April 24th Drive from Pelling to Darjeeling

The drive to Darjeeling was lon and tough. Upon checkout I learned that my breakfast and dinner were includedd in the price of the room. The bad news was the hotel didn't take Mastercard and the only ATM in town hadn't worked for 3 days. In the end an employee from the hotel drove 25 km with us so I could use an ATM in Grazing the provincial capital. Grazing has more than 1 ATM and it took 3 ATM's before we found a working one. The hotel employee got the money and made his way back to Pelling, 

The driver was a bit of a cowboy and he lost his side mirror in the first 10 km when he nicked a passing truck. On these narrow roads any passing is treacherous. In the last 25 km he lost all his antifreeze. After 2 more stops for water another commercial driver told him to use real antifreeze and add more than 1 l. of water at a time. After that we limped into Darjeeling at 16:30. Between looking for a working ATM, crossing a provincial border, and overheating 3 times – we turned a 5 hr trip into a 7.5 hour trip.

Darjeeling in in the mountains and has narrow roads like Sikkem so driving in the city is an adventure. Often cars cannot make the u-turns required for the switchbacks. They stop, bach up and do the turn in 2 sections.