Arrived in this gorgeous hillside city of 100,000+ and immediately booked a room in Hotel Ailment. The temperature (in the low 40s) and lack of heat in the building — not to mention that we could see our own breath in our room — annoyed us only mildly after spending the last 25 hours in a bus. Plus, for 300 Rs a night ($6), we thought it was a great deal since the hotel provides hot water for a few hours in the afternoon.

Spirits high, we made it down to the main streets and prompty purchased hats and gloves to keep ourselves warm. We then headed down the bazaar to explore the other goods for sale and eventually ended up having biscuits and tea at Goodricke. Divine!

After a somewhat restless night of sleep (it was cold!), Claire and I got up the next morning and enjoyed breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant before heading out to sort out travel arrangements for the next leg of our trip. Despite our best efforts, the Indian railway continues to remain unavailable. The Darjeeling train station simply does not sell tickets to where we want to go (for reasons that make absolutely no sense) and while we contemplated booking online again, the trains appear to be filled up for the next 5 days. Did I mention that India has a lot of people? Apparently not enough trains either. So that left us with no other option and despite my insistence that we create a third way (I did suggest we look into helipcopter fares or perhaps flying to Varanasi (our only option being to fly via Kolkata and Delhi), Claire wisely steered us to a travel agency where we booked another night bus — this time from Siliguri to Patna [350 Rs ($7)/each]. God help us.

In the evening we ate momos at the fantastic Kunga Restaurant. Basically like perrogies, which you all know I admire intensely!