We could see Kanchenjunga quite clearly:
Most of the visitors were Indians, who are there to greet the sun - they weren't so interested in looking at the mountains.
And it was pretty amazing.
And speaking of mountains, here are a few more:
From left to right the peaks are: Lhotse, Everest and Makalu. With Kanchenjunga that's four of the world's five highest peaks visible from Tiger Hill.
We were thrilled - this is me with Lynda and Susan.
There were good views of Darjeeling from up there too:
After coming down the hill in another convoy of dozens of cars, we headed for Ghoom and our first Buddhist monastery, Yiga Cholang, a Tibetan Yellow Hat sect monastery.
The temple was dim and dusty and a bit shabby, but very atmospheric, with walls of scriptures (the picture above of the shelves; the texts are long sheets stacked between boards and wrapped in brocade) and a very beautiful Buddha. Gurmay gave a very interesting explanation of the imagery and rituals, and also the different sects in Tibet.
And then we had breakfast! Amazing how much you can pack in to the day when you get up early. Lovely buffet - breakfast was pretty much my favourite meal at most of the hotels! There was always something unexpected and delish. At the Mayfair there was a scrummy spicy egg dish.
The next excitement was a ride on the "Toy Train", the Himalayan Mountain Railway. This was a great thrill. We started at Darjeeling and rode the train up to Ghoom. It was wonderful seeing the little steam engine being stoked up ready for the trip, the boiler filled. The smell and sounds took me right back to my school days, getting the train to town every day.
And then we were off!
The narrow-gauge line goes along the street, so you go chuffing right past the shop fronts, the engine whistling constantly as it goes. It was so much fun! It's really only a tourist attraction these days, because it actually is quite slow. On the steep bits the engine was clearly struggling. There was a lovely spiral too, to get up a reeeeally steep bit.
At Ghoom we had a look round the railway museum, mildly interesting, then piled back into the cars for the next destination: the zoo. As zoos go it was superior - the enclosures were large and comfortable looking and there's a strong emphasis on conservation. The big stars were red pandas, cute bushy ginger critters, and sleek snow leopards and clouded leopards. We also saw a very bored-looking Himalayan brown bear, quite a character.
I took a lot of photos but none of them came out particularly well. It was overcast, I was tired... I got a lot of shots of very sharply focused fencing with vaguely animal-shaped blurs in the background.
Next to the zoo was the mountaineering institute, with an interesting exhibition about the Everest conquest - interesting because it focused on Sherpa Tensing, a local hero.
We were all properly knackered by now, and it was only lunchtime. So after lunch at the hotel and a bit of a rest (though I had less rest than the others; I managed to somehow trigger the combination lock on my suitcase but didn't know the number to unlock it and ended up having to force it open with my walking pole!), we set out on a little shopping expedition.
Some pics of the hotel:
The first stop was a tea shop, where we were supposed to have a tasting. But the shop was absolutely tiny and we were all jammed in. The temperature rose and the tea talk droned on... finally I begged to be allowed to buy some and went outside for a breather. I got some "Moon Drops" - silver tips apparently picked first thing in the morning when the dew is still on the bushes - and white tea, which is very rare and special and good for your health.
Afterwards the plan was to go back through the town shopping for postcards etc to the hotel, and then go out for dinner to a Tibetan restaurant. I headed off with Denis and Lynda, but they set such a cracking pace I soon fell behind. Merle and Des had mentioned a shop further up the hill where they were going to buy some shawls, so I looked for the place and found it, and waited there for them to catch me up. The shop was run by a Kashmiri family, very affable chaps with big moustaches. The walls were lined with shelves stacked with thousands of shawls in every imaginable colour and style. The salesmen sat on a slightly raised platform along one side and the customers on low chairs along the other.
Their sales technique was to pull down shawls at random, pull them out of their cellophane packet and spread them on the platform in front of you, dazing you with the variety. They'd spread out a few clearly inferior shawls, then suddenly whip out a dazzling one, an amazing piece of embroidery. The fun really started when Merle and Des arrived. Merle had seen a shawl she liked the day before; trouble was, the chaps had so many shawls they really couldn't remember them all, so they just kept pulling out more and more. "Is this it?" "No, no, it was darker." "How about this?" And so on. Finally they flung down one that was breath-taking. How much? The father pulled out his calculator. $12,000. "WHAT?!?" It was the most beautiful, sensational piece, embroidered all over with delicate flowers in exquisite detail, as perfect on the reverse as the front. A work of art, an heirloom. But crazily out of reach for mere tourists.
The show went on, and finally Merle and Des chose shawls. I bought two, one each for Pinky and Faye - silk, in very subtle colours in a paisley weave. Hope you like them, girls! I didn't get myself one though: I never wear that sort of thing, I never manage the kind of elegance you need. I loved looking at them though.
Gurmay arrived at the shop too in the end - the shawl seller was also the best money-changer in town and Gurmay needed to change some of our tip money (we each contributed £20 to a fund to cover all hotel tips and temple donations and so on - a real bargain!). The whole business of looking at shawls and drinking tea and paying for shawls and talking about shawls took so long it was too late to go back to the hotel. So Gurmay went back alone to fetch the others, and Des, Merle and I went to the restaurant to wait for everyone.
It turned out to be a really sweet little greasy-spoon cafe, with a few gingham-clad tables and a little kitchen visible through the hatch. While we waited I had a delicious lemon and honey tea, and once the others got there we tucked in to lovely plates of momos - Tibetan dumplings - and a really nice soup. The food was delicious and really tasted like home cooking.
While we were eating the rain started, complete with thunder and lightning. The worst of it was over by the time we left the restaurant, and we walked back to the hotel under our umbrellas in a refreshing downpour.
I slept really well that night!! Denis was keen to drag everyone off to the bar for a drink, but I slid out of that... I was too tired.
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