Kalimpong

23.04.2008 to 26.04.2008

It was time for us to leave Darjeeling and move on to Kalimpong. We took off early in the morning and reached Kalimpong at around noon. It took a while to find accommodation, which would fit our budget, until finally we managed a room for Rs200. We were not that happy with our room as it was dirty, and there was no water, so we decided to go in the search of another guesthouse. We managed to find a good-value guesthouse a couple of minutes away from the motor stand…Sherpa Lodge….and we decided to move there on the morrow. Kalimpong was not much of a nice place… but for us it was a stopping point in order to go trekking. What made the place worthwhile was the owner of Sherpa Lodge, Raju, who was very friendly, and helpful. He gave us a lot of information about trekking and always had good advice for us. We did a couple of things in Kalimpong, which included visiting a small paper factory, where they produce paper from Daphne leaves. The final products are really nice, ranging from cards, bags, lamps, notebooks, etc. Kalimpong was the place where we changed a lot of rooms… in two days we changed three rooms!! First time was to change from the first hotel to Sherpa Lodge and following that to a different room within Sherpa Lodge itself. We were given a lovely room but with a 'little' problem, an unpleasant surprise which struck us during the night. Janet was sleeping, when, she suddenly felt something running on her arm. At first she tought it could be her hair but on second thoughts she put on the torch and she saw a small roach running on the mattress in Yakof’s direction. Yakof was woken up, by the ubrupt shouting, only to learn that there were around four other small roaches in the room, together with a big dead one next to the door and another (living one) on its way in!!!! That was the end of our sleep….from 04:30 in the morning we waited for Raju to wake up and we changed rooms. The room was pretty much the same but with a TV… and as long as there were no roaches it would be fine. It turned out that we could not make do without roaches even in that room, though we have to say the maximum we found were three. We spent the days in Kalimpong to preparing ourselves for our trek… bought trekking boots and so on. Our next destination The Trek… and that is one hell of a story….