Tea Dear(jeeling)?

Our trip to Darjeeling infact begun not with tea, but with white water rafting. The Teesta river, flowing down from the high Himalayas provided for the perfect introduction to white water rafting, with  fast flowing rapids broken by periods of sedate river cruising. It was exhilarating, crashing through the tumult and foam of the churning water. 

Darjeeling sits high above the river, a steep climb up to 2000m. The population is mostly Nepalese, and all the street dresses proclaim that this is Gorkhaland, not West Bengal as the Indian government would have us believe (Darjeeling is the center of a movement among the Nepalese community for a separate state). We stayed however with a lovely Tibetan family. There are also many Tibetans. We visited the Tibetan Refugee center and have had some brilliant Tibetan food.

On the second day we found everything inexplicably closed. A fire overnight had ravished the bazzar and so the whole town closed up in a show of 'town solidarity'. This made finding places to eat a bit of a challenge. Yesterday we caught the  'Toy Train' along the heritage railway, a quaint steam powered ride to the cloud shrouded town of Ghum, walking back in the pleasant mountain air. Good training for next months trek. Darjeeling feels tantalizingly close, just kilometers away is Nepal and the high peaks of the Himalayas. 

For the first couple of days the fabled mountain scenery was hidden from view, shrouded in mist and smog. Then one morning we caught a glimpse of snow capped peaks, and the morning after that they were revealed in all their glory, towering high over Darjeeling. Kanchenjunga dominates the skyline. As the worlds third highest peak it is only 300m shorter than Everest, which could also be seen in the distance. At last, my Himalayan goal is in sight, far across the boarder in Nepal. In less than 10 days Emme and I will begin our journey on foot to the base of that mountain. The excitement built during a visit to the Himalayan Mountaineering Insitute, set up by Tenzing Norgay on his return from becoming the first man to scale that mountain with Edmund Hillary. 

Darjeeling of course is world famous for tea. Brought by the tea sipping colonials across from China, the tea grown here is often regarded as the worlds finest. And we went to what may be the worlds best tea plantation (It is the worlds highest, and only supplies to Harrods of London and Bollywood, Fancy). Tea pluckers were busy taking in the first flush of the spring season. The real highlight of the plantation was sipping tea with an eccentric old Indian woman in a plush toy filled shack, an explucker who chatted away about tea as she made us tea from the top pick of the season. It only took 5 seconds to brew but was delicious, warm orange in colour, sweet without any hint of bitterness or tannins. 

From The Plantation....

...To The Table.

Today is the last day together with family. Tomorrow I take the bus across the border to Kathmandu for the next leg of the journey: The Everest Trek.