I'm in Bangkok and just bought my ticket home for Wednesday morning. I've got a couple more pictures to post but I'm going to have to do it later.

Today is a water festival and everyone in Bangkok under the age of 50 is armed with high-powered water guns. Khao San road is a war zone. I'm going to have to go buy one and join in the fun.

If you guessed "miserable bus-ride from hell" you win. After leaving Darjeeling early and wasting a whole afternoon getting bounced around from official to official at the train station I finally had to give up and take the bus back to Kolkata. Not the way I'd have chosen to spend yesterday and last night but I survived.

However, the jeep ride down from Darjeeling to Siliguri in the morning was amazing. Apparently there are multiple routes down from Darjeeling because the last half was a new route that I hadn't taken before (i.e. it did not follow the toy train tracks). Most of the time it was clouded in so there was no view but what I could see was nice - the last 30 or 40 minutes we were surrounded by tea plantations and the descent was much steeper than the route I'd taken before. It was kind of spooky riding down in the clouds - particularly for those sections where the driver shut off the engine and coasted.

Between the clouds and the bumpy jeep ride I had a lot of trouble taking pictures. Here is one from the ride down and another from my day in Siliguri yesterday. Nothing too thrilling though.



Tomorrow I leave for Bangkok to begin the long trip back home. In the meantime, I'm off for some coffee and chocolate cake at the Barista down the street. Mmm, Barista chocolate cake.

I made it to Darjeeling yesterday afternoon. It's nice to be back to see the first place I visited in India 10 years ago even though the weather has been pretty awful. The city is buried in clouds and it's been raining off and on since I got here. I managed to wander around a bit between showers today and took a couple pics.



I still don't have a confirmed ticket yet, but the Chief Reservation Supervisor in Siliguri is supposedly working on an emergency or other concession for me. These guys are supposed to be pretty good at this so there's a good chance I'll be on the train tomorrow night. However, this means I have to head back down there earlier tomorrow than I'd planned so I lose a half day in Darjeeling (and gain a half day in Siliguri - oh joy). Worst case scenario I cancel my ticket and take an overnight bus tomorrow night. Not the method I'd chose for getting back to Kolkata but I'll live.

First, here are a couple more pictures from Vijayawada that I took after my last post.



Gopalpur-on-Sea was great. It was a small, relaxing seaside town with nothing much to do except lounge around. Exactly what I was looking forward to after the previous week of rushing around. I even considered canceling my tickets up to Darjeeling and running out the rest of my trip there but I didn't really need an extra 5 days on the beach. I didn't take too many pictures in Gopalpur but here are a couple.



Finally, here are a couple pictures from Kolkata (Calcutta) that I took this morning when I arrived. I'm just here for the day waiting for my train up to Siliguri for Darjeeling tonight.



Enough for now. I can't believe I only have 5 days left here.

I'm glad I decided to stop in Vijayawada for the day. It's a pretty big town but it's nestled between the Krishna river on the south and a series of rocky hills to the north. In the right spots its very picturesque, although I don't have many pictures to show this yet. I'm going to try to get some more before I leave but in the meantime here are a couple from this afternoon.



I'll be in Gopalpur-on-Sea for the next 3 days. There is a good possibility I won't be able to post while I'm there - the LP says that it's a pretty small village with few amenities such as internet access. Of course that info is a couple years out of date now so we'll see. After Gopalpur I head up to Darjeeling, although I have to spend a day in Kolkata on the way up.

Here are a few pictures from Vellore.



I'm leaving to catch a bus back to Chennai in a couple hours. From there I have a train to Vijayawada tonight. There are a few things to see there, but mostly I'm just spending the day to break up the next leg of my trip. Otherwise I would have to either leave Chennai or arrive in Gopalpur at a very inconvenient time.