Holiday in India & Bhutan (6): Ghoom and Darjeeling
On Monday, hardy members of the GRJ group were out at the incredibly early hour of 4 am to travel to a location called Tiger Hill to view the sunrise, but Jenny and I did not make it.
Travel was at a minimum today.
First, we returned to the ‘toy train’, this time reversing our travel to make the short trip (about an hour) from Darjeeling back to Ghoom with a brief scenic stop at a place called Batasia. The main difference from the previous day’s rail travel was that today we had a steam locomotive. One of our group, clearly a rail enthusiast, told us that this steam engine was built in 1925 at the North British Locomotive Company in Glasgow and carries the name ‘Iron Sherpa’.
Next, at Ghoom, we visited the Yiga Choling Monastery, the oldest in the area, having been established in1850. The main distinguishing feature of this monastery is the Maltreya Buddha who is the Buddha of the future, born to teach enlightenment in the next age. It dominates the interior, standing 15 feet (4.6 metres) tall.
Darjeeling is a motorists’ nightmare and today we spent an inordinate amount of time with our convoy of six cars reduced to limping mode, when we were not actually halted still. It took us so long to drive from Ghoom back to our hotel in Darjeeling and it took the hotel staff so long to process our simple lunch order of toasted sandwiches that we finished up eating in the cars on the way to our afternoon destinations.
These two locations are co-located in the same grounds.
First, we strolled around the Himalayan Zoological Park where saw the red panda, the black bear, the Sonbar deer, the blue sheep, the yak, the Mishmi takin, the common leopard, the snow leopard, the snow tiger, the Himalayan wolf and – my favourite – the Royal Bengal tiger.
Next, we had a quick look around the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute whose exhibits include objects from the first expedition to conquer Mount Everest. On that historic occasion in 1953, the British Edmund Hillary was accompanied by the Nepalese-Indian Tenzing Norgay and the latter has his tomb and a statue outside the museum.