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The town, nestled in the folds of the Himalayas, was high enough to be kissed by clouds. The nights, when the sky was clear, stars hung down so low, that you felt if you stood on your toes, you could rearrange them any way you wanted to. On moonlit nights, whether gibbous or sickle, the moon would chase off the remotest shadow. Street lights became superfluous. It was a pretty town, more English than Indian. The architecture belonged to a time when this little hill station served as a summer retreat for Britishers living and working in hot, sweltering Calcutta. A train journey on a pair of broad-gauge tracks, took you to the banks of a wide sluggish river. A waiting barge carried you across to where a pair of middle gauge tracks began. Six hours on this train brought you to the foothills, where you changed trains again. This time climbing aboard the iconic Darjeeling Toy Train that climbed up seven thousand feet on narrow gauge tracks. Siliguri station, Tashi and Jigme Ghendun La, stood impatiently on the platform, their luggage making a pile around them. Most of it would go in the luggage van at the tail end of the little train that would take them up into the Himalayas, to their beloved town. They had spent a month in Calcutta, perspiring, and bathing three times a day, ordering supplies for their hotel in the hills. It was not a homey guest house that they ran, but a proper hotel, twenty- five rooms, twin sharing, and four luxury suites. There was a separate dining room for the afternoon meal, and another one that was used for dinner. "A waste of good space, Mrs. Ghendun La," Said the acerbic Mary Maypole, British to her fingertips, and a most efficient General Manager. Her long nose, and flaring nostrils always said more than she actually voiced.
