Day 7 & 8 - Kalimpong & Siliguri

We left our hotel at sharp 8:30 after having breakfast for our last tourist destination - Kalimpong. It was again a 3 hour drive approximately thru the jungles. We were the lone travelers thru that jungle atop a hill & it was supposed to be a shortcut to Kalimpong.

Kalimpong is a hill station in the Mahabharat Range (Lower Himalaya) situated in West Bengal. It is located on a ridge overlooking River Teesta. The driver mentioned that he would take us to 5 points in Kalimpong. First, he took us to Hanuman Tok where a stylish idol of Hanuman was built in a neat garden atop a small hill. Climbing that small hill only made us tired.

Beside Hanuman Tok was the Durga Mandir, our second point.

Next he took us to Deolo Hill which is the highest point in Kalimpong. Deolo Hill is one of the two hills that the town of Kalimpong stands between. There was a beautifully landscaped garden and a resort atop the hill. It is said that on a clear day, Kanchenjunga & other snow clad mountains of Sikkim are visible. But due to mist on that day, we couldn't get a clear view. Our bad luck.

Our next point was Mangaldham temple, which is located at the heart of the town. This temple is built by some Baba, whose Samadhi is below the main temple. The main temple was huge & colorful, more like ISKCON & the presiding deities were Radha-Krsna. Inside the temple around the walls, colorful models of Krsna's life were displayed.

We then left for our last point - cactus nursery which was at the other end of the town. To go there, we had to cut thru the smallest street lanes & traffic laden roads. The streets looked like Avenue road of Bangalore. We got fed up of the slow moving traffic. Finally we took around 45 mins to reach the nursery.

This nursery is very unique & the first of its kind we have visited. Cacti were grown here & sold. They were housed in a tent like structure. Depending on its size, they were grouped into 6 different tents. For the first time we saw flowers on cactus, baby corn shaped, pumpkin shaped cacti & various other forms. We were spellbound upon seeing the various brands. In one of the tents, entry was itself forbidden, as that cell contained long & ferocious variety of cactus.

The garden around the nursery was neatly maintained. There was a tall X-mas tree and some other peculiar tree which formed arches at the top too..

After seeing all these, we proceeded towards our final destination - Siliguri. It took around 3 hours from Kalimpong to Siliguri and reached Siliguri by 4:30 PM. On the way, we had our lunch in some dhaba. After taking some rest at the hotel, we decided to go out and thought of going to some movie. The receptionist said that there was a theatre close by but didn't know the show timings or the movie which was running. We just casually went out and checked in Biswadeep theatre that My Name Is Khan was running. When contacted the theatre guys about it, they said its almost 45 mins since it started and still tickets were available. As we had nothing else to do, we bought the tickets for just Rs. 25 per head for second class. By the time we entered, Sajda was going on. We couldn’t control our excitement of watching an SRK-Kajol movie in a hopeless theatre for just Rs. 25. It was worth the money spent :)

We came out of the theatre by 7:15 PM and loitered around the place for sometime in search of Bengali sweets. But we couldn't find one. We came back to the hotel, ordered dinner & slept.

The next day we got up lazily, had breakfast & relaxed as nothing much was there to do. Our cab arrived at 11:30 AM for dropping us to Bagdogra airport for our 4:30 flight. We were at the airport by 12 PM and just killed time for almost 3 hours. We thanked our tour operators - darjeeling-travel.com for the pleasant trip we had. We had lunch at the terminal and it was too pricey! We started our flight at 5 PM for Kolkata & from Kolkata to Bangalore via Hyderabad at around 7 PM. The dishes served by KingFisher were good. All thru the flight, we were only talking about our most memorable trip. On our second flight, we watched Paa too. We finally landed at Bangalore airport at around 10:30 PM. By this time, my father-in-law had come to pick us up & went straight to their home.

Mission Chandrayaan was finally accomplished and a huge success. Another most memorable trip in my record. I kept thinking - when there are so many places to see in India itself, why to honeymooners, or common people itself go abroad for vacations? Anyways, I wouldn't stop saying - AMAZING, SUPER, WOW, SAKKATH,...... about our trip.