At 4am a convoy of 100 or so Jeeps race up the narrow streets and lanes to Tiger Hill at 2,590 metres (that’s over 8,000 feet!) to watch the sun rise & to see its rays illuminate the west facing peaks of the Himalayas. Sadly the haze sploit the occasion. This what we were supposed to see:

And here we all are not seeing it.

After breakfast I set out to explore this town of 140,000 mostly Mongol origin people. Darjeeling is so near Tibet & Nepal & China that it i easy to forget that we are very much in India. I share the first part of my walk up the main street & along an open road with the joggers & speed walkers. The haze is really disconcerting because there is never a clear view down the hills (I’m going to start calling them mountains because that’s what they are) so the views out & between houses are simply blankets of grey.

Being so near Nepal the locals are mostly Buddhist. There is a wonderful temple hidden in a grove of trees with a huge flutter of a thousand prayer flags, a clanginging of prayer bells & a haze of smell – smoke from hundreds of incense sticks.

Darjeeling is a really busy place. The houses are multistoried as space is such a premium. Their frontages are in need of a good sand down and a bit of exterior emulsion applied. Streets are very narrow and wind through the buildings, the deep descents and steep slopes of the mountain sides. The most amazing sight is that of a handful of porters who climb these steep slopes with enormous weights on their backs and a strap attached around their foreheads. The most amazing was one with 3 large gas containers.

Hundreds of Jeeps scurry through the maze of streets honking constantly to no avail as parked vehicles, pedestrians, huge potholes that could swallow a small car, market stalls (I saw a market being held on the railway line!!) or one of the many water lorries cause an obstruction & everything stops for 5 mins, the problem is sorted & the traffic moves on to the next obstruction a few hundred metres further on. The streets of the old town are full of stalls & bustling traders & tributaries &streams of busy shoppers who manage to snag up the vehicles that are also sharing the flow. Great fun buy everything is on the mountain so you know if you go down and some point it is a long slope or a steep climb back up.

At this altitude the temperature has drops to a chilly 12 or so degrees so it’s goodbye to shorts & out with the fleece. Day & night the locals go about well wrapped up in coats, blankets & heavy woollen hats.

Tea plantations were visible through the mist in the distance but it is

still hard to believe that this place is the source of some the world’s best tea. Tomorrow I move onto Spelling in the former Kingdom of Sikkim. Am hoping Wi-Fi is available!!