Darjeeling: A Cuppa Fresh Air.

With train travel being so cheap and Kolkata being a night-train ride away from the foot of the Himalaya, it would seem unreasonable not to send a weekend in the mountains. Darjeeling was one of the first hill stations estabished by the British in India, and it was here that they left arguably their greatest contribution to Indian culture - tea making (their other most obvious contribution being cricket, which let's be honest, sucks). With fresh air and fresh tea on offer, it seemed like the perfect break from the madness of Kolkata.

The journey to Darjeeling doesn't get interesting until you hop off the train in Siliguri and get into a jeep which begins to climb up from the incredibly flat Indian Plateau into the green foothills of the Himalaya. After three hours of winding through the tea plantations, which cover these steep hills, we arrived in Darjeeling. Darjeeling feels a lot more Nepalese than Indian (which makes lots of sense if you look for it on a map...) - the people look different, there are big lovely mountains around, there is a significant Buddhist community, and even the streets are cleaner with slightly less flea-bitten dogs. Oh, and the nicest difference by far - it's actually cold up there.

First impression of Indian night-trains: Actually pretty good! Got a fairly decent sleep, without getting anything stolen. Only complaints were the guy that came round 6 times yelling "CHIP CHIP, POTATO CHIP ABAILABLE", and the amount of people pooping beside the train tracks in the morning.

Looking out towards the hazy Indian plains from the Himalayan foothills.

A view of Darjeeling from the Happy Valley Tea Estate - Darjeeling's highest tea plantation.

It's not called Happy Valley Tea Estate for nothing. We were the happiest of hobbits as we skipped down the pebbled mountain path with the wind in our hair, the sun on our face, and joy in our hearts.

This is where they dry the tea leaves. It smells like a fresh grassy delicious cuppa!

Our group was tricked into sampling "the best 5-second tea in all of India" by India's greatest hustler, a little old lady who had set up business right outside Happy Valley, selling their cheapest grade of tea possible. It was average at best.

At 5am every morning there is a mass exodus of tourists from Darjeeling to Tiger Hill, one of the best view points for the Himalaya around here. Fighting through the crowds is absolutely worth it to see the sun rise over Kangchenjunga (3rd highest mountain in the world) and all his magnificent friends.


Being white and a head taller than everyone else at Tiger Hill meant we got assaulted by hoards of camera-wielding Indians wanting photos with us. At first it was amusing, but it quickly turned into a competition for who could ruin the photo the most without them noticing.

Buddhists sure know how to build epic monasteries. Not only that, but they know how to pick the most epic places to build monasteries too.

The Japanese Peace Pagoda was super stunning, with depictions of the phases of Buddha's life carved around the Pagoda's dome. We even got to join in on a mesmerising drumming session with some resident monks.

We paid $2 per night for our beds. They were very damp, and we had to keep the bathroom door shut or the whole place would reek of bad things. We did find a way to entertain ourselves though - Darjeeling's newest sport, "Flappy-trouser Fighting". Phoebe: 2 - Felix: 0

First impression of Indian night-buses: Absolutely awful. The roads were so bumpy we were bounced around like popcorn for 21 hours (6 hours more than promised?!!) in a tiny space which we couldn't even sit up in. Never again.

Next time: Back to the squalor of Kolkata for more volunteering.

Kolkata: Welcome to West Bengal (and a Very Merry Durga Puja!)

The first thing that hits you is the humidity – we were sweating by the time we were in the taxi which was parked a few metres from the air-conditioned airport entrance. The sights and sounds hit you next; our taxi driver permanently had his hand on the horn and there were people screaming and swerving all over the road. On the way into Kolkata there is a chaotic mess of people, dogs, goats, cows, abandoned buildings, piles of garbage and general squalor lining the streets. The smells vary from dead things and fresh faeces, to delicious curries and the spiciest of spices. There are so many potholes in the road and so much abrupt braking and accelerating that it’s impossible to shut your eyes for a second, despite barely having slept at all in Kolkata airport the night before. All this before we have even made it to the guest house…

It’s taken a while just to get used to being in India. Luckily we have a month in Kolkata, volunteering for the Institute of Indian Mother & Child, by which time we should be well accustomed to the Indian way of life. Volunteering is also a rude reminder on how much we have forgotten about the world of medicine during our 10 months away from home, but more on that in blogs to come. The first few weeks are all about getting used to this completely different world. Thankfully we’ve got a top bunch of fellow volunteers at our side!

It's har to capture the essence of Kolkata in pictures. The sounds and smells and humidity contribute so much to the madness that are the streets of this city.

There are no rubbish bins in the streets, just mountains of rubbish in some areas. Even when you ask at a shop if they have a rubbish bin they gesture for you to throw it onto the street. Quite sad.

How traffic works in Kolkata:

> You MUST sound your horn when you drive. People don't use indicators or rear vision mirrors, so you gotta blow the horn if you don't want to be crushed by a truck.

> There are no lanes, in fact there are no road markings at all except for in the very city centre. This means you can drive anywhere you want, but try to keep vaguely left.

> Most one-way streets change direction at 1pm everyday. Carnage ensues.

The markets are as delicious as they are chaotic. You've gotta be careful not to buy the deadly fruits (the ones the flies are crawling all over), and not to get ripped off (if you're paying more than 10cents per samosa, you're being ripped off)

Yes, this lady is emptying a cow's stomach into the gutter. We were lucky enough to wander around old Chinatown during the Muslim festival Id-ul-Zuha, where they butcher cows in the streets and share the beef with everyone, among other festivities.

Felix contemplates the effects of 200 years of British colonisation in front of Victoria Memorial. It seems Kolkata was the city to benefit the most from colonisation, but also the city that suffered the most when the British left.

When you have no iPhone or xBox, you learn to make your own fun!

One of the clinics the Institute runs is in a tiny village called Dhaki, 70km south of Kolkata (the roads are so bad it takes 4 hours to get there). It’s just inland from the Bay of Bengal, near the mangroves and swamps that are the mouths of the Ganges River. Very green and swampy and beautiful!

We paid a bit extra for our 2 hour jeep ride so we didn't have to hang off the roof like these crazy folk.
(The jeep ride was followed by a ride on a few planks of wood attached to the back of a motorcycle.)

Even more than in the city, the kids in the villages around Kolkata think we are aliens. Most of them get really excited about these alien sightings, but some of them are just really confused, an some even get upset. We swear we didn't do anything to the kid on the right to make him cry...

For all the bad things the monsoon brings, it does make everything so, incredibly, GREEN!

Life in these villages may be challenging, but it's a heck of a lot better than life in the slums of Kolkata. Less overcrowding, more access to crops... And it's flippin' beautiful.

As a bonus, we’re lucky that October is festival month in Kolkata. There’s Gandhi’s Birthday (Happy Birthday Mahatma!), the Muslim festival Id-ul-Zuha, several other minor celebrations, and the biggest one of all: Durga Puja. This Hindu festival celebrates Durga, the 10-armed mother goddess who came down to earth and slayed the evil demon Mahishasuri, who could not be slain by any man (like that scene in Lord of the Rings where Eowyn kills the Witch King). During Durga Puja, Kolkata becomes beyond saturated with people. The roads become grid locked, the metro literally overflows, and the streets become filled with brightly clad festival-goers.

Literally thousands and thousands of pandals like this one pop up all over Kolkata for the duration of Durga Puja. People visit them to make offerings to Durga, dance, an get amongst the Puja action. On the last day everyone completely loses the plot and throws all the statues of Durga and her chilren in the Hooghly River, amidst a storm of chanting, facepainting and debauchery.

We da Maharaja and Maharani of da puja, yo.

Next time: A weekend of tea-tasting in Darjeeling!

Thailand: Temples, Jungle-trekking and Many Many Monkeys.

 En route to Asia we managed to fit in a cheeky wee catch up with Rachel in no-mans-land at Heathrow Airport, followed by the best long-haul flight of our lives (ie we slept the whole time apart from during food) and arrived fresh-faced and ready to face new adventures in Thailand.

As we touched down in Bangkok airport, we still didn’t know where we were going to spend the night, our only criteria being that it had to be somewhere in central Thailand, as we only had 5 days in Thailand it seemed silly to stray too far from the ‘kok. We ended up heading just north of Bangkok to Ayuthaya, the historical capital of the ancient Ayuthaya Empire. The temple ruins in Ayuthaya were pretty spectacular, it also had an awesome floating market and charming locals who enjoyed watching us eat with chopsticks and giggled when we tried out a “thank you” in Thai. Above all, it was a rather charming introductory town to Thailand… We definitely ain’t in Europe anymore.

 The best way to get around Ayuthaya, and the best way to get used to Thai traffic.

Wat Phra Si Sanphet, probably the most impressive site in Ayuthaya. Still, hard to believe that Ayuthaya was once the largest city in the world!

Definitely the most impressive buddha in Ayuthaya.

Ayuthaya Floating Market. It sold mostly delicious Thai treats and curries, elephant-themed clothing, cheap souvenirs, and photo opportunities with chained-up depressed starved tigers. The food was the best part.

Nothing could possibly live in water that brown and murky.... could it?

Next we headed an hour and a half north of Ayuthaya, to Lopburi. We had heard little about Lopburi except that it was similar to Ayuthaya, only with slighlty less impressive ruins and slightly more monkeys. We were wrong on both counts – the ruins are just as impressive as Ayuthaya, and there were a SHITLOAD OF MONKEYS

A typical Monday morning in Lopburi. Monkeys rule the town. The locals literally have to arm themselves with brooms and slingshots to protect their shops.

"Terrence, what do your monkey eyes see up there?"

"Two pasty white tourists approaching with large backpacks and a camera. Form the ranks. Let's gettem"

Moments before Felix got into the first monkey-fight of his life. Thanks to the 2 litre water bottle he was wielding, he escaped with his life, just.

This exquisitely preserved temple was in the non-monkey end of town, making the visit a lot less stressful. It was so un-stressful we even learnt a bit about the history - this temple complex was built by the Khmer Empire, the largest ancient power in South-East Asia. Kinda looks like the temple that the monkey king lived in in the Jungle Book, no?


This temple was in the monkey-ruled end of town. The only safe place was inside the temple itself as they had put bars around the entrances to prevent monkeys from getting in. It was like being in a zoo, except the animals are on the outside and you're in the cage...

Still eager to spot more macaques, we caught a bus to the entrance of Khao Yai, Thailand’s oldest National Park and one of the largest monsoon forests in Asia. We’re not entirely sure what a couple of city kids such as ourselves expected to find in a tropical jungle, but I’d say we probably got more than we bargained for. We chose to camp in an abandoned camping ground in the middle of the jungle, which in hindsight wasn’t the brightest idea. We managed to get some decent jungle trekking in during the day, but the night-time proved to be not so straight forward… We spent the night bailing water from our tent as a tropical monsoon/thunder storm broke out over Khao Yai. Sadly our tent was not very waterproof, a situation that was not made any better by the amount of leeches that made their way into our tent. The jungle may have defeated us this time, but we will be back.

There's no public transport in the park, so the only way to get around is to hitchike... Not really that easy on a weekday during the off season...

Mama and baby elephant! Spotted on the side of the road, driving into the park.

Get on ya walking boots, it's jungle-trekking time!

 The 'track' we were following tended to disappear every now and then, so we had to do a bit of jungle-bashing to find the path again.

When we saw the signs saying "Beware Crocodile", we were sure it was a joke. 

When we saw this 3 metre long Siamese croc, we knew it wasn't. We were very happy he'd chosen to sunbathe here, and not on the track.

More cheeky monkeys. These ones were particularly cheeky - while we were hiking they unzipped all our bags and went through all our belongings in search of food. The only "food" they found were Felix's contact lenses, which they ate all of.

On top of the thieving monkeys, crocodiles, monsoons and thunder storms, we had to put up with the leeches. Blood was shed during our jungle trek.

The gibbons’ chanting woke us up after a few hours of sleep, to find that another group of happy Thai campers had arrived after dark and camped (in water-proof tents) across the road. They must have felt sorry for us looking like drowned rats, because they gave us a lift all the way back to Bangkok in the back of their Ute, which was uncomfortable but incredibly kind! We met up with Alex and Robbie in Bangkok, with whom we spent a relaxing few days, not doing a whole lot and preparing ourselves mentally for the next phase, the Indian adventure.

This is how Phoebe spent the 200kilometre ride back to Bangkok... with her sunhat, cob of corn and spring rolls that the driver gave us. Way too nice. 

Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn. It symbolises the dawn of the Bangkok-governed era of  Thai history, and is probably the most famous temple in Bangkok. More on Bangkok when we return here for a few days after our Indian adventures...

Next time: Volunteering in Kolkata!