Tip: Never listen to a French boy. Especially when he appears to know what he’s doing.

In a moment of Varanasi infused madness we listened to the French boy. Goodness knows why. Because everybody who’s travelled India knows that on a long train journey comfort (or as much of it as you can get) is key. This is usually helped by having an actual seat on a 16 hour journey. But aha Frenchy knew best so we decided a waiting list ticket would be a grand idea.

This basically means you don’t have a seat but have to hope people will be willing to let you squeeze on theirs and as there were no tickets left and we wanted to head to Darjeeling we went for it, waiting list it was. Naturally it was rammed, there were no seats but luckily for us we were all white which meant people were very kind and let us share their seats. Granted we did have to move a few times but hey ho, life was jolly. Until a cockroach ran across Lyvette’s plate. Just as she was eating a samosa. She tried to jump but because she was so squashed couldn’t really move her arms and had to yelp instead. This particular train had travelled for 3 days. 3 days between the starting station and final destination, so you can only imagine the state of it by the time we boarded. The toilets were something else, I mean why would anyone ever poo all over the toilet seat? And then there was the squatter that had reached its poo containing capacity and had decided to overflow. Lyvette managed to hold a wee in for 16 hours. Impressive. I, on the other hand had to change my tampon 3 times, balancing on one leg, trying not to stand in shit, with my pants round my ankles whilst maintaining enough balance to get the job done. It was a definite highlight of my travelling experience so far.

But luckily, on this journey we had the company of Jeremy the French guy who kept us entertained with his one liners. He was squeezed amongst various bags and I could just about see his face as the ticket conductor came round (bearing in mind we didn’t have actual tickets as we were on the waiting list so there was a chance we could be chucked off).
Jeremy: “I am a little bit scared of zis man (nods towards ticket conductor)… I think he is not zat gentle.” My only response was to laugh at the not so gentle ticket conductor.
As we neared our station is was midnight and we then had to get a jeep for 2 hours to reach our destination. We didn’t think the public jeeps would be running at that hour. But Jeremy had a plan…
“I zink that what we need is to find some Europeans!” Why do we need to find Europeans?
“Because zey will be tourists heading to Darjeeling like us, so we can share a private taxi if the public ones have stopped!” He was very excited about his idea.
And with that thought he was off, running around the station searching for Europeans. Myself and Lyvette stood with the taxi drivers who assured us that no taxi, not even a private one would take us on that 2 hour journey to Darjeeling at such a late hour. So we all stood there watching Jeremy dart between tuk tuk’s, taxi’s and Indians searching for Europeans who would surely have the answer and miraculously change the taxi drivers minds. Ten minutes later he returned looking dishevelled and extremely unhappy.
“I am a little bit un-appy. I zink we will ave to stay ‘ere for the night.”
And with that we trundled off to the nearest hotel without any Europeans.
Jeremy: “ ‘Ow much iz ze room?”
Receptionist: “1200 rupees.”
Jeremy: “No. Zis is not possible.” Me and Lyvette just looked at him wondering what was not possible and had to stifle a giggle when he whipped up the calculator on his phone and typed ‘1200’ in. “Ahhh” he said showing us the figure on the calculator; “I zink zis is ze price.” (And yes he is definitely French). We got the giggles as Jeremy’s calculator confirmed exactly what the receptionist had just told us and then settled into our room where Jeremy put on his glasses, and proudly announced; “My glasses, zey ‘ave a special sickness.” We spent the next few moments trying to work out what sort of sickness his glasses could possibly have and why this was so special. Can glasses even get sick? Is this a thing in France? Or did they get sick on their journey to India?
Then we realised his glasses had a ‘special thickness.’ They were actually extremely healthy and not sick at all.

The following morning we continued our journey to Darjeeling with Jeremy, no Europeans and the sick glasses. Here we watched the sunrise over Kangchenjunga (the third highest peak in the world) which was tres bien. We then met Jeremy in the bakery for coffee and cake. My cake was still warm.
Me: “Mmmm my muffin is still warm.”
Jeremy: “Maybe it’s fresh from ze hoover.” Yes Jeremy maybe it is fresh from the hoover, but I’m hoping not.
So there we sat munching on muffins fresh from the hoover with Jeremy wearing his sick glasses as we discussed our travel blog. Jeremy was very interested and wanted to read it;
“I will write ze name down, what iz it called? Two Small Monkeys’?” No Jeremy, Two Small Mancunians. Two Small Mancunians.

Please note that Jeremy’s English was actually great and his banter even better, hence why we feel we can write an entire blog on him.

And then we said our goodbyes to the whirlwind that was Jeremy as we picked up another travel companion, Georgina and headed to Sikkim. From here on it there wasn’t much to report apart from the cold weather, Lyvette’s dose of vomiting and some very nice scenery of the mountains. It was in fact a beautiful state but as usual we went there at the wrong time of year. It was so cold my coconut oil solidified. That’s when we decided it was time to get to Calcutta and experience some warmer weather for our last two weeks. The journey down from the mountains took us about 2 weeks because the bus driver had to stop and get his eyebrows waxed. And then his shoes polished en route.

And then we decided to head to the Andaman Islands for our last 2 weeks before leaving India from Delhi. Now, this blog was part written a while ago but because we’ve been islanding we’ve had no wifi, hence the delayed blog posts. We are now currently in Delhi and let me tell you everything that could possibly have happened on the Andamans did. We left with fond memories of some of the best travelling times with had combined with the worst. But that’s for our next blog. Our final blog from India…