Summer Vacation in NorthEast India - Part 3 (Street Travel)

We did find some other beauties of Kolkata very interesting. The cool drinks served in terracotta pots, man pulled rickshaws, man carrying cargo and the beautiful Kali devi and Ganesha statues on the bazaar.

After we started from Sealda station, the train journey was good as the climate had its stake in making us cool. We found the co-passengers very talkative and there was an incident at 2:30am in the mid-night as there was an attempt to do chain snatching from a passenger in next bay. The thief was trying to snatch the gold train that lady was wearing through the window when the train was stopped for signal, luckily she awake and screamed so everyone in the couch switched on the lights, with a wound in the neck she saved her chain. But none of us could locate the thief as the outside was pitch dark. I'm still wondering how did the thief climbed up and found the chain from sleeping lady.

We reached the New Jalpaiguri(NJP) station in the next morning with 1 and half hour delayed schedule. The taxi guys at NJP will follow you right from the couch till you sign a contract with one of them to go to Sikkim, Darjeeling or other tourist locations nearby. We stopped for a breakfast at the railway station food counter and booked a Sumo to Darjeeling (drop) for Rs.1250. Meanwhile I got my accommodation details from Mr.Bhimal of Ken's(TBHPian) friend.

The co-passenger at the Kolkata to NJP train already told us to choose the coronation bridge road instead of rohini road to reach Darjeeling, so I insisted the taxi driver to take us through the coronation bridge road. Rohini road is the common road everyone travels with lots of traffic, the coronation bridge road is actually a road that goes Gangtok along side we were enjoy the beauty of Testa river and the road diverts to Darjeeling in some place.

I must stay, this road was scenic to the eyes and very cold, our driver was little young aged (28yrs) and he claimed he never came in this route. His jaws went down after seeing the beautiful views and the temperature was sub 15degree with full fog outside the car.

I will leave the pictures to show you our fog filled mountain and complete lonely drive

The toy train rails along the road showed the symptom of reaching Darjeeling, our main destination in this tour. The school going children reminded me of Japanese kids , at time I forgot that I'm in India as I completely mad to think all the people with Mongolian skull types are east Asians, but here in Darjeeling they are my nationalist. I could say they are the most beautiful Indians.

We saw the toy train steam engine, that was a rare chance I should say.

There are monasteries and mandirs on the way to our hotel. My eyes were keep on searching for that vehicle as many people told me that Darjeeling hosts the most number of Land Rovers.

I found the first Land Rover aka work horse carrying tar mixture for road laying work, I pity this chap the most wanted offroader in the country is working like donkey. But I also have to admit I have only spotted three Land Rovers in this two days and most of them seems to gone out of Darjeeling to offroaders elsewhere in the country. (So, offroaders don't assume Darjeeling still have many leftover Land Rovers they were all sold off already)

We spend our rest of the day in the streets of Darjeeling doing some shopping, the temperature went down to very minimal and all of us started shivering in the night.

That was the end of yesterday, we continued to discover the Darjeeling from this morning and the details will be presented to you later today or tomorrow.