Darjeeling is much busier and built up than either of us had imagined, and thick fog in the valleys make it difficult to see down valley to the tea plantations and forest. We found a gorgeous Tibetan hotel to stay in with lovely attention to detail and a woodburner in the lounge in the evenings.

Our first morning we got up early and wandered in the direction of the mountains towards the west of town. Before long we found ourselves walking a road around the bottom of a hill atop of which, unbeknown to us, was the Mahakal Buddhist temple. Walking in an anticlockwise direction was a bad move. It seemed that half of the Darjeeling population was participating in mass exercise by running around the temple. Killing two birds with one stone? Even the dogs and marauding monkeys had the direction sussed. We managed to avoid collision and found a spot to watch the sunrise over Kanchenjunga before turning around to blend in a bit more. Later in the day we visited the Himalayan mountaineering institute and Himalayan zoological park, both of which were a bit disappointing in their own way, though the mountaineering institute had some interesting history on climbing in the area and Nepal.

We were talked into signing up to do the first day of the Singalia Ridge Trek the following day and left early in the morning with a local guide from a small town near Darjeeling. The drive took us into areas much more like we imagined the area around Darjeeling to be, with lots of government owned forestry and small villages along the way. Heading into Singalia national park and walking along the cobbled pathways through rhododendron forests was well worth the effort to get there. Unfortunately because of the fog we never got a view of the mountains from the ridge, but we enjoyed seeing birds, flowers, hilltop monasteries, and chatting with our guide. We learned a lot from him about life in Darjeeling, local politics and corruption, and education. Another thing we enjoyed was watching a vulture float around in the wind at the top of a ridge, it's long finger-like primary feathers at the ends of its wings moving ever so slightly to adjust its direction. It was very impressive seeing it so close. When we got to the end of the walk we waited for about an hour for our jeep to pick us up. When we finally got him on the cellphone he told us he was held up by an accident- this turned out to be a nice metaphor for falling asleep parked up in the forest somewhere.

On our final day we caught a taxi to Ghum, about 10km East of Darjeeling, and walked back along a quiet road well above the main busy highway. Getting away from the main centre was a revelation. People were friendlier, and every group of homes had its own vege and flower gardens. Coming back into Darjeeling along a back road led us through a local market where fish (goodness knows where from), chicken (killed, plucked and skinned in the same spot), beef (offal and all), eggs, and numerous vegetables, were on offer. For the first time of the trip Liam opted to have vegetarian for lunch AND dinner.