India Vol 2

Picking up:

We departed Gangtok for Darjeeling in the afternoon on Wednesday, leaving just in time to hit the blinding fog on the ridge-top road that wound into town later that night--a good thing, though, as it not only added to the romanticism of the journey into tea country, it also stopped our driver from taking the the curves at 100 k per hour as was his habit in less foggy moments. This same speed demon driver also at one point made a 25 minute stop for a carwash, which is a move that no taxi driver has pulled on me before, but one which was not unwelcome as it allowed us to have a well deserved tea and dumpling break.


Once in Darjeeling, we checked into a cozy wood-paneled hotel with a fire place, had another cup of tea, and then headed from this colonial-era delight to the next: Glenary's, the restaurant where we ate pretty much every meal, very little of it Indian, in a classy and comfortable Victorian train station kind of setting.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, and a memorable one. We spent sunrise on Tiger Hill trying to catch a glimpse of Everest, which I think we did but honestly couldn't really tell for sure, then napped, then headedover to the train station for our ride on the fabled Toy Train of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. Well, whoever spread the malicious rumor that that train is fun, quaint, or anything else other than a big waste of time should be shot. Seriously, and this is coming from someone who lists trains in the interests section of her facebook profile. The train crawled along at a snail's pace, along side the dirty road we had already driven on several times, belching smoke so black and billowing that little children started crying and dogs hid under cars and mothers just looked at us and shook their heads, like "Did you have to?". BJ called it "purgatorial", and he was right. We got off at the halfway point, in a town aptly named Ghoom, also sometimes called hell, and walked most of the way back in the haze of exhaust that still lingered over everything in our path.

After the train fiasco we definitely needed a little pick me up, so we went and had afternoon tea and scones at the Windamere, followed by afternoon brandys at the Windamere, followed by befriending a soft-spoken stranger to be our token pilgrim at Thanksgiving dinner, which we ate at, you guessed it, Glenary's. There was no cranberry orange relish -- and there were monkeys. I think that proves conclusively that it takes more than a monkey to make that fine dish, thank you very much.



And that was Darjeeling. Delhi was next, and it was as much chaos as
they say it is -- plus a pig stomach in a handcart -- and their animal
shelter is the saddest sight I've seen in a long time. But they did
have some adorable puppies, one of which Dana and BJ rescued and who is, as we speak, probably curled up in one of their armpits grunting like the little piglet she is. So that was a nice note to end on.


And also the coffee shop Dana goes to has a Winter 09 collection ("Layers" -- like, foam and coffee, or syrup and foam and coffee, for example) that they did a slide show of on their flatscreen TV and I enjoyed that a whole lot.

Anyway, so that was my introduction to India. Now I'm back in Cambodia and getting ready to run a 10 k race this weekend and then come home next Thursday, so hopefully I will be seeing a lot of you
soon! And eating a lot of cheeseburgers!