Today saw us leaving Darjeeling – but not without checking out the local zoo and the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI).

The HMI conducts courses in mountaineering; for the general public it features a museum showcasing various achievements in mountaineering – from first ascents (incl. of course Mt.Everest) to achievements in Antarctica – all complete with equipment of the time of the respective trips. The maps shown here are interesting, as they show the historical border and political situation; a statue of Sir Edmund Hillary sits in front of the museum.

The zoo is right next to the HMI, it features plenty of the local fauna – from mountain animals (as the Himalaya Tahrs in the photo below) to forest dwellers. The stars here are the Red Pandas – with the zoo successfully engaged in a breeding program.

From the zoo it was right onto the road for our drive towards Sikkim. En-route we had a short stop at Tukvar Tea Garden to take in the great views and serene surroundings.

If your association with Darjeeling is more on the (Special Finest) Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe side of things – well, it was finally time to have a closer look at camellia sinensis during a visit of a tea estate.

First we had to make our way back to Darjeeling (once more through horrendous traffic) and through town for us to get to the Happy Valley Tea Estate. After a downhill walk through the tea garden, we had a guided tour around the small estate museum, followed by a tour through the tea processing facility (no photography here). While the tour was informative, there was mostly not too much to see (this was very different during my visit of the tea factory in the Nilgiris).

After the visit we made it back up to the main road for a transfer into town for a proper tea tasting and an opportunity to buy some of the dried and fermented leaves.

Well – and as it is a short walk from tippy to tipsy, we continued straight from the tea tasting to yesterday’s restaurant for more great food and the best G&Ts of the trip. I call that appropriate behavior in a former hill station of the empire.

Today was a very early morning, with us leaving the hotel around 4am to make our way to the Tiger Hill viewpoint – a drive of about one hour. We were here to see the sun rise over the Eastern Himalaya and break its light over some of the giants to the North-West, with Khangchendzonga (at 8586m the world’s third highest) being the most prominent here.

This obviously is a major tourist attraction and the place was packed with other tourists (and per our guide this was not even a too busy day) – it was nevertheless a good thing to do – and the traffic jam the way down probably is just part of the quintessential Indian experience.