My “joy ride” on the Himalayan Railroad train from Darjeeling to Ghum (or Ghoom, depending on which sign you read), known as the “Toy Train,” turned out to be just that.
At first I was a bit blasé. More spectacular views of Khangchendzonga (or Kanchenjunga, depending on which sign you read), the highest mountain peak in India and the third highest in the world. Ho hum. That I can have without stepping outside my $22/night hotel room. And the Toy Train is no Orient Express. Plus, I’d gotten up at 3:30 a.m. the day before to head to Tiger Hill to watch the sun rise over Kanchenjunga (my preferred spelling because it’s shorter). So I was pretty much overdosing on charm and natural beauty.
But the Toy Train offered far more than spectacular scenery. It offered equally amazing company.
Riding, just for the fun of it, in the same car as me was Tenzing Norgay’s daughter, one of his sons and their families. Tenzing Norgay, of course, was the first man (accompanied by Sir Edmund Hillary) to summit Mt. Everest. My fascination with Everest and the high Himalaya is what draws me to India. So I was blown away to meet the scions of perhaps the most significant mountaineer of all time.
My day started with rushing to the train station, past a dead cat whose head had been battered (dogs, cats, they’re like pigeons in India, or flies; cab drivers barely bother to swerve to avoid killing them), to wait one frigid hour to buy my ticket. But the day began to brighten while I was sitting in the train car still in the station.
A Western woman in her sixties, Pat, whose son is married to Norgay’s daughter Deke, asked me where I’m from. This, alone, was unusual. I’d say that 95 percent of the time I’m the one to initiate conversations with Westerners here in India. Pat asked if I was originally from San Francisco and when I confessed I grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, one of Pat’s numerous traveling companions, Chris, became excited. Turns out, Chris hails from the same area.
Scranton was once famous for its coal mines. The Toy Train, which moves at a speed that is honestly slower than my jogging pace (and I jog very, very slowly), is powered by coal.
Pat’s son, Clark, offered me a ride back from Ghoom to Darjeeling. I tagged along with him, Pat and Chris (a 39-year old woman who is also a writer and now living in California) for the rest of the day. This is what I love most about traveling (apart from these spectacular, mystical, magical mountains), meeting other travelers. And locals.
On Tiger Hill I met Joseph Thomas, former Indian soccer (real football) star. He bought me a coffee and found binoculars for me to watch the full moon give way to the sun lighting up Kanchenjunga. More importantly, he assured me my trip to Srinigar and Gulmarg (in Kashmir) will be the most gorgeous, lovely and gracious stay on my journey. And fun.
Just like my last trip, each day here gets better and better.
Okay, how come my last comment about the mysterious Italians didn’t make it to the blog? At any rate, meeting Torgay’s scion (nice word) was great. Did you know that expedition was where Jan Morris, then James, got her big break, so to speak? I could use more on these locales, or do you keep it short because it’s a blog? Mardi
Mardi, Thanks for comments and for coming along on this journey with me, metaphorically. I blog short because I’m blogging both with and to my own attention span!