Entry No.16 by Clare

We arrived in Darjeeling around 10am after about 20 hours of travel, we found our homestay run by a lovely Indian couple Wan-chuck and Doenka (his wife) which we stayed for about 3 days in their home, they were very sweet making us tea all the time even in bed! Our first day we were still very tired so we went exploring, Darjeeling was so good looking, lush tea plantations and beautiful crop fields down the valleys. There was also a nice english couple staying at Wan-chuks homestay and two Spanish ladies, we spend our first night up talking with them. The following morning we went out early to the 'Happy Valley Tea Plantation' which supplies Harrods Knightsbridge exclusively first flush tea. The plantation was really nice and you an walk around for free for as long as you like. We made some photos into disc and had lunch. In the afternoon we took the 'joy ride' train for a 2 hour round trip across the towns and villiages. We stopped at Ghum and visited the trains museum. After we returned we went to a pub called Joey's for a drink, weird to be in a pub. The next morning we were getting up at 4.30am to visit tiger hill for sunrise but Josh felt a little sick so we couldn't go :( Instead we got up later and went to the Zoo (best of India and highest alltitude Zoo in the world) which was great, for about 1 pound we saw lots of great animals such as red pandas, tigers, brown bears, yaks, tibetan wolf etc. There was also a Himalayan Climbing Museum which was very interesting, we found out Everest is named after an English man. Later we went tea shopping, Josh tried some of 'the best tea in the world' but probaly was wasted on him a bit. We got up the following day to leave India, Wan-chuck and his wife made us a lovely breakfast before we set off looking for a jeep. We arrived at the border to Nepal about 3pm, it was very easy to cross and fast. The bus to Kathmandu left the boarder and 5pm and we arrived at 10am after some shockingly bad roads and slow travel. We met a guy who took us to his hotel which was nice for 5 pounds per night, unfortunetly Nepal has unpredictable power which is an issue for light and hot water. We needed to start planning for our trek we intended to do of The Annapurna Circuit so we sold our India Loney Planet and brought a 15 years old Nepal trekking guide. The next morning we went to get our trekking permit and TIMS card. This took a while as nobody seems to know where to go, this cost us 40pounds which was more than I expected. We also went out looking for walking shoes, Jackets, gloves, thermals as it is very cold this time of year and we only turned up in Nepal in shorts and flip-flops. We pretty much spend the next day  doing the same thing and we booked our flight to Bangkok for 1st April too. We leave tomorrow for Besi Sahar to start our 16 days of walking!