Holiday in Darjeeling

Our family had a lovely time in Darjeeling over the holidays. This was our view on the clearest day, the snow capped Kanchajunga range. We had all hoped to at least get a glimpse of snow and our wish was fulfilled. Every morning we would look out the window to see if the fog had lifted and blessed us with a view.


But even the fog had a beauty all of it's own.


Here the boys are standing under prayer flags with some friends from school who were also in Darjeeling. They had a lot of fun going to the zoo together and playing games back at the hotel.


My animal lover!


A highlight for the boys was having a pony ride.




A view of Darjeeling town from another window.


This is what I enjoyed almost more than anything - time to sit and read!


Austin and his dad took a class on making Momos.


We played lots of games.


Climbed lots of stairs - seems like everything is up and down in Darjeeling.


Waiting for breakfast on Christmas morning.


My little elf, singing to himself in the mirror.


Opening presents - a highlight for everyone!


Austin and I were the audience while the rest of the family put on a mini- Christmas pageant, with Pruitt being the director.


My in-laws as Mary and Joseph.

All in all, we had a great time. The trip to and from was long and grueling but it helped to be traveling with family. For those of you who don't know them, my in-laws make everything more interesting and I feel really blessed to have them here.

So, we saw beautiful things, beautiful people, rested, ate lots of good food, played, laughed, drank pots of coffee, went shopping, laughed some more and finally bumped our way back home to Dhaka!

Which really is a whole other story! First we were told that there was a strike and we would have to leave our hotel at 4 a.m. to get down the mountain on time to miss it. Then that was called off at the last minute and we left at at 8 instead (but oh, the drama that went on in the midst of it all as Austin tried to book a vehicle and find out the truth about the strike and our breakfast order getting misplaced...) So we made the journey down the mountain fine, had a couple hours till the bus left, so some of us went to a little shopping mall and picked up a few more goodies to take back to Bangladesh with us. I felt so relieved when we were finally pulling away on the bus, feeling like the rest would be a piece of cake. Little did I know...

An hour from the border we stopped in a long line of vehicles that were just sitting on the road. Here another strike was going on, a political party had blocked the road and refused to let anyone through. We sat and sat and I was beginning to think we were going to spend the night in some hut by the border if we didn't get there before closing. 2 hours later the police and border patrol turned up and cleared the road and we were on our way again. The bus driver had called ahead and asked the border guards to stay open a little longer for us and we were so grateful! As soon as we got off the bus, we were surrounded by a group of guys wanting to exchange money for us. We grabbed the kids in the darkness and went to the first hut to get our passports stamped - which took at least 30 minutes. As we were waiting, one of the guys told us that a Bangladeshi had been trying to cross the border illegally that morning and had been shot. From there we went to another hut that to go through customs. Before we knew it, porters had moved all our bags to the border crossing and when we got there the guards were asking us how many bags we had. By this time we had been traveling for nearly 12 hours, we were tired and it was pitch black. I had no idea how many bags we had or where they were. It didn't help that porters kept picking them up and in the darkness it was hard to tell who was who -which was why I felt more than a little freaked out, crossing no-mans land in the dark and hoped and prayed that both sides would know who we were and that all our bags would make it. I had visions of them mysteriously disappearing but it all ended well and the lights on the Bangladeshi side were quite inviting. We all grabbed pens and forms and filled them out in record time to hurry through immigration and headed for the bus with all our bags and all the children. Whew! Another sigh of relief! Later my mother-in-law asked me if I'd seen the corpse on a stretcher as we were having the struggle to count our bags at the crossing. I hadn't and was rather glad I hadn't!

By this time we were quite hungry and were told dinner break would be around 2 a.m. (which is not something we foreigners like to think about doing in the middle of the night but locals seem to be fine with it). So Austin quick bought a handful of hot parathas (fried flat bread) which tasted amazing, and we were once more on our way. We pulled into the bus station in Dhaka around 5 a.m. without further incidence - except the one when Riley woke up and let his lunch fly all over himself, his seat and my face. I'll leave it at that. Home looked so good!