We have ventured North and are now freezing cold in Darjeeling, a town that seems about as un-Indian as they come. We flew from Chennai to Kolkata on the posh Kingfisher airlines and spent a few ritzy days enjoying the food in Kolkata/Calcutta before heading a South to the Sunderban Tiger Reserve.The Tiger Reserve was a nice change of pace from the city - very clean and quiet, but we never really felt that our chances of seeing the illusive Royal Bengal Tiger was much better in Sunderban than Sunderland. The "guide" never spent time spotting from our river boat and our time at the watch towers were short (about 15 mins each) and marred by the hundreds of noisy Indian tourists (despite the constant reminders of "Keep Silence").
Anyway, it was nice to get away and we met some fabulous people on the trip, so it was time well spent.We took a night train over to Darjeeling (more or less) in 2A (luxury!) and arrived yesterday, completely
unprepared for the cold. According to a few people it was -3.5 Celcius a few days ago and there is snow at night - even if there isn't it's freezing cold.The town is built into the side of a hill and everything is rammed tightly beside the few roads that pass through the town (making traffic a lot worse than it needs to be, considering how quiet it is here). Driving up here it was like stepping into another country - the towns look a lot different without all the usual ads and trash, and the change ethnicity has been a bit of a shock. While we knew there was a strong Tibetan community here, we never assumed so many of the people would look so Chinese.
We are going to spend a few days sightseeing here (and cowering in our room, trying to avoid the cold as much as possible) and then we are (probably unwisely) heading even farther North and slightly higher up to Pelling (in Sikkim) to see the Tibetan New Year. If we survive, it will be great.
