Laura's Year in Asia = Fun Stories

*The runner up title to this blog is "Pimp My Pony"

After our crazy trip to Darjeeling, we were ready for a sleep, some mountain vistas and a shower. Considering that there was no water in the whole town thanks to a landslide the week before, we could only manage 2/3.

Our first day there was spent doing stuff. I know it doesn't sound blog-worthy, but actually getting stuff done in India is such an accomplishment. We also wandered up and down and up and down the town that is a quintisential British Colonial hill-station (read on a 5km mountain face) We sampled the incredible Darjeeling teas that are all around town, and found some great bakeries that may have been better than their Lao equivillants. We bought our first himilayan touques (aka TUK) and just enjoyed breathing fresh clean mountain air.

At the end of our first day we were walking home after dinner and wandered past a horse stable. Randomlly Justina asks the owner if we could rent some of his ponies to trek to Tiger Hill where you can see 4/5 of the world's highest mountain peaks. I don't think I can stress the randomness of this request. In NO guidebooks, or travel agencies or through NO travelers recommendations did we hear that this was an option. I'm pretty sure we were the first to do this. The guy agrees to set us up with 2 ponies and a guide to take us to the hill for sunrise. We were to be ready at 3am. Yes 3am. In Vancouver, no problem staying up - I usually come home from the PIT at 3am....But in India, we still tried to get 6 hours of sleep by goign to bed at 8pm. "Morning" comes and the skies are full of stars - but we have no ponies. 1/2 hour later, on Indian time, comes 2 guides and 3 ponies. Instead of all of us riding down the village paths along the mountain sides, the two guides walk our two ponies (Petting zoo styles) and lead their other pony. It was such a random set up, and took us over 2 hours to get there since we were at walking pace. Plus the ponies were teeny-tiny little things. My poor Thukpa was not having anythng of me. We get there after weaving in and out of the jeep convoy that the normal tourists take too see the sunrise (the looks we got on those ponies...) we watch the sunrise from a nice grass meadow and decide to hike up the last 500m to the summit to see the 360* view. Once you get up there it was so crowded with pushy and annoying Indian and Bengali tourists we didn't stay long. As we were walking down the path back to our ponies we see a huge crowd of people around them. While we were gone our guides Pimped out our Ponies. Yes for 20 rupees you could sit on it and get your pic taken. The Bengalis were loving it, Justina and I tried to demand 50% of the profits...but suddenly the guides lost thier English skills.


The way home was more of the same, uncomfortable saddles and slow walking paces. Justina's horse had its shoe fall off and slipped down the path a few times. Mine was just plain slow. 6 hours after we left Darjeeling we were back with much MUCH sorer bottoms. Luckly the fog rolled in and we didn't feel bad about spendign the rest of the day in bed.

The next day we took a joy ride on the Darjeeling toy train. It's pretty famous. Something about being really small and having a really long and steep journey, I was still pony-exhausted so didn't pay too much attention. You can google it. It was a fun little 2 hour ride on the Queen of the Himilayas (Much better than going to Langdale on the Queen of Surrey).

The rains came in the next day, everyone was saying it's because the Himilayan weather gods are upset about the WWF helicopter crash, but luckly we were leaving for Katmandu, Nepal. Little did we know what we were in store for there..... Got in a shared jeep. 2 flat tires and 3 hours into a 1.5 hour ride we ditched that jeep and flagged down another one. Got into Sirigurli to board another shared jeep to the Nepal border, in which I faced death about 3 times thanks to an untrained and I think unconscious driver. All in all it took us 8 hours to go 80km. Then from the Nepalese border (where apparently there is a height restriction b/c all the gates are about 4ft high) we boarded a local bus to Katmandu. The said 14 hour journey extended into 21 hours after we stopped to pick up 8 squeeling pigs from a farm, and everyone who was standing on the roadway (note I did not call it a highway) who wanted to go for a ride.

Our reward was arriving in Katmandu 25 hours after we left Darjeeling. Beaten, but not battered. I love this town! We're here for a few days as I get my visa situation sorted out for India, and we are loving the Thamel area. It's basically the Khao San rd of Nepal. But more outdoor gear than pad-thai stalls. Basically it seems like MEC threw up all over the streets. You can get anythign and everything you need to hike Everest here. All I need is sunglasses though as my Lao pair just broke as I was typing this blog....