Two New Yorkers spend six months 18 months!?! in Bangalore and other places in India.

Friday, December 07, 2007

Gangtok

We left Gangtok this morning, driving about 4 hours over very dramatic roads to Darjeeling, another mountain town. Darjeeling was once a hill station, where the British Raj went to escape from the heat of Calcutta, but now it's a very large city as well. It may be even a little colder than Gangtok. My fingers are a little numb as I'm typing. We've had some fried rice and momos (dumplings) for lunch, we're walked through a tea estate and bought some of their specially-packaged-for-tourists tea, we've looked at many shawls, and after we call our credit card companies to tell they to stop refusing our charges, we'll be making our way back to the hotel. Like Gangtok, it's difficult to find your way after dark, since you have to get to the right level in the town, and of course there are few signs.

Tomorrow we're going to take the Toy Train, a munchkin train that runs as a tourist attraction, just 7 kilometers to a nearby town and its Buddhist monastery. After that, not quite sure. but it may involve carpets and/or hiking.

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