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.