Millers in Mymensingh: Darjeeling

The night after our visitors arrived, we did a crazy thing. We took an overnight bus to India. It took a couple of hours to get out of the city and then the AC stopped working and everyone was yelling at the driver, literally. So we stopped and they messed around and got it going again. Then at about 5:15a.m., we stopped again. I thought maybe we were at the border but, instead, were at a bridge that was under construction and would be closed until 7:30 a.m. Soon the boys were awake and getting antsy so we got off the bus awhile and they ran around and rather put on a show for the hundreds of other people that were there waiting. Lets just say that the line of buses and trucks was rather long. 2 and a half hours later, we were on our way once more. We finally got to the border, had breakfast of eggs and chapati and eventually made our way out of Bangladesh and crossed over into India. It was noon till we were on our way again. When we finally arrived at Siliguri, the last stop where we were to get a jeep up the mountain, we were very weary. Austin tried in vain to book our return tickets (which the bus people in Dhaka said they could not do, that we would have to do it once we reached the Indian side) but by the time he was waited on ( everyone else had been pushing the tickets and passports in ahead of everyone else) there were not enough seats left. To make a long story short, we finally booked a jeep and just left and decided to "wing it" ourselves on the way back. We had a 3 hour ride up the mountains and by the time we got to our hotel in Darjeeling, it was dark, cold and raining. It was also exactly 24 hours since we had left our house in Dhaka to begin the long journey. Needless to say, we slept very good that night, under mounds of thick blankets. After coming from the heat of the plains, it was a shock to feel so very cold. The first thing we did, after breakfast the next morning was to buy everyone a sweater or shawl.