. It could be from a sci-fi film. Kind of reminded me of Logan’s run in a way. Pure white building with underground buildings in the grounds where the people emerge from to relax in the gardens of paradise until one is chosen for sacrifice! ...
Day 3 in Delhi – coincidences Things improved today. Although we’re still in HUI. We bumped into two girls Abby and Beth (speech therapists from London) who were also off to see the athletics later. Coincidentally (i’m going to say that alot in these blogs) they were in the same block as us. So we travelled together to the stadium and watched the 100m mens and women’s finals. The women’s was controversial because there was almost a false start because of the noise the crowd were making. An indian shotputter was taking his turn just when the women were getting ready on their blocks. And when an indian athlete did anything the crowds went mental. There was no co-ordination between the field events and track events so this scenario happened quite a few times. ...
Day 2 in Delhi – The inefficiencies We pop by Smyle Inn to ask about the room. Yes it will be ready later. Come back at noon. Ok so merrily we go off to get brekkie @ Sam’s Cafe. I won’t even go into that… Back at 12 and the guy is oh i’m sorry we still have no room. do you mind staying at the other hotel another night? Um yes we do bloody mind mate. He starts throwing free cartons of juice at us to placate us. And you should have come for free breakfast he said. Sod the bloody breakfast where is our room? So off in a huff we go to HUI and cunningly ask the guy how much our room is. He struggles to say immediately but blurts our 450 rupees. Why that little *&%*!! was charging us 690 per night. What a scammer. So with some confrontation from the Smyle Inn and protests of well you get free internet and breakfast blah blah blah, we officially moved ourselves from Smyle Inn to Unique International and paid 450 per night direct rather than via a middleman. ...
Our first experience of a sleeper train was pretty good. We’d booked far enough in advance to get the side upper and side lower beds in a 3AC carriage which meant we could sit opposite each other and go to bed whenever we wanted without worrying about anyone else. It was an 18 hr journey but didn’t feel like it as from 21.30 til 7.30 we were pretty much sleeping. The evening was occupied with reading and interruptions of “chai, chai chai”, “coffee, nescafe, coffee” etc. And we were even served an evening meal. It was kind of like airplane food. A thali consisting of different runny concoctions, raita and chapati served in separate cartons in a cardboard box. It was tasty enough for 45 rupees. ...