After a full day rest and recouperation we were both back on top form so headed into the centre of Varanasi, apparently the most holy city in India for Hindu's. We eventually found our way through a complete maze of alleywaysfor our first sighting of the Ganges.The water was completely howfing and apparently its not uncommon to see the odd corpse floating around but that didn't stop the hundreds of people having a wash or a holy dip. We took a boat trip down the river, which was nice, apart from the two dead dogs floating around and the cremations that took place all along the banks.Seeing all that however wasn't near as bad as 'Mike the mink,'thee most disgusting dog on the planet.After three days seeing Varanasi we took a short train ride to the station that we were to catch the train to Darjeeling.When we arrived, however we were told the train was running five hours late, and this soon turned in to nine hours and by the time it arrive at 7am we'd been sitting around trying to catch 40 winks in a café for 11 hours.The delay in the train meant that the entire next day was spent traveling, finally getting to Siliguri (the closest station to Darjeeling) at 1am.

We caught a jeep up to Darjeeling early the next day and it was without a doubt the most terrifying drive I've ever had.At one point the jeep seemed to double as a school bus and at its busiest there were 16 of us crammed inside, speeding round the bendy hill roads.After the jeep ride Joanne was feeling "tired and queasy" so I had to carry both our rucksacks up the steep hills and stairs to our hotel, where Joanne suddenly and conveniently perked up.Darjeeling was really nice and we really appreciated being somewhere not quite as hot as everywhere else we've been.

We somehow managed to make it up at stupid o'clock (3.45m) the next morning to catch another jeep up to tiger hill to get a view of the sunset and the Himalayas.The whole appreciating the cold idea went right out the window when we were completely frozen at the top, although when the sun did eventually came up the views were totally worth it.It was too cloudy unfortunately to see Everest and Kanchenjunga (3rd highest in the word) bt we did see some of the other Himalayan heavyweights (although the pictures didn't really come out well.)By the time we were ready to go back to Darjeeling all the jeeps had left so we had to walk the 11km's back ourselves - my legs have never hurt more in my life.

We spent another day pottering around town and having tea, which was really pretty darn foul to be honest, we headed back down to Siliguri.It had been cloudy pretty much the entire time we'd been there but luckily the morning we left was pretty clear so were able to see Mount Kanchenjunga, which was awesome, and absolutely huge (something you'd probably expect from a mountain to be fair.)

After another dodgy jeep ride we had a five hour wait for our delayed train to Calcutta - our last stop in India.Its kind of sad to know were not traveling any more in India, but it should be good having the same place for a few weeks.Plus over 8 days, mostly overnight, traveling seems more than enough.

James