We’ve also updated our previous posts with better quality/sized images.

Tea!

The view from our window.

Tea, tea everywhere!

Road signs in India are so much more interesting.

We stayed in an old Maharaja’s summer house in Kalimpong, think we might have actually been in his room.  It was really old and creaky, and a bit like the Shining (especially as we were the only people there for the first night).  This was the view from our window just before sunrise.

Handmade paper drying in the sun.

Some girls who started following us around town.

Fabric shop

The fantastically named Ringkingpong Monastery.  We were planning to get there for sunset but it took 5 times longer to walk there than our book said so it was dark and foggy by the time we got there, but quite cool nonetheless.

The journey from Siliguri was like driving into the sky – Darjeeling’s about 2150m above sea level. Ben Nevis is about 1344m.

We also saw someone carrying a full size sofa like this up a huge hill.

Darjeeling seems so relaxed after all the cities we’ve been to, eveyone just sits around chatting and nobody hassles you except to ask if you’re lost.

Sunset over the Himalayas.

A huge Tibetan breakfast. That’s tea made with salt and butter, mmmm, with deep fried tibetan bread. It was nice but so buttery, Matt was almost sick afterwards.

That’s a leopard in the zoo.

Jenny – a lazy moon bear.

Clouds come down really fast so suddenly you can’t see anything.

Sunrise, sort of. We got up at 3.30 am to get a jeep to this special viewpoint (Tiger Hill) but this was the only shot through the clouds.

We weren’t the only ones, and there were lots of local ladies selling sweet coffee. It was freezing (well probably about 15C).

Scrolls in Yiga-Choling Gompa Buddhist monastery in Ghoom.

The tea shop before Jenny bought it all.

A nice Nepalese man who showed us round the gardens.

Main Ghat (steps down to the Ganges). Every Maharaja had a palace built here along the riverside.

Bathing at sunrise in the Ganges. That’s an Indian person, not one of us.

The ‘burning’ ghat. There’s a hospice next door where the elderly and sick go – they believe that if they die in Varanasi they will go straight to heaven. Most bodies are burned and the ashes put in the Ganges. There are three tiers of fires depending on what caste someone is, each with a different type of wood. The bodies and fires are looked after by the untouchables.

Women washing in the morning.

Sadhus chilling out.

At night lots of people float candles on the water.

Evening ceremony, which lasts an hour and a half and takes place everyday.

The new metro is really nice, like the jubilee line but much quieter and the cheapest journey is about 5p.

India Gate.

It was worth getting up at 5am to catch the sunrise.

So awe-inspiring some people just pass out.

Matt’s head is still stuck at that angle.

Monkey!

Another monkey!

The Red Fort – probably the biggest castle we’ve ever seen.

Jenny has superstar status here. She ended up posing for photos with about 5 random different families.

Salim the 4th, our friendly cycle-rickshaw driver. Every time we arrive somewhere we end up getting a rickshaw driver called Salim who tries to charm us into going to lots of shops. We haven’t actually had one who isn’t called Salim yet. This one was really nice though (he didn’t stop smiling except for the photo) and he let Matt have a go at driving.

Fortunately we didn’t have to do this.

This is what the train looks like. At nighttime they bring sheets and blankets and pillows, there’s two more bunks at the top.

The first of many train journeys – 8 hours overnight from Udaipur. Really impressed with how organised they are, it’s just a shame the beds are 1 ft too short and people kept walking into our feet all night.

Thali no. 100 for Matt

Eccentric garden restaurant which we’ve been living in for the past few days.

Jantar Mantar observatory, for calculating the calendar and doing horoscopes. The big triangle in the background is a massive sundial, about 50ft high.

It’s been 38-40 degrees C when it’s not raining.

Jaled Chowk, Amer (Amber) Palace

Construction workers at the palace

This should be impossible in Jaipur traffic.