From Bombay, we transited through Delhi and then flew on to Calcutta. Our flight to Bagdogra was delayed, so we decided to take the opportunity to drive into Calcutta for a little bit. We managed to get a glimpse of the Hooghly bridge, the maidan and also walked around Victoria Memorial. We then dashed to Palace Court to meet Uncle Satyan and Aunty Anjali. It was great to see them again and also to have some delicious Christmas cake! Visiting Calcutta and Palace Court also brought back memories from previous visits to Calcutta to stay with my grandparents. The most recent visit had been a long time ago (15 years ago). After Palace Court, we made a mad dash back to the airport to catch the flight to Bagdogra. Bagdogra is an airforce base as well as a commercial airport.
From Bagdogra, we took a 3 1/2 hour taxi ride up to Darjeeling with our driver, Tendup. Darjeeling is at about 7,500 feet and is quite cold! The next morning, we woke up at 4am to drive up to Tiger Hill - the view from there was spectacular - the sunrise over the mountain range as well as the absolutely clear view of the whole range. Basically, one can see the highest mountains in the world from here, including Mt. Everest and Mt. Kanchenjunga. The Kanchenjunga range is about 60 kilometres away as the crow flies. Here're some of the photos taken from Tiger Hill. The highest peak in the middle is Mt. Kanchenjunga:
After this, we went to one of the parks, where there is a memorial to soldiers who have died defending the border with China. In the park nearby, Smruti tried on a local costume. 
We visited the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute where most of the memorabilia from the first ascent of Mt. Everest (by Indian Tenzing Norgay and New Zealander Edmund Hillary) is on display. We also took a bit of time to see the moutain zoo, which turned out to be pretty interesting. We saw snow leopards, regular leopards, Siberian tigers, Tibetan wolves and various other animals as well! My first glimpse of a tiger on our round-the-world trip!
- Dev
It was a very pleasant surprise to see you both land up at Palace Court, between flights - with your tight schedule - just for that brief while! Smruti said, so she DID get a Christmas tree after all, since we had the tree & all the decorations up from Xmas.
Enjoy the rest of your trip! What a wonderful adventure, and so well-planned. Hats off to you two!
Love, Aunty Anjali
Posted by: Anjali SenGupta | Wednesday, January 19, 2005 at 11:45 AM
edmund hillary is from new zealand
Posted by: santosh kumar | Monday, January 17, 2005 at 01:22 AM