Hotel Kabur, Pelling, Sikkim, India; Wednesday 24th November.

We arrived in Pelling in Sikkim this afternoon after a day spend riding up and down mountain roads in Jeeps on the road from Darjeeling after spending the previous four nights there nestled in the hills in the fog.

Darjeeling was mostly very cold and damp although we did get a couple of sunny afternoons which we spent walking around the town and visiting the zoo, Observatory Hill, a Buddist monastery and numerous tea and cake shops. The clearer weather allowed views over the Himalayas and snow capped mountian peaks in the distance. Darjeeling reminded us of winter back home; cold, damp and foggy, but the hot Darjeeling tea and Momo’s helped warm us up. We also stocked up on scarves, hats and warm clothes which were badly needed.

We left Pokhara last week where we white water rafted for two days along the Seti river en route to Kathmandu, spending the night camping by the side of the Seti. The rafting was excellent, and the taster has definitely made us hungry to do it again - only on a more dangerous scale. The smooth sections of the Seti (Level 3 (Scale 1-5) gave us the chance to see Nepal from a different aspect and was a very enjoyable way to see more of the country.

Kathmandu was not our favourite place; the tourist part of the city was pleasant enough with the usual Asian traffic chaos thrown in, lots of shops, traders, hotels and restaurants. However the rest of the city was pretty grim - pollution being the principal cause of the gloom. We spend a very long day experiencing the full brunt of India bureaucracy at the Indian embassy in Kathmandu for 5 hours “seeking permission” (form filling and paying money) to re-enter India.

We left Kathmandu by the over night bus to the border, which was a terrifying journey given that the driver seemed to think it was some kind of race against all the other buses, along unlit, hilly, blind bend, edge of cliff Nepali roads. Somehow we managed to get some sleep and one bus breakdown later we were woken up to change buses for the last hour of the journey to get to the border, where we had to walk about 2km across a bridge back into India. The usual filling in of a paper ledger and form filling then 2 more bus journeys and we arrived in Darjeeling - 25 hours after our departure!
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