Transport in Darjeeling

The town of Darjeeling can be reached by the 80-kilometre long

"Siliguri is palpably a place of meeting.[.....] The discovery that here the metre gauge system ends and the two foot gauge of the Darjeeling-Himalayan railway begins, confirms what all these things hint at.[....]One steps into a railway carriage which might easily be mistaken for a toy, and the whimsical idea seizes hold of one that one has accidentally stumbled into Lilliput. With a noisy fuss out of all proportion to its size the engine gives a jerk - and starts.[....] No special mechanical device such as a rack is employed - unless, indeed, one can so describe the squat and stolid hill-man who sits perched over the forward buffers of the engine and scatters sand on the rails when the wheels of the engine lose their grip of the metals and race, with the noise of a giant spring running down when the control has been removed. Sometimes we cross our own track after completing the circuit of a cone, at others we zigzag backwards and forwards; but always we climb at a steady gradient - so steady that if one embarks in a trolley at Ghum, the highest point on the line, the initial push supplies all the energy necessary to carry one to the bottom."^[2]

The trip up to Darjeeling on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway has changed little since that time, and continues to delight travellers and rail enthusiasts, so much so that it has its own preservation and support group, the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Society.

The Operation of Darjeeling Himalayan Railways between Siliguri and Kurseong was temporarily suspended following a Landslide at Tindharia between 2010 and 2015.^[3]

Road transport

The Hill Cart Road (

The 8 km (5 mi) long Darjeeling Ropeway connecting Darjeeling's North Point with Singla, which was started in 1968, was closed after an accident in 2003.^[6] It reopened in February 2012.^[7]

Notes