Linda and Mals Asian Adventure: Darjeeling

Darjeeling: The road from Siligiri to Darjeeling has to be seen to be believed, it is a track full of the best quality potholes and bad reinstatements ever collected. It took 3 hours by mini bus in the fog to complete the 80km. The next day the fog had lifted slightly but it was still very misty. As we are here to get in some altitude walking practice we decided to head off on a number of day treks.

Our first trek was to the local Bhutia Busty Gompa, not far but very steep path, the Gompa appeared out of the mist to reveal the first of many Buddhist Monastery’s. Our next trek was a 18km ridge walk to Ghoom via the Aloobari Monastery and the small but impressive Yiga Choling Gompa in Ghoom. On the way back we followed the famous hill cart road to the Gorka war memorial and the huge Druk Sangak Choling Gompa, also know as the Dali Monastery.

Tiger Hill was our next walk a renowned viewing point to observe the distant Indian and Nepalese Himalayan ranges. On our walk it was only just visible due to the low cloud cover.

Observatory hill in Darjeeling was one of our frequent walks, thousands of brightly coloured prayer flags adorn the local temple on the hill. The only downside to this are the bands of marauding rhesus macaques that wait in ambush on the way to the temple.

A repeat of part or some of our walks was made when the weather beckoned for better views. On one of our other walks we got hopelessly lost but managed to find a short cut back to Darjeeling via a really steep path. From Darjeeling we arranged a side trip into Sikkim before our visa ran out and we had to exit India after a really fascinating and enjoyable 6 months.