Friday, February 20, 2015

From the plains to the mountains

It's amazing how just in the span of a few days you can go from sweating your balls off in the plains of India. To freezing them off while sipping the world famous tea found in the mountain town of Darjeeling.


Northeastern India is full of national parks. And while in the town of Guwhati I read that Pobitora National Park was on 40km away and had the highest concentration of white Rhinos in the world.


And the kicker was that you get to search for them on the back of elephants. Now how could I pass that up!


And rhinos there were.......big ones, small ones and of course baby ones.


Going on the elephants is the way to go. Since they are natural in their environment it allows you to be able to get up nice and close.


I guess thats another check mark on the old bucket list. 
It just made me think how cool Africa will be!!!!!!!!



Well after the Rhinos it was time to head up into the clouds to the mountain town of Darjeeling. Darjeeling is famous for it's teas. 
But damn it is cold at 2100 meters. I am told you can see the Himalayas from here but unfortunately it was to cloudy to see far away. Guess I will have to save that for Nepal.


Darjeeling was settled as a British colony so the change in architecture from the "we use concrete to build everything" attitude found in most India towns was refreshing.



You will notice Fred is covered. And this has been the case every time I stop overnight in India. The Indian culture is different in that they will poke, prod, tap, flip and sit on Fred without even asking. It is common to stop and have at least 50 people surround Fred and I. But that being said they have been some off the friendliest people I have met in my travels. Fred just spell binds them so I now use the fly from my tent as a cover. 
The out of site out of mind saying never fit any better than here.


Told you it was cold



If it was warmer I would have opted for a ride on the unesco train.


The train passes through the villages around the hillside. It runs on a smaller 2 foot wide track and the engines are still coal fired producing steam.





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