After a few broken hours of sleep I got up in the train at 8:00 and arranged my berth as a seating area. I went on to read for a bit until Claire got down from her bunk above. Then we sat and talked for a bit until the train arrived just before 10:00, about an hour late.
We got out and went outside of the station where there were literally 100's of jeeps - one of the local jeep-wallahs quickly intercepted us and gave us two seats for Rs.200,- each, which turned out to be somewhat above the going rate for our fellow Indian travelers by about Rs.50,- per person - but hey, pointless to take it personal as that will ruin your trip. We spent an additional hour there while waiting for him to hoard sufficient passengers and goods into the jeep - before we took off.
The trip was a bit of a nuisance - on the one hand the jeep was full to the brim with people and on the other there were a few stops where more people were fitted in and more goods were exchanged. Then there was the mad driving and loud music - we ended up having 2 different drivers, with a swap underway at yet another store, and on both occasions I had to ask them to turn down the volume of their crap music - not that it helped much as about 15 minutes later the volume would magically make its way back up to the original level. After about 3.5 hours of this we were ready to slit our wrists and were very thankful of being dropped off in the wrong end of town to where our hotel was. But never mind, a quick trot with (for me) 30+kg of backpacks uphill and up countless stairs to take shortcuts from windy roads for more than 20 minutes with Claire behind me and we were at our hotel, albeit knackered ;-) Yes, we could have taken a cab but precious few people could speak English and neither of us were in a mood for any bullshit or haggling with the locals ;-)
Arriving at our hotel and climbing even more stairs there, we finally ended up at reception in the Dekeling Hotel only to be told that they had "accidentally" sold our top-floor deluxe room and so had no availability on that location - but offered us an "upgrade" with a suite in Dekeling Resorts, about 20 min. walk from the hotel and so slightly out of the way of the centre.
Never mind, we put on our brave faces after a number of inquisitive questions about our requested room to which we really didn't receive any satisfactory answers. At least they in the end offered to pay for the cab to the other location.
About 15 minutes later a cab brought us to Dekeling Resorts and our initial reaction was that of being slightly impressed. We got a separate living room to our bedroom and both rooms featured fireplaces. So we took it. At around 15:00 we then went exploring town for something to eat as we had had nothing to eat at this point - we were recommended two Tibetan restaurants Kunga and Devekales - we chose the former and were well impressed by the food. We had deep fried Momo's (dumplings), fried Wai-Wai (special type of noodles to the region), Chow Meing, and a very nice soup, which name currently eludes me. It was a feast for kings - and in fairness to them, they did warn us that maybe the order was too much for us, there was such an incredible amount of food on the table of which we did consume 3/4 and brought the remaining Momo's back to our room in a doggie bag/box.
Afterwards we went to see Chowrasta and then decided it was time to go back to the room and relax for the remainder of the day.
Initial thoughts about Darjeeling is that it's just as commercial as all other areas of India and not really as nice as we had expected. Also, the pollution from countless Diesel engines (mostly jeeps) is nearly suffocating here as there is so much traffic more than 2000 meters up.
When we were back in the room I set-up the laptop and connected it to the television. We started watching some Dexter and Warehouse 13 when suddenly there was a lot of commotion of newly arriving guests our side of the Resorts. Unfortunately the tourists ended up on top of us on the next floor and they were very(!!!) noisy, moving furniture around and walking in what sounded like clogs - the fact that it's all a wooden building didn't really help as sound travels easily. They kept being incredibly noisy up until after 23:00 and with lack of sleep from last night I was getting rather annoyed towards the end. But thankfully they finally made it to bed and I could finally fall asleep just after midnight.
We got out and went outside of the station where there were literally 100's of jeeps - one of the local jeep-wallahs quickly intercepted us and gave us two seats for Rs.200,- each, which turned out to be somewhat above the going rate for our fellow Indian travelers by about Rs.50,- per person - but hey, pointless to take it personal as that will ruin your trip. We spent an additional hour there while waiting for him to hoard sufficient passengers and goods into the jeep - before we took off.
The trip was a bit of a nuisance - on the one hand the jeep was full to the brim with people and on the other there were a few stops where more people were fitted in and more goods were exchanged. Then there was the mad driving and loud music - we ended up having 2 different drivers, with a swap underway at yet another store, and on both occasions I had to ask them to turn down the volume of their crap music - not that it helped much as about 15 minutes later the volume would magically make its way back up to the original level. After about 3.5 hours of this we were ready to slit our wrists and were very thankful of being dropped off in the wrong end of town to where our hotel was. But never mind, a quick trot with (for me) 30+kg of backpacks uphill and up countless stairs to take shortcuts from windy roads for more than 20 minutes with Claire behind me and we were at our hotel, albeit knackered ;-) Yes, we could have taken a cab but precious few people could speak English and neither of us were in a mood for any bullshit or haggling with the locals ;-)
Arriving at our hotel and climbing even more stairs there, we finally ended up at reception in the Dekeling Hotel only to be told that they had "accidentally" sold our top-floor deluxe room and so had no availability on that location - but offered us an "upgrade" with a suite in Dekeling Resorts, about 20 min. walk from the hotel and so slightly out of the way of the centre.
Never mind, we put on our brave faces after a number of inquisitive questions about our requested room to which we really didn't receive any satisfactory answers. At least they in the end offered to pay for the cab to the other location.
About 15 minutes later a cab brought us to Dekeling Resorts and our initial reaction was that of being slightly impressed. We got a separate living room to our bedroom and both rooms featured fireplaces. So we took it. At around 15:00 we then went exploring town for something to eat as we had had nothing to eat at this point - we were recommended two Tibetan restaurants Kunga and Devekales - we chose the former and were well impressed by the food. We had deep fried Momo's (dumplings), fried Wai-Wai (special type of noodles to the region), Chow Meing, and a very nice soup, which name currently eludes me. It was a feast for kings - and in fairness to them, they did warn us that maybe the order was too much for us, there was such an incredible amount of food on the table of which we did consume 3/4 and brought the remaining Momo's back to our room in a doggie bag/box.
Afterwards we went to see Chowrasta and then decided it was time to go back to the room and relax for the remainder of the day.
Initial thoughts about Darjeeling is that it's just as commercial as all other areas of India and not really as nice as we had expected. Also, the pollution from countless Diesel engines (mostly jeeps) is nearly suffocating here as there is so much traffic more than 2000 meters up.
When we were back in the room I set-up the laptop and connected it to the television. We started watching some Dexter and Warehouse 13 when suddenly there was a lot of commotion of newly arriving guests our side of the Resorts. Unfortunately the tourists ended up on top of us on the next floor and they were very(!!!) noisy, moving furniture around and walking in what sounded like clogs - the fact that it's all a wooden building didn't really help as sound travels easily. They kept being incredibly noisy up until after 23:00 and with lack of sleep from last night I was getting rather annoyed towards the end. But thankfully they finally made it to bed and I could finally fall asleep just after midnight.
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| Our cozy fire place with laptop hooked up to TV |
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