An Off-season trip to Darjeeling

So the trip started somehow when one of my friends asked me about a trip post exams.. What a better way one can have to release the exam toil than that! I jumped right in.. This time we planned. Our journey started from Patna, we took an overnight train to Siliguri. We had booked our hotel in advance and we expected a little less footfall since it was not the peak season.. As we are students we were on a budget so we had to bear the crunch😂😜. We reached around 12.30 in the afternoon.

We decided to take a bus from tenzing norgay bus stand (Siliguri) but not to our surprise we had missed them as they ran till 12.00PM. So here we were.. Through some local help we got to know that we can do a connecting journey to darjeeling via ghum ( the bus left at 1.40PM) and from ghum we took a shared taxi..(around Rs.20 each) Enjoying the cantt area and those steep ascent and turns, beautiful and warm people, the bus took a 15 mins stop somewhere.

We reached ghum around 5.00pm and we were hungry! We ate noodles with soup at a local restaurant just opposite the ghum toy train station... Took few shots

Then we hopped onto the shared taxi and reached Hill cart road.. we hunted for our hotel asking for directions from locals.. We reached and sobered ourselves from that journey hangover.. and went for the known "Glenary's Cafè" which was near our hotel(5mins walk) And we wrapped up the day at 10.30pm

We booked a private taxi for covering the ten points from the hotel.. First we covered the three points which are with in each other i.e. Padmaja Naidu Zoological park, Himalayan mountaineering institute & Bengal Natural History museum. We saw the red panda, yak, black panther, Himalayan black bear and other notable ones. The Bengal Natural history museum is a must for Zoology enthusiasts.

Next was The Ropeway, since it was off season we didn't counter any long queues( cost around Rs.200 each). 5 mins into waiting and we were on the cable car the next moment.. It took around 40 to 45 mins(subjective). You get off enjoy the landscape, get some pictures and hop back on the next.

Next was Happy valley tea estate.. Enjoy the tea gardens!

This was something different, it was RKMV which had such scenic backdrop😍

Then we went on to tiger hill, as expected we couldn't see the sunrise but we thought of going in the afternoon..

we ended our journey at batasia loop and after that it started pouring..

It was time to say goodbye. We checked out of the hotel, strolled down the streets through the markets and picking some snacks on the way upto the bus stand.

we reached siliguri around 4.30pm and our train was at 1.30 in the morning.. so we decided to check out the Hongkong market.. ate something and headed back..