Setting off from the hotel at 9.30pm we headed for Sealdah station to catch our first overnight train. The taxi driver was low on gas, I hate to think how long that orange light had been on. He turned the engine off at every intersection if we were stopped for more than 10 seconds or so. Luckily we had plenty of time so worrying about missing the train wasn’t a biggie. Breaking down in the middle of busy Kolkata roads and negotiating cars, rickshaws, bikes and various animals would be the exciting part.

Arriving at the station was a bit of a shock to the system. We were feeling pretty exhausted and covered head to toe in Kolkata street dust (we told each other that's all it was, sometimes it pays not to let the mind wander). The station was hot, humid and chaotic. We stood around a while looking bewildered, trying to work out which of the 12 platforms our train would arrive at and how we would recognise it. A visit to the service desk wasn’t helpful as no one spoke English. Someone must have been looking out for us as we asked a couple standing next to us how the system worked and it turned out they were on the same train as us. Pretty remarkable coincidence given the thousands of people and trains coming and going every few minutes.

We shared a cabin with a family from Kolkata who were moving to a town near Darjeeling for their 3 year olds education. They are planning on sending him to the UK for schooling when he turned 10. He was very nurtured. His parents owned a plastic bottle making factory in the city and you don't need to spend long here to see that this would be a successful family business.

When the sun came up we were passing rice paddys, marigold fields and paddocks of barley, maize, corn, tea, and other vegetables. We were both feeling much more at home.

After being accosted by swarms of taxi drivers on our arrival at New Jalpaiguri station, we climbed into the back of a Mahindra with 7 others for the 3 hour steep climb to Darjeeling. Our driver was aggressive and had some sort of inner compulsion to use his horn at least 5 times a minute. Liam liked that he was efficiently getting the job done but I wasn't so sure on some of the tight corners with unsurvivable drop offs, especially when it started drizzling and the road got slippery. One saving grace on the steep roads are the thousands of stones hammered into the seal in lines to increase the grip. It looks like tedious, dirty work but seems to be very effective. The seal itself is all laid and smoothed by hand. The only similarity to NZ is that for every person working there's 3 others standing around chewing paan (betel nuts). No ones wearing fluoro (no suprises there) and there aren't any stop/go signs, drivers just weave their way around the workers. I don't know if there's any OSH in India, but if there is they're pretty relaxed.