Reunited!

After one month of separation the Darjeeling ltd blog team has been reunited! Vanessa survived the long Kathmandu to Darjeeling journey with an escort of a few Israeli travellers and the three of us celebrated with balloons, cookies and chocolate (and hugs…hugs are key). Despite Nouri and Christina spending their loitering days in darjeeling waiting for Vanessa to arrive in fog, rain and general miserable wetness, we were treated to clear views of the Sikkim Himalaya and bluebird skies during Vanessa’s stay. To take advantage of the weather, we took a stroll around the town to some great view points of kanchenchunga (the third highest mountain in the world I’ll have you know), visited a tea estate, the Himalayan mountaineering institute (to show Vanessa, Christina and Nouris home sweet home for the past month) and the Darjeeling zoo (of Red Panda fame… google how cute these guys are and you won’t be disappointed). Oh and we ate. A lot. All sorts of things. Waffles, French toast, chocolates, pasta, banana bread, cookies, veg sizzlers, smootheis, hummus sandwiches… the list goes on. While waiting for several days in Darjeeling for Vanessa to arrive Christina and Nouri took it upon themselves to diligently track down the best food options of the city (before passing judgement sympathize that we ate the same repetitive meal of rice and dal for a month ). 

And now to the exciting part… the train of blogname fame! We spent a sunny afternoon riding the world heritage steam train of the Himalaya railway in darjeeling with permanent smiles of glee plastered upon our faces. In reality, the experience was actually quite slow (had we not been eating so many cookies we probably could have run faster than the speed it travelled) and dirty from all the coal. But as a bonus Christina did convince a reluctant conductor to let her stoke the steam engine!