Wes....(numero dos)

Where were we? Oh, right, on top of a mountain waiting for some other mountains. Man that was so long ago...ok. Blah blah blah, so we waited in the cold. The sun came up and was fantastic, and while everyone was staring into the orange and purple sky that was kindly illuminating the sea of cloud below us, I noticed a giant mass of something appearing in the distance. They really appeared like ghosts. Like the biggest, most infamous ghosts in the world, looming only a couple hundred miles away from my face (which let me tell you, considering they are the largest mountains in the world, 200 miles feels like nothing). All I could do was mutter incoherently to myself, and stare. I couldn't form thoughts, or react to people around me, my eyes were just glued to those mountains as they appeared out of the darkness. When the sunlight hit them from the East I just about lost it. I had never truely understood the expression "I didn't believe my eyes" until that moment. The scene in front of me was so incredibly beautiful, so magnificently natural, that I could not grasp the fact that I was seeing it, and that it was real. I just about fell in love with nature all over again. How could something so amazing, so powerful, just have sprung up on it's own? It really was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. And I have to say, the second I layed eyes on them, I knew I would be back. I knew that in some future time, I would go to them - feel them , know them. And I will. Lordy, it felt like I had come home to a place I'd never been.
Basically I took about 8 gazillion photos, and after a while my friends convinced me that we really did have to go, and that I couldn't just stay here all day. On our way down the mountain, my face was literally smashed against the window the entire time, looking at them through the trees as we wound down the road. I would shoot over to whatever side of the car they appeared on, any smash my face against the glass. If there was a clear view of them I would scream "STOPPPP!!!!!" with such a tone of desperation that the driver would slam on the brakes and look back in urgency to see what apendage I had slammed in the door. Of course, I just wanted to take yet another picture. By the end of the ride my three friends were crammed in the back row to avoid my rocketing from side to side, all the windows were smeared with my hand and face prints, and the driver was enormously thankful to get away from my screeching voice and apparent obbsession with a distant land mass. But it was so great. I floated around the rest of the day, and watched those mountains until they disappeared from my view. I was kind of possessed.
We had a lovely taxi ride out of Darjeeling during which we wound through tea plantations and tiny hill-side villages, and I gawked at the largest bamboo shoots I've ever seen (literally the size of a full-grown Doug Fir). I also saw a TAZO TEA billboard in the middle of the forest on the way down from Darjeeling. I had to scream about that too, but only cause it's from Portland. After the awe-induced stupor I had been wandering around in all day, it was almost too exciting to handle.
Our train ride back was fairly uneventful, except for the gaggle of Japenese teenagers who couldn't figure out how to set the bunks up so decided that it would be a great idea to sit up all night long singing their all time favorite church tunes. And let me tell you, church tunes are way more interesting with a Japanese accent thrown in. Thank the good lord for melatonin.
Ok, dinner time again. Next entry will have to be a Durga Puja update. And if you don't know what Durga Puja is please look it up -- explaining Hindu holidays as a non-Hindu is like trying to explain to an Indian taxi driver that you're not trying to die in his cab today. They just don't get it.
Love and dal