Darjeeling - town and tea..

The many Tibetan monasteries and nunneries in and around Darjeeling are very interesting, and I recommend a visit there

Quick Tips:

Be prepared for the weather. I'll give you a hint if I tell you that the child monks at my boyfriend's monastery were given the day off school if the sun was shining…. This is one of the wettest places in the whole world! None of your clothes will dry properly, and books' pages crinkle up after only a few days.

It's a great mixture of old colonial government - Darjeeling was the Raj's summer capital until the government moved from Calcutta to Delhi - and modern India, with strong Nepalese and Tibetan influences thrown in. It's also a break from one of the unpleasant aspects of India, sexual harassment. I was travelling with another girl, also 21 years old, and by the time we got to Darjeeling we were ready for a break from chat-up lines of the cruder variety.

Best Way To Get Around:

The Aliment Hotel is a lovely place. It's clean, the heaters work, and so do the showers. There's even reliable hot water! If you've done much travelling in India, this place will come as a welcome surprise. The bottom floor is a café, where the Tibetan family who run the hotel cook great food, including a terrific Tibetan dish, which is a cross between a jam doughnut and a pancake. The price is low - about 70 rupees for a twin room (about £1 or $1.50) and is well worth the money. The same room has board games such as scrabble and chess, and a library of English books you can swap yours for. It's a home from home! When I stayed here, my friend and I were both getting over Salmonella poisoning, and it was a great relief to be staying somewhere comfortable and friendly.

Built to the north of Darjeeling, this place has been working to help exiled Tibetans since 1958, by giving them a place to work and an outlet for their goods. They sell the wonderful stuff they produce at the centre itself - their jumpers are of great quality, and useful if you didn't bring anything warm to Darjeeling and find the need of it while you are there! They also make great gifts and souvenirs.

The people who work there are helpful and polite, and you can watch the items being made on the premises. In addition to its commercial and craft functions, it is a community centre. Young people get language and culture lessons there, and there are prayer wheels and other Tibetan Buddhist resources for the local community. There is a small library of religious and Tibetan books. This is an interesting place to visit, but it is also a worthy cause to support. I bought a light blanket here, in red shades, and it was very useful on trains in India as a pad between the plastic sleeping berths and me - it cost about a pound.

Tea is the big thing in Darjeeling, the source of most of the town's income, other than tourism. The combination of the high rainfall and soil type make it an ideal place to grow the delicate, perfumed tea the town is famous for. About a quarter of India's total tea production is grown in Darjeeling and the surrounding areas, astonishing considering how small the place is.

The Happy Valley Tea Estate, which we visited, is about a mile and a half from the town. During the picking season - Easter to November - it's a fascinating place to visit. On the walk there, you can wander through the terraced plantations and watch the women at work, picking the tea, and putting the leaves in the baskets strapped around their heads. Be warned - if you have long fair hair as I do, you may get it pulled so they can decide if it's real or not!

The estate itself is fascinating. There is a large plant to dry, process, and pack the tea; the machinery is stamped and dated with the mark 'Belfast, 1891' on it, and it still works well today, using the original combination of steam power and fan belts to produce the finished article you can purchase in the market in Darjeeling. Men in the basement keep the boilers stoked up with coal, so the power doesn't give out. The tea is dried in huge containers, then crushed slightly and sorted. There are many different grades of tea, ranging from the tips of the Orange Pekoe first picking, to the large leaves that fall on the floor, are picked up and sold as "Russian grade tea." It's a fascinating place to visit, and will make your cuppa tea back home more interesting, now you know how it is made!

After the Chinese took over Tibet, many Tibetans came to live in exile in India. Darjeeling became the base for many of them - others went to live in McLeod-Ganj / Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama. Monasticism has always been an important part of Tibetan Buddhism, and there are now many monasteries, and some nunneries, around Darjeeling.

My boyfriend spent a year in India between school and university, teaching English in Guru Sakya monastery, in Ghoom. He was teaching the baby monks - those aged between 7 and 18. Many boys go to the monasteries for an education, but not all of them go on to take vows later in life. The village is about 5 miles down the road to Calcutta from Darjeeling - but no one told him before he went that the name of the village was Nepali for "damp"....

Visitors are welcome at the monasteries, during the day, provided they behave appropriately. We went and visited a couple around the town, and were shown the prayer halls, wheels, and monastic buildings. It's a very interesting experience, and the monks are very kind and helpful. You may find that in the smaller establishments, the level of English is minimal, however.

A small donation, while not required, is gratefully received. I know from Adam's living in Guru Sakya monastery, that many are very poor indeed, to the extent of food shortages every so often. Many of the places sell prayer scarves - those long, white silky affairs used in meditative exercises, if you don't want to make a gift.

Darjeeling is a great place to get fit. Just walking from the market to the hotel I stayed in, the Aliment, involved climbing a thousand feet! The town is laid out along roads that follow the contours of the hill, and steps and sloping paths that lead up and down the hill, connecting the roads. This is emphatically not a place for the disabled, as it would be just impossible to get round town, and be very careful that you don't leave something vital in the hotel, in case you have to go back and get it….