Darjeeling

This is the old steam toy train that Jason spent too much time dribbling over and taking photos.

Built by the British in 1882, it still runs on steam.

We never actually caught it as the 80 kms from the airport town of Siliguri takes a tortuous 8 hours to cover. It also has a tendency to de-rail; 3 hours in a jeep seemed more appealing.

School children that were also fascinated by the train jumped on and off it, while they turned the carriages around.

We are not sure if he is asking Jason to take pictures of him or telling him to shove it.

The breath taking views of Khangchendzonga from Darjeeling. At 8,598m it is the third highest mountain in the world. We could see it from our room with a craned neck, but this view was 5 minutes walk and well worth the effort.

St. Andrews church gives a pretty good indication of the British footprint.

We went to the zoo / sanctuary that has been very successful in breeding some endangered animals. The endangered red pandas are bred and released into the wild. They seemed quite happy in their enclosures despite the taunts from domestic tourists.

The bears were well cool. They were enjoying the camera attention. Lounging around in the sun and posing for the camera, this leads us to believe these cheeky chaps won't be finding their way back to the wild anytime soon, even if they are breeding.

Our afternoon visit was mildly tainted by local tourists who decided to spit at a leopard that was just relaxing in the sun.

They seemed to do anything to tease the animals.

They must have been that stupid that they couldn't read the sign.

The very excellent Himalayan museum saved the day, it had the equipment of expeditions to Everest, including this English newspaper clippings of Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing reaching the summit.

Jason can be now seen with his head in most of the climbing books of Darjeeling reading out stories of frostbitten limbs and deaths on Everest. He is taking more than a healthy interest in mountain climbing since he first saw Aconcangua in South America. Seeing the length of the Himalayas, isn't helping to quell the interest.

Did we tell you how cold it is here? We had all our clothes on all the time as there were no fires anywhere unless you stayed on the street.

Prior to the trek Claire got sick here, and spent a couple of days in bed trying to keep warm.... but the toilet seat wasn't heated!

In Ghoom (5kms down the road), there are several monasteries including the famous Yiga Choling Gompa. Jason did this as a trip on his own as Claire was still recovering from the trek to Sandakphu.

The monks of Yiga Choling belong to the Gelukpa sect which we think is the "yellow hat" sect. Hence the yellow hats and the long trumpet things whose name escapes us.

The Druk Sangak Gompa was a bustling place full of young happy looking monks like this chap.

We found a very cool man who embroiders t-shirts. Jason now has two extra for his collection to break up that white vest combination.