Lassi Come Home

Yesterday went well – but quite tiring. The flight to Bagdogra was on time and apart from a little turbulence, uneventful. The drive then to Darjeeling gave us our first encounter of what to expect. The drive from Bagdogra took close to 4 hours, up a very steep, windy, and pot hole filled road. But the scenery was amazing as you would expect. The only disappointment is the amount of low cloud, fog and drizzle that is around – blocking views of the Himalayas and some of world’s tallest mountains that you can apparently see on a clear day.

Plenty of tea plantations around – funny that! So we might go explore one of those today.

Food has been very good so far – Darjeeling seems to have a good mix of Indian, Chinese & Tibetan restaurants. Last night we had an excellent dinner at Glenary’s – 3 dishes, and a couple of Kingfisher’s each put us back around 600rp – ($15) – excellent value.

The Hotel we are staying at – Shangrila Regency (no relative of the more widely known 5 star Shangrila chain in Asia) is great – old world charm, bed tea served to your room each morning (a hot cup of tea brought to your room after you wake up – at whatever time you request it the night before), a nice rooftop restaurant to enjoy breakfast, and a very small bar to have a drink in the evening. The only complaint is the dogs that seem to roam about town will often get into a barking frenzy right outside the hotel at random times through the night.

Internet access is only available from the internet cafe across the road from our hotel – and not a fast connection – so we will do our best to keep the updates coming and to provide some photos soon.

So now to explore a little of Darjeeling…and to contemplate more on the fact that the road we drove up on yesterday is a road we will eventually have to drive a Rickshaw on come next Sunday…