Down on the farm

We took a shared taxi back out of darjeeling and north to the border of sikkim to reach karmi farm, a relaxing retreat run by an englishman, Andrew and prior to that run as a working dairy farm by his grandparents. It was a lovely setting, the combination of a traditional local farm house with touches of a quintessential english cottage. The rooms built across the front path were done so in a local style and they had some quality finishing touches that made us feel at home and set this place in a league above most homestays in the area. The views from the seating area looked out over the sikkim and nepal borders, split by a gorge and a gushing river flowing over gigantic rocks below. Over the three days there we read a hell of a lot, i got into "the snow leopard", quite a perfect story with some limited parallels of our adventures and thoughts in the mountains. We chatted a lot with andrew the owner and learnt a lot about the local area and of the many great charitable causes he has interest in, including the walk in clinic he sponsors right on the farm itself. We also exchanged many interesting convos with a well travelled american lady called diane as we lazed the days by on the veranda or in the snug next to a crackling open log fire. We were treated to some lovely food, three times a day, tasty local food for dinner and tea and porridge and freshly baked bread and peanut butter for breakfast. I soon put on the weight that i'd lost out of my rear end in lucknow. Aside from the reading we got into a bit of twitching from the veranda, using a book on local birds to tick off some of the fantabulously coloured animals we saw swooping amongst the trees.

We had a relatively long journey down from the himalayas to our last port of call on the mainland, calcutta. The jeep drive to darjeeling was too bouncy after another hearty breakfast on the farm and we had a few hours to kill in town before the next leg to new jalpaiguri train station. After discussing the option of seeing west bengal's tremendous effort of conservation, the zoo, we thought we'd saunter on down there. A good half hour walk was trudged downhill only for us to find the zoo to be closed. Bummer, i was really looking forward to seeing a red panda and one of the very few snow leopards in captivity. So, we marched back up the hill and had tea, lunch and bought presents to take home. The second jeep to the station was less bumpy and more windy, through rising clouds breaking of the mountain ledges creating a b-movie horror back drop to proceedings. On the way we overtook a british couple who we're competing in the cross india rickshaw rally so we wound down our windows and shouted good luck right in their faces much to their surprise. The train was pretty painless and we managed to grab some good seats in ac3 and bedded down for the night, earplugs in and diazepam schnaffelled.