Darjeeling

So we've been in Darjeeling for about 4 days now and it has been a much welcomed relief from the hassles and the heat of the rest of India. The days have been pretty relaxed here. We've spent most of the time just wandering around and exploring this nice little hill station town.

For the first two night we stayed in a hotel closer to the main road in town and I believe we were the only two people in the hotel. Every time we left or came back we had to have the front door unlocked and had to turn on a the few lights that led down a dark, damp hallway to our room. The room itself wasn't that bad...fairly clean, complete with a squat toilet and about 20 minutes of hot water every evening, but it was on a main road and the street noise from the trucks driving past all night and the dogs barking made for some very light sleep.

We decided to switch hotels yesterday and found a much nice hotel for only 2 dollars more a night that has 24hr hot water and some nice views since it is higher up on the hill.

The other day we took about a 45 minute walk from town to visit the Darjeeling Zoo and the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, which are both housed on the same grounds. The Zoo was awesome and they are more of a Himalayan Endangered Species Sanctuary. They are the only zoo to successfully bread and keep Tibetan Wolves and they had a large population of Endangered Snow Leopards and Red Panda's. There was one tiger exhibit where there was only a chain link fence between a huge tiger and myself. I was able to literally get within inches of this huge power animal. It was pretty intense looking into its eyes and knowing how easily it could kill me in the wild.

The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute was also really cool. They had a museum on mountaineering and on Everest with a lot of antique climbing gear that was actually used on expeditions. The institute also still holds courses for rock climbing and mountaineering which are only a couple hundred dollars for a month long course. A similar course in the U.S. would easily cost a couple thousand....it was pretty tempting to join up with one of their courses considering it is some of the best instruction in the world.

Other then that we have been wandering thought a lot of Tibetan and Indian shops that they have in town and drinking lots of tea of course.... we are in Darjeeling after all.

We also have visited some really interesting Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries and temples that are scattered through the hills hear. One was the Bhutia Busty Monastery that holds the original copy of the Tibetan Book of the dead.

It's neat to have such a mixture of culture in this town. The main language here is Nepali, although we are technically in India. This area used to belong to Nepal and China still does not recognize it as part of India. On top of that the state of Darjeeling and Sikkim are both trying to become independent states of India which has caused a little bit of political instability in the region. As we were driving up we met a road block and were delayed for a while until we were allowed to pass. Other then that its mostly peace full demonstrations and signs everywhere trying to claim their independent state "Ghorkaland."

Today we are going to arrange a permit for Sikkim, as you cannot enter that state without one and then hopefully tommorrow afternoon we will be headed further up towards the Himalayas and hopefully to do a little trekking.

I tried to upload pictures for about an hr yesterday without success as you can tell be the one lonely picture below. I may have to wait until we get to a larger town with a little better Internet connection. Until then you'll just have to use your imagination. That's all for now.