So last weekend I went on a little vacation, which
ended up being 5 days. Because of the Holi holiday we were able to take
Wednesday and Thursday off and we had Good Friday off work. Kristy,
Jennifer, and I decided that we wanted to go early to a smaller town near
Darjeeling. Our first day was wonderful, we had a very short one hour
flight to Bagdogra and then got a prepaid taxi take us to Kalimpong which is a
few hours from Darjeeling. We stayed there until Friday. The ride was beautiful
and the weather was in the 70s which was fantastic! The taxi driver was
awesome as well because he stopped at random points along the way that he knew
we would want shots of. We ate at this hole in the wall restaurant and I mean
that so very literally! We had amazing dal and roti though. The lodge we
stayed at was nice and totally comfortable, and the owners are from Tibet. We
had dinner at a great place in town about a 10 minute walk from the lodge. We
also met a local who helped us set up some things to do for the rest of our
time.
Thursday was a really nice day. We got up
around 8am, got ready, and went to have breakfast on the terrace (which was
actually like a terrace). We had a nice conversation with this group from the
States that is doing work with Tibetan school children. Oh the people you meet
while traveling!
After breakfast we went on a 2 hour walk (read
hike but on a road) up to the highest point in Kalimpong, which is also where
the paragliding takes place. It was a really challenging but I was loving breaking
a sweat for exercising purposes! We saw a lot of the town that was very
neat and I'm a huge fan of the place in general.
When we got to the top I determined that the
paragliding was safe (due to the instructor not being Indian and being
legitimately licensed in Sweden). It was really the coolest experience. I
was most nervous because I don't like stomach drops but I didn't have a single
one! It was just like floating through the air...it was beautiful and
quiet and just lovely overall. It is definitely one of my favorite parts
of the trip!
From there Kristy and I had an outdoor picnic
lunch of momo's and coke while Jennifer was paragliding. After that we
were going to walk down to our hotel but we ended up getting a lift from our
instructor back to the center of town, on the top of his SUV. From there
we went to this orchid nursery and walked around for a bit. After all of this
adventure we ended our night by going to dinner at this place called King Thai,
fun fact that it doesn't serve Thai food!! We had an early dinner and
then walked back to the lodge.
Friday morning we got up early again because we
were going fishing down at the river. Our friend that we met said it
would be a good time and we didn't have anything planned for the early part of
the day Friday. We had our taxi driver, an instructor and his daughter
who went with us. I don't really care anything about fishing but just
thought it would be a good experience to be able to take pictures and enjoy the
surroundings some more! It was a good time, even though I'm pretty sure
there are no fish in this particular river because all of the other people we
saw fishing weren't catching anything either. I had a great time even
still.
We left fishing a bit early because we found out that
another coworker is from a town about 30 minutes away from Kalimpong and she
was coming up early to take some vacation time at home with her family.
She invited us to her home to have lunch so we definitely didn't want to
pass up that opportunity! I will write about our time in Padong at a
later time because it was a wonderful time!
I'm so glad we ended up going early and were able
to go to Kalimpong. The weather was amazing and the air is so clean!
Everyone there spoke Nepalese and are much more Asian looking than Indian
looking.
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