Day 47

I'm 2200 metres above sea level on board the Darjeeling Toy Steam Train. The sky is blue and in the distance rising above the lush, green hills is the magnificent, white peak of Kanchenjunga and the surrounding mountains which make up part of the Eastern Himalayas. We've spent the last four days in Darjeeling after completing our work in Kolkata and now we're heading back down the mountain to the town of Siliguri.

I'm definitely glad to have finished work and to be moving on but I can't seem to shake this slight feeling of guilt at leaving behind all those we've met and worked with. It's silly really as there's a constant abundance of volunteers at The Mother House, often too many, and SMILE has an uninterrupted flow of applicants, so the work will always be done and the people will always be cared for but I suppose the guilt comes from leaving behind the personal satisfaction I gained from knowing that it wasn't just any volunteer doing the work, it was me.

Why does one decide to go and work in one of the poorest cities on the planet? Why choose to witness firsthand the extreme poverty, the sick, the dying and the needy? Surely everything we do in life, every move we make makes for personal gain, our desicions are undeniably selfish, so what can one attain from work like this?

For me it's been about balance. About trying to gain an (although somewhat limited) understanding of the world I live in and what goes on in it. In removing myself from the comforts of home and England and submerging myself in a city like Kolkata, on re-emerging I feel like I can rely on a greater balance of judgement, of thought and of perspective on which to base the future of myself and (one day) the future of my family. At home I can witness as much poverty as I like on the television and in the newspapers but never really understand it and therefore never let it play a part in my life and inform the desicions and choices I make. The work and simply being in Kolkata has allowed me to do this.

So, we are now on the move. On leaving the city, the smog and the stench we decided that we definitely needed to head somewhere green and somewhere where we could actually see the sky so we boarded the overnight Darjeeling Mail train from Sealdah and settled down in our bunks. The train journey was fifteen hours long and we arrived at the last train station on the line (Siliguri) at eight o' clock the next morning where we took a jeep (with nine other passengers) and made the final part of the journey (four and a half hours of steep uphill climbing) to Darjeeling. The town and its surroundings proved to be well worth the lengthy journey.

Part Victorian holiday resort, part major tea growing centre, Darjeeling (meaning the place of the thunderbolt) straddles a ridge 2200 metres up in the Himalayas. Over fifty years after the British departed, the town remains as popular as ever with holidaymakers from the plains (and monkeys from the forests) and it has been a pleasure to embrace the holiday atmosphere over the last few days. Our little guesthouse, Long Island Hotel, was neartly nestled high up at the top end of town, reached only by climbing windy and narrow streets and was run by a family of Nepalise descent who were extremely lovely and welcoming. As life begins to get a lot chillier at this altitude we would no longer be relishing the cold showers like Kolkata but hot and steamy water would be the way forwards. The hotel had one shower heated by a gasfire water boiler and each morning the young daughter of the owners would unlock the door to the bathroom so that we could wash and then lock it again once we had finished. Not only is hot water precious in Darjeeling but cold water too. There are over five hundred hotels in Darjeeling and new ones spring up all the time placing serious strains on the town's water supply.

Over the last few days we've visited the Happy Valley Tea Estate and watched the women pick the leaves, the Darjeeling Zoo to see the Himalayan black bear, Snow leopards, enormous yaks, Tibetan wolves and the ever so sweet and endangered Red panda but only to leave with that horrible feeling of "Why did we do that?" and 'I'm never visiting a zoo again".

We spent a most enjoyable afternoon in the HMI (Himalayan Mountaineering Institue) which is India's most important training centre for mountaineers and holds lots of courses. Its first Director was Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, Sir Edmund Hillary's climbing partner on the first successful asscent of Mount Everst in 1953 and he lived and died in Darjeeling and is now buried in the institutes grounds. In the heart of the complex, the HMI Museum is dedicated to the history of mountaineering with equiptment old and new, a model of the Himalayas (it looked a bit like the models we used to make in GCSE Geography classes) and a collection of costumes of different hill people. The Everst Museum next door recounted the history of ascents on the worlds highest peak.... so many people have died up there!

We also clambered up a pine covered hillside to Observatory Hill viewing point and the site of a beautiful Buddhist shrine decorated with streams and streams of colourful Buddhist prayer flags. Here an old man with a stick chanted to us, blessed us and then asked for money.

The Tibetan Refugee Self Help centre was the most memoriable of our excursions and definitely had the most impact. The complex is at the bottom of the town and houses around seven hundred refugees including many elderly and orphans. They have a nursery, a schoolhouse, a hospital, a room containing an exhibition on the history of the camp (and horrifying facts and figures about the Chinese invasion of Tibet and all that's followed since) and three workshops where those who can, work to produce beautiful Tibetan crafts, rugs, clothes and leatherworks to sell in the on-site shop. We were allowed to walk round and watch them at work, weaving and spinning wool and nimbly stitching the most intricate of patterns to create wonderful rugs before we headed to the shop. Here Jonny bought a fantastic woollen jumper, real Cuddly Christmas Bear style. It was great to be able to see exactly where our money was going.

Well, this choo choo train has just about reached its destination of Siliguri. There we shall spend the night before heading to Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary where hopefully we will participate in some "endangered Greater One-Horned Rhinocerous spotting" for a few days. Then it's back to Kolkata to finish our stint in West Bengal and to say goodbye to the city once and for all.