Parting Darjeeling & how we reached Gangtok

This is a series of posts covering my trip to Darjeeling and North Sikkim. You can read about my

• Overall trip plan here
• How we reached NJP
• Darjeeling sight seeing

Day 3 –

We were supposed to getup at 3 AM in the morning to visit tiger hills in its pink glory when the first rays of sun hit it. Alas, it was raining even at 3 AM and our driver said nothing would be visible from the observation tower. So, we decided to see it later during the day and slept.

We woke up, refreshed, had breakfast and were ready to cover these places

• Rock Garden
• Batasia Loop
• Tiger Hills observatory tower

Reaching Darjeeling & roaming around

You can read about How we reached Darjeeling here and here.

Day 2 –

At NJP junction, we were offered a taxi to Darjeeling for certain amount and were asked to wait in a hotel while they bring a taxi. Even after an hour there was no sign of taxi. When we enquired, all we got were some indirect answers. Suddenly they said no taxis would run from NJP since a taxi driver was killed (not sure if this was true, but the taxi union there is pretty strong). So we took a shared auto to Siliguri (150 INR for entire auto). From Siliguri we hired a jeep to Darjeeling (1000 INR) – and there started our wonderful journey where I fell deeply in love with The Himalayas.

We had a simple breakfast at a roadside home-cum-inn in Kurseong (4864 ft). It roughly takes around 3 hours to reach Darjeeling (6710 ft) depending on number of breaks you take in-between. I have given a map of the route below (not drawn to scale)