Like excited primary school kids, we gaily walked to the Darjeeling zoo bright and early in the morning.

before our walk, we had breakfast.

"chow mien" darjeeling style


A potential dog-of-the-day! having breakfast too


On the way to the zoo, we saw:

our hotel, the quaintly (and aptly, i think, for a hotel in remote mountains) named hotel shambala.


another very aptly named hotel

real Darjeeling school kids going to school. Their uniforms (when not baggy/dirty) are a lot preppier than ours used to be.

we do not have a fetish for schoolkids. really.
assembly at boys' school. like us, they do drills and sing songs with no fervour whatsoever.
cutely named cafe. perhaps they serve aphrodisiacs. i don't know what i was doing.


excellent view

obligatory pose
i have never seen a sign like that prohibiting the same for humans.
cute ^^ red panda. elgin spent 10 whole minutes gazing forlornly at it. perhaps a kindred spirit?
garang mountaineering centre hidden in the zoo. its instructor list reads like an everest hall-of-fame.


elgin the law student was very interested in this. it was next to where we made our sikkim visa.

lastly: pretty flowers. a dandelion?