Durga Puja - the trip from campus to Darjeeling

After a few weeks of classes it was time for a holiday, it was the festival Durga Puja in these days classes were cancelled and there was no food served at the mess in campus. Because of this most of the students went home or on holiday. I ended up deciding on travelling with one of the French girls that I had a few classes with and spend a lot of free time with. We decided to go to Darjeeling and Sikkim. So the week before we were leaving we went to the Sikkim House in Calcutta to obtain out Sikkim permits, a permit all foreigners need. Otherwise they are not allowed into Sikkim, as far as I remember it was also possible to get it by the border but we decided it would be better to have it before leaving Calcutta, so we did not risk arriving at the Sikkim border and being told that it was no longer possible to get the permit by the border.

Me and the French girl decided that we would take the train to Siliguri and then a tourist train also called toy train the rest of the way to Darjeeling, we booked our tickets and the morning of our departure came, and first here we noticed that we had gotten waiting list tickets and not a "real" ticket so we could not be sure of getting a seat in the train. My travel buddy had tried taking train in India before so she knew there might be a chance that we could get a "real" ticket but it meant that we had to go to the train station from the morning even though our train was not until 2. So we went to the station and found the counter where it was possible to wait in line and see if there was anyone that had cancelled their tickets so there were seats available.

For me it was a big experience just to arrive at the train station, it was very crowded, people was sitting, waiting, sleeping, and laying everywhere inside and outside the station.

There were also these men in the red shirts that are baggage handlers, you can pay them to take your luggage to the train and carry it into the train.

After some time we managed to get 1 seat confirmed, this meant that we had a seat but only 1 for the two of us, but it was better than not getting to the train since our tickets for the toy train was confirmed, and we really wanted to get our holiday started. So we sad/ lay in 1 seat for the 10 hours the train trip lasted.  We ended up arriving a bit later than expected, so the time we had to wait until the toy train was leaving ended up being shorter.

This is a picture of the toy train.

The toy train trip was beautiful, coming from a country with no mountains; I have a childish fascination for mountains, and the nature around them. Here are a good picture of both the toy train and a waterfall.

We drove through small villages where shops were build so close to the train track that you could shop in the store while still in the train.

The trip with the toy train was great and certainly something I would recormmend to anyone going to any of the hills stations in India where it is possible to take a toy train some of the way there. The train ride took a long time, but it was all worth it :-)