Wednesday – 21 January 2009
SB woke up early to look out the window of the hotel only to be dismayed that the cloud and mist appears to be a permanent fixture at this time of year. LP says the best time to visit is October/November and mid-March/May, we knew it wasn’t going to be perfect, but we were hoping for just a glimpse of the tea plantation covered slopes with maybe a Himalayan mountain or twoin thebackground. Sadly, this will not be the case, so over a hotel breakfast of sweet milk coffee, aloo dum and puris, we discussed alternatives if today we discover there isn’t much more to do/see here, or if today we do/see all there is.
We walked to Observatory Hill which was just above the main part of the mall, depositing our shoes and walking around the Buddhistand Hindu temples/monastery’s, keeping an eye on the monkeys and stray dogs. Not many places in the world where two religions have important sites at the same place and there is no conflict. The area is very quiet compared to Tibet and Nepal. We visited the cave that honours Mahakala, but didn’t got in due to my dislike of monkeys. We retrieved our shoes and decided to book train tickets etc for tomorrow as the view is still totally obscured and you get the impression that Darjeeling is above everything.
At the train station the chaos was hampered by the fact that of the 2 windows open only one at a time operated due to lunch breaks etc. So we filled out our form and both got in different queues to see who was the quicker. SB won and we booked our toy-train and Kolkata tickets – after an hour of waiting not bad going.
We walked back through the Chowk Bazaar which was a bit disappointing not as hectic as other chowks. We decided to walk through the back streets and see where they took us. We stopped for an afternoon snack of Dosa at Frank Ross Cafe -the filling was nice but the Dosa fell apart.
We continued our wander, stopping at an internet cafe to book some accommodation in Kolkata and also sent an inquiry regarding some Bengali Cooking Classes. We headed back to the hotel and advised we were leaving in the morning and organised breakfast.
We headed out for dinner and the restaurant we originally were going to was closed so we ventured into Hotel Chanakya for some Bengali Food. We had a veretable feast for RS84 (AUD2.50), leaving there stuffed and walking back to the hotel the long way around and did a quick pack ready for tomorrow.