Back in Darjeeling

Ah, a good long comfortable sleep. I still wake at 5:00 every day but don't get out of bed until at least 6. Breakfast at my guesthouse comes to my room at 8 and I always get tea and toast with the orange marmalade jam. It goes really well with the tea they serve here. I also watch tv in the mornings. The BBC news was all about the royal wedding. Also apparently the NATO troops had bombed one of Kadafi's compounds. One of his sons and three of his grandchildren had been killed. I know this is a NATO operation, but I don't like this third war.........

I bumped into two people I met trekking. They were on their way to try to get a permit for Sikkim. I told them I was going to the zoo and the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. They said it's a short walk and they enjoyed it very much. There were quite a few people there this morning as it was a Sunday. The ticket gets you into both as they are on the same grounds.

The zoo comes first. As you enter you come to the deer and goats. Then soon enough the wolf and leopards. The black leopard and snow leopard were pretty active. I don't know if they were planning their escape route or they were just agitated with people like me watching them and taking pictures. The snow leopard was gorgeous and had a really long and thick tail. I watched him for a while.

Then I went to see the tigers. They also had a lot of bright colored pheasants and other very colorful birds. The Himalayan black bear was no where to be found. Then came the red pandas. There were several large sections where they were housed. Finally a worker showed me two of them up in the tree. You could only see the color of their tails hanging from the trees. I was bummed I couldn't see them closer. I kept walking a little further then was so excited I saw two cages of the red pandas. Oh, they were so cute and they were moving around so you could see them. They probably had the most visitors watching them. Pasang told me that this is the only place they breed the red panda. They tag them and set them free in the wild. Apparently they have a pretty high success rate.

I took one more spin around past the black bear and he was moving around too. I got pretty close to him. He was definitely looking for a way out.

I grabbed some chapati and chick peas just outside the zoo. They were nice enough to let me leave and come back in. This time I headed for the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. The place was really cool but unfortunately they don't let you take pictures. Tenzing Norgay is famous in these parts. He was a sherpa from Nepal and had several attempts on Everest and success on many other peaks before joining the 1953 expedition of Edmund Hillary. Tenzing made Darjeeling his home and was the director of the mountaineering institute for many years.

The museum showed equipment used in the various expeditions and they also show the equipment used now. It's quite the contrast. The whole upstairs is dedicated to Everest. There are great maps of the various routes and who was the first one up each one of them. There is also a huge map of the Himalayas. There are buttons listing each peak. When you press the button the peak lights up. There is also a comparison map of the highest peaks in each section of the world. Mt. McKinley in Alaska is a mere 20,000 ft compared to 29,000 at Everest.

After spending a good part of the day between the two places, I walked back towards the guesthouse. I must have taken a wrong turn and ended up at the chowk bazaar. It is a huge shopping area of stalls and shops with anything you could possibly need. It is overwhelming at times. It was very busy as it was Sunday. As always, I look around the stores at the beautiful sari patterns but only end up buying baby bananas at one of the fruit stands.

It started to rain heavily. I was near the post office so I jumped into Joey's Pub. It was pretty dead. But the man, Girish, that works at Nathmull's tea shop was there and asked how my trek was. I told him I had just gotten back. I hung out catching up in my journal until the rain had stopped. I walked back towards the guesthouse and I got a piece of Tibetan bread stuffed with onions and cabbage. I also got a samosa. Boy was that the best samosa ever. The potatoes were mixed with some amazing curry paste and fennelgreek seeds. Oh, it was so good. I went back for two more. I have finally started eating street food and have been rewarded with price and quality.

I was just walking around. I checked out a place I might go for dinner. It was supposed to be great Bengali food. I'll keep it in mind for later. I bought a wool scarf for walking around at night as it gets chilly at 7000 ft.

I headed over to the tea house. It was really packed at around 5 or 5:30. I sat down next to a young German guy, Frederick. He was very cool. We chatted for about 90 minutes or so while drinking tea. He already had a snack and tea, so he tried another cup. Instead of doing military service in Germany you can volunteer through various organizations. He was volunteering in southern India as an English teacher. Now is the school break so he is taking time off with some other co-workers to travel. He is thinking of heading to Sikkim. He says he has no equipment and will have to rent it all. I told him I heard there was still a lot of snow up there.

He shared his favorite pizza joint with me. After we finished our tea, I went back to the streets to get dinner as I only wanted a snack and not a full dinner. This time it was momo's. I spent a total of 49 rupees on food today (less than $1.50). Too bad I also spent 120 on a beer and 290 on tea.

The following morning, I was watching the BBC with my breakfast and they were saying Obama would give a speech. I figured that it was about Libya. It was odd since it was getting around 11pm east coast time in the US. Then the BBC started getting leaks. They said that it was regarding Osama bin laden and he was captured and/or dead. Weird. Then, just before the speech, the cable went out at the guesthouse. I had the NPR app on my iPhone so I quickly turned it on and heard the speech. Thanks NPR and iPhone!!!

So on today's list was the Tibetan self help refugee center. I asked at the hotel how to get there. The man that speaks the least English showed me the way down the hill. He said it was a fifteen minute walk. That's interesting because when I did a google map this morning it said the walk was 1 1/2 hours and something like 7 kilometers. Maybe this was a short cut. I walked and it was all downhill. Soon I saw a beautiful Tibetan temple or gompa as they call them here. There were monks chanting and playing the drums. It was a beautiful setting. I walked around for a bit. I met an older man. He asked if I needed help. I said I was just looking around. He asked me if I have been to the Tibetan refugee center and I said, no but I wanted to go. So he said follow me. We walked behind the gompa. Then we followed a well trodden path. He showed me the road. He said to take the road and when there is a junction, I should go to the right. He pointed to it from where we were. I asked if it had a yellow roof. He said yes.

That worked out well because had I gone the google maps route, I never would have seen the gompa. He said it would take 25 minutes but it was shorter than that. It was mostly downhill. I saw a sign and arrow once it got tricky and you were walking by people's homes.

It is a small place with a showroom. You could purchase any sort of Tibetan made product. I had heard about the rugs. Each one is hand made to order with natural dyes for the wool. They take about 6 months to make. Apparently they ship them to your home when they are completed. They had some samples on hand so you could see the quality and size.

It started to rain a little and I walked into the photography exhibit. In the early 1940's China invaded Tibet. Along with the Dalai Lama, many people fled Tibet. Right now, there are more Chinese than native Tibetans in the country. The Tibetans may lose their cultural values and way of life forever.

I am really glad I was able to see both the gompa and the refugee center. I walked back the same way I had come. I slightly got lost on the way back and overshot the gompa. I ran into the same man and he led me back so I could take a few more photos.

I decided in the afternoon that I would go to the Happy Valley tea plantation just to do my diligence and compare at least one other estate to Makaibari. I walked down the hill to the chaos of Hill Cart Road. I continued past the main section of town. I kept asking people, to make sure I didn't pass it. But everyone reassured me I would see a sign. I eventually did. I followed the road down the hill to the estate. Along the way I met an Indian family walking down the road too. They were very interested in me-- where I was from, what I was doing here, how I liked the country, etc. They were from Utter Pradesh and asked if I was going there. The younger boy of about 10 wanted to show me around his town. He was sweet. The whole family wanted to take pictures with me. I think because of my relatively light skin. That was so weird....

I finally got to the bottom of the hill where the factory was and there was a little gift shop. The woman who worked there practically accosted me. The plantation is closed today for May Day holiday. But I could come into her shop and learn about tea and try some tea as well. She said come into the back room.

There was already another person inside. She was from Oslo originally but living in Australia most recently. She had just spent one month trekking in Nepal. She had five months to travel in southeast Asia and was traveling with someone else that was sick today. Before we got started with the tea tasting a group of about 10 Canadians from Quebec showed up. We all squished together in the room. The Canadians were all dentists doing a three week volunteer assignment in southern India. They had one week to travel before heading back to Quebec.

The woman had 6 bowls of dry tea leaves. She showed everyone how to smell the leaves. Then she boiled up some water and made us all go into the other room. She said you need one teaspoon of tea for each cup. Then she brewed it for 5-10 seconds. She said that's all you need for 1st flush. And she also said that you can get three steepings of the leaves. We all tasted the tea. It was ok, but nothing special. They sell their tea exclusively at Harrod's. Apparently they also have green tea, white, 2nd flush, and two other lower grades. I wanted to just get out of there because I wasn't planning to buy any. Finally the woman from Oslo said she had to go. I took this as a clue for me to get up too. Otherwise I could be there another half hour.

I really just checked out this estate as a sanity check. I noticed walking down the hill that at Happy Valley, the tea plants didn't look as healthy as those at Makaibari. Even though I didn't get the official factory tour, the woman who did the tasting had previously worked there. She said the estate was organic. Well, how come all the trees were painted in white from three feet down? Doesn't that usually indicate pesticide use?

After I got back I went for some fabulous tea at Nathmull's. Ah, I found two teas I really liked today. The lighter of the two was thurbo 2nd flush muscatel. It tasted a little vegetative to me but in a pleasing way. The other one had an amazing puckery muscatel taste and was the 2nd flush Pussingbing. These were both 2010 teas.

The tea lounge was packed so I invited an older Frenchman to sit with me. He was here for three months to learn the Tibetan language. He lives in Paris and had been to San Francisco before. We had a nice talk about many things. He told me about a restaurant that he liked nearby. When we both finished our tea he walked me there. It was nearby and called Hotel Shangri-la.

I had a big dinner since I never had lunch that day. It was, pappadum, Tibetan bread, vegetable biryani, and smoked eggplant. Yum! I had a lot of rice and eggplant left over and thought it would go well with my tea in the morning.

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