Darjeeling unlimited.

This is not India. It doesn’t resemble to anything I have seen, tasted, smelled, done and experienced…yet I am here in the Indian Himalayas.


I am sitting in a train, around me, the constant noise of 4 or 5 Indian kids is rising and is filling the smallish train compartment of the little mountain train that is leading me towards the Indian Himalayas.
Yes I am used to noise, how could I not be after 5 months of cacophony in India, still the excitement, or boredom ( its quite hard to say) that leads these kids into a constant state of agitation and relentless talking and mumbling is quite hard to identify with. To make a point, it drives me kind of crazy, as sitting here and now, all I want to do is stare at the splendid sight that is slowly passing by my little window.

There is a greenery around me, one that is as lush as one might think being on a expedition to the south American jungle, and there lies a freshness in the air, one that is being swept in with the cool mountain winds that are blowing more and more eagerly as we are taking on altitude.
Riding towards something that I have no imagination of in my mind….well, maybe I have dreamt of it, I have dreamt of it many times before, but to actually find myself sitting there and to observe these mountain peaks appearing on the horizon reaching high into the sky, that’s a special moment.

How can you articulate that moment? How can you wrap it up in words to send it all around the world, to be savored in any given moment…..like conserving it. A conservation of experience.
Of course I can’t, as it is and will always remain my personal experience that lies within a spectrum of my being that cannot be expressed in words, rather just in my simple being, as all these experiences gathered in all those years just made me to the person I am, here and now, but to describe that in words, no, by trying it, one will find out very soon about the limitations of language. Its simply impossible.
And so then, sitting on the train seeing those magnificent peaks appearing on the horizon, and riding towards them….that moment feels almost unreal.
It feels like a completion, a feeling ….something like, you have arrived. Like a subsequence of my last 5 months in India and everything I have done, seen, felt, understood, learned, experienced during all this time….all this seems to line up like a book, and this moment feels like the last page, something like you breathe in, you smile and you understand.
I breathe and I smile.
Yes I am in this moment and the city that just starts to reveal itself is taking more and more shape….and I read a sign….welcome to Darjeeling, the queen of the hills….
Happy to get off the train I take a deep breath, and the freshness in the air is not the only change that I feel from the pressingly hot metropolises of Calcutta and Chennai. …it feels like a different world.

This is not India.

India is many things, and for me it represents vast numbers of adjectives and experiences but what I experience here, on the rooftops of the world, is rather something like not from this world. It somehow feels like standing above everything, detached from the rest of the world, like as if ,with the view that is changing, we are changing the way we look at things.
Everything changes if we just change our point of perception.
It is refreshing, and that’s how it feels to wander around these steep and hilly roads of Darjeeling, discovering little characters of people, all part of a culture that really has that relaxed way of being, that seems totally detached from the worries of the rest of the worlds ( I speak of the world that I am from.
I encounter warmhearted people, people that seem to live in such a content space that it almost feels like an eternal peace.

Me and my friend, we find ourselves sitting in a little wood hut in mitten the busy fruit market in Darjeeling, enjoying one of our most memorable lunches, consisting of the only dish served in that inviting, charming, cute little family run place, where, if squeezed , 6 people have space to savor veg momos, the most delicious homemade stuffed dumplings I have ever had……..the 2 Nepalis that sit next to us understand the way of enjoyment and send us a warm smile, to let us be a part of it.
I glimpse over the table to see the magnificent collaboration and community effort that comes straight from the heart and goes into these delicious Momos that I am about to enjoy. Thanks for this moment…. Thats what I want to say and indirectly I let my joy speak, through a smile, that gets immediately reflected…





There are moments in life that you will always remember, that you will cherish on, that will illuminate your world. Not in a sense of revelation but rather in the sense of light, like to bring light into the darkness.
I am sitting in a jeep, cramped in there with 9 other passengers, I find myself on the way to a hiking adventure in Sikkim, one of India’s northern most states,in the midst of the Himalayas, the roofs of the world. I am riding along and soon I have no chance of admiring this spectacle of nature outside, flying by my window, that seems to be not from this world. The rising sickness takes me back into reality and with it comes an awful feeling, spread out over my body from the centre of my stomach.
Yes I am getting car sick, but measured by the non existence of any road, not at least what many Europeans would refer to while speaking of roads, by the rather radical driving skills of our sweet Nepali driver, and by the number of hair pin bends we pass, that sickness is more or less surprising.
So am I riding along…. Well, it feels more like bumping…..sitting there makes me somehow feel like being part of a video game, something like an adventurous car racing game in the mountains….that thought makes me smile, even if the breakfast that I quickly got before hopping on this adventurous ride already decided that it wouldn’t stay where it was, I am somewhat enjoying this insanity and I smile along, listening to the crazy techno high pitch Indian music….

The feeling of being totally out there, in mitten the magical mountains, standing amidst the roof of the world….its such feeling of being in the present. A total absorption of the moment. . You are just out there and with such a presence that everything seems to fall in place, serendipity of time space and being.

This moment is perfection. Its magical, as then there is nothing that counts, absolutely nothing, no thought is created, there is only existence. It might sound philosophical but in fact that moment could not be farther away from philosophy….it was reality.
The beginning of that reality started for us in Sikkim. We set off on a hike for a week to explore the Indian Himalayas along with our lovely Sikkimese guide, with a couple of yaks some rain and a cloud of mist.
On our long way up we were passing through some cute nepali mountain villages, had tea with local Nepalis while listening to the radio stations, playing the most random and mostly not the best American pop music, and we sipped some millet wine, a self brewed drink that Sherpas would not do a step without.

And then after a few days gaining altitude, in one specific moment you find yourself climbing up 5000 meters with the sun setting in your back and as you reach the top then that’s what you see….perfection.
Peaks rising as high into the horizon, the colors of the sunset playing along in this game….and then you just stand there and breathe.
This is awesome. In the true meaning of awe.
An unforgettable spectacle of natures beauty and impressiveness, The strength, the immense beauty, the patience and hope that these mountains reflect makes you stand there and understand the incredible power of creation. Me, as mere human, I feel totally insignificant.