Hi everyone,
We have now been back in India for 2 weeks now and have explored quite a fair amount in that time. When we last posted we were in the hill station of Darjeeling. As some you may know, it is famous for its tea plantations. At an elevation of 2200 metres they are some of the highest in India and the world. We sampled some of the different varieties but none of them were as pleasing to the pallet than the 10 cent chai (sweet milk tea). We visited a plantation where we found the self proclaimed “World famous 5 second tea lady”. She did literally make a decent cup of tea in 5 seconds though (if you discount the time it takes her to get the water boiling). Apart from the tea, Darjeeling was just a really cool town to chill out in. We took the “Toy Train” which was a small steam train that struggles up and down the hills. We also found one of the best snack shops in India where we would often sit and have 5 samosas and 2-3 cups of chai. I think that is where our chai addiction was cemented. We now have 1-2 a day at least and sometimes more.
From Darjeeling we headed to Kolkata (Calcutta) which was supposed to take 12 hours but ended up taking 22. I won’t go into that but you don’t really need to be told how much 22 hour on a bus would suck! Arriving in Kolcata we were pleasantly surprised how nice it was compared to other big cities we had seen in India so far. It was less dirty than most, and had plenty of large parkland areas. The main sites we checked out were the Queen Victoria Memorial which was a very impressive reminder of the British rule. Had it not been built for a dead colonial queen it would surely rate as one of India’s more impressive buildings. The other place we really enjoyed was the Maiden park. This was originally cleared to allow a clear line of fire for cannons from Fort William, but it has now become probably the worlds biggest cricket pitch. There were so many games going on at once that had I been standing in the middle, I probably could have been fielding in 10 matches at once (mind you, I think I would have been up for the challenge).
From Kolkata, we did a three day trip to the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve, which has the highest concentration of tigers per sq km in the world. The reserve is a network of channels and semi-submerged mangroves which was a pretty amazing experience in itself. Unfortunately we didn’t see any tigers, just plenty of birds and alligators along with a couple of spotted deer and wild boars. We spent two nights sleeping in a local village and eating the same food they did which was also fun. The highlight of our time there would have to be the walk we did into the forest during which we had to walk in thigh deep mud. After the walk we had a mud fight during which we were totally covered in it.
On the way down south we also spent time in the state of Orissa where we have seen some pretty impressive Hindu-only temples from the outside in Bhubaneswar and Puri. Of course they have still found a way to make money from us by erecting viewing platforms that allowed us to spy over the walls to see the goings on inside. We did manage to see the Sun Temple of Konark up close, which was an impressive world herritage listed building that had been heavily restored. We also finally made it to an Indian beach in Puri, which has one of most interesting beaches we have ever seen. It’s actually not that bad if you ignore all the touts, rubbish and (no kidding) human feces floating in the water from the nearby village. Needless to say, we stayed out of the water!
One last story worth mentioning is that while we were at the sun temple, one of Robyn’s thongs (flip flops to all of you non Aussies reading this, just wanted to avoid confusion) suddenly snapped rendering it impossible to walk in. We still had 3 kms to walk to get to where we needed to so bare feet was not an option. After a quick repair using a piece of grass, we wandered around the street looking for replacement shoes. Instead, being India, we found a street stall where a man promptly fixed it for the small cost of 30 cents which is 3 cups of chai we will now have to miss out on :)
Anyway I have waffled on long enough for now. Next time we post it will be about Mamallpuram and Pondicherry and it will hopefully include some pics as well.
Till next time,
Glen and Robyn