Finally some mountains!

Kat and I spent the last few days in the wonderful city of Darjeeling. The climate and scenery is similar to Washington so we were very comfortable, but the culture was mostly Nepalese with some Tibetans and Indians thrown in. The people here were extremely nice. The last day we woke up early and took a share-jeep up to the top of Tiger hill to watch the sunrise over the Himilayas. We were particularly lucky because the clouds parted for us to see not only Kanchenjunga, but also Everest! In the picture at left it's the peak in the middle that's just poking out. The sunrise was gorgous! I have lots of pictures but these computers are too slow to load many.

On the way out of Darjeeling we took the Toy Train. It's a small train that runs from Darjeeling to New Jalpaiguri. We shared the car with a large Indian family that was very nice. I had actually met the man the day before and he was very happy to see that myself and Kat would be riding with them. They were great! They sang songs and shared lots of snacks with us. One of the girls even begged Kat to sing her a song. After much reluctance I convinced Kat to sing "we are the champions." Kat sang like a nightingale but the little girl was not impressed (sorry Kat!). I think she wanted Britanny Spears or something.

We also ran into a couple that trekked for 15 days up in Sikkim. They managed their way up to the 5,000m pass of Kanchenjunga! That's higher than any mountain in Washington and it's just a pass! Anyways, we had dinner and breakfast with them before and after the train. They were from Vancouver and are into the typical northwest outdoors stuff so we had plenty to talk about.

Kat and I heading out for Varanasi on the train tonight. We plan to spend 2 days there and then head to Agra for a day. From there we'll go to Jaipur for a couple of days before going to Jaisalmer for a camel ride in the desert! We don't have plans past that. But lucky for us we've been able to upgrade out tickets from the 'sleeper' class the the 'AC3' class. Kat is VERY happy about this and I suppose I am too. But I sure will miss the calls for "Chai!" at 3am and the harassment from the singing eunuchs for rupees...wait, sleeping sounds nice too.