Day 103, Kalimpong [Friday 14th March 2008]
Previous day: Day 102, Sirikola, Sukhiapokhri [Thursday 13th March 2008]
Next day: Day 104, Kalimpong [Saturday 15th March 2008]
We get up early and busy ourselves contacting the British High Commission in Kolkata from the phone booth inside Glenary's. We have to fax them a note to cancel our current passports, then submit a huge form to apply for new ones, which will cost us £125 each! We also check our insurance, which covers us for accomodation costs bu not the cost of replacing the passports. We dream up plans to go to Kolkata and stay in a top-end hotel for the 3(!) weeks it will take for the High Commission to renew the passports. Then we realise that we can probably just apply for them, carry on our trip to Sikkim and pick the passports up laer from Delhi when they're ready.
Luckily we are able to get a replacement Sikkim permit without any trouble as our name's written in one of their big books.
We get a shared jeep to Kalimpong, which takes about an hour by winding road, and check into the Himalaya Hotel, a lovely old stone house built by a Scottish bloke who was one of the first Westerners inside Tibet. It remains in his family, too. I think Kiran Desai stayed here while she was writing her excellent book The Inheritance Of Loss. There's a deep wooden verandah at the front, filled with comfortable chairs and surrounded by hundreds of flowers and pot plants. At the back there is a large dining room filled with Tibetan memorabilia and pictures of famous guests, including Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. A quiet, relaxing atmosphere pervades the place. Apparently on a clear day you can see Kanchenjunga from here, although we don't get one during our stay.
For dinner they serve up a pretty spicy chicken tikka masala(!), muttar paneer, rice, nan and a bread pudding with chocolate sauce and custard.
Next day: Day 104, Kalimpong [Saturday 15th March 2008]
Previous day: Day 102, Sirikola, Sukhiapokhri [Thursday 13th March 2008]