Darjeeling foot hills Birthday Trip : Part 1

This year we decided to go for a trip to Siliguri, Darjeeling foothills, celebrate hubbies birthday on the 21st of February. That was to be followed by a visit to the in- laws place i.e. Firoze’s hometown Guwahati. The last two weeks leading upto the trip was hellish at work. I got through it with a balanced mind only by looking forward to this 3 day birthday trip to the picturesque Mayfair Tea Resort nestled in the foothills of the Darjeeling Hills.

Packing but without “Montmorency‘

Even though I had planned to get our packing done since the last weekend but as usual our “fun” got in the way. And lo and behold, I find its Friday night, both the empty suitcases staring at us and our flight is the very next morning. Luckily enough our flight was at 12:55 pm which meant waking up at a normal time with no rushing to the airport. Maa had agreed to plant-sit and fish-sit for the week. That meant our plant babies and Onyx would have to stay home alone for a whole week. I am thankful to Mom for stepping in and helping out.

Trip Begins

Finally, the much awaited Saturday morning arrived. With a light breakfast in our tummies we we set out in our pre-booked cab which we booked from MMT. The previous night I ate a wrong medicine, mistaking it for my anti allergic. I realised this when I lay tossing and turning with my body itching away in its full glory. Actually, the two medicines had exactly same packaging which was the culprit which made me suffer so much. So as I woke up in the morning, despite the intrinsic excitement for the vacation trip beginning, I could feel a constant choking feeling and generally felt unwell.

Anyway I tried not to focus on the malaise. We got ready in a jiffy, tended to my plants for a while. This was followed by a light breakfast made by our cook Shankari and very soon we were chatting away in our cab, on the way to the airport.

At the Airport, on the way to Darjeeling foothills

Our Go-Air flight was delayed for around 30 minutes. In the meanwhile we visited the Kolkata Airport lounge where hubby had a light lunch. I only had a coffee as I was not very hungry. My choking feeling was still on and I was busy trying to ignore it away.

We reached our departure gate and realized our flight was delayed by half an hour more. That did not bother us too much as we were on a leisure trip, and we were not at all in the mood to hustle. Finally we boarded the flight at around 1.20 pm and were on our way to Bagdogra Airport. We watched a part of an episode of the new season of the series You and before we knew it, we arrived at our destination at around 2.30 pm.

Mayfair Tea Resort

A cab was waiting for us to whisk us away to the Mayfair Tea Resort within the New Chumta Tea Estate property in Salbari, Sukna.

Finally we reached the Resort at 3.30. We freshened up a bit and set out to explore the magnificent tea estate property.We had booked an attic room which is a standard room and due to a great MMT deal, had to pay nearly a third of the actual price which was very steep. The resort and the room was very picturesque and highly well decorated. One may call the décor royal even, with huge wall paintings, marble statues and antiques at every corner and table top.

Since it was nearly 4pm, we were too late for lunch and too early for high tea! Things got a bit confusing, and we ended up spending nearly 1000 bucks on 2 pieces of bread toasted and coated with cheese which was purportedly “desi chilli cheese toast” and 2 cups of fragrant Darjeeling tea( this was awesome though)!

Then we started to walk through the emerald green Darjeeling tea gardens just outside the resorts boundary but within the tea estate property. At a slight distance just beyond the first stretch of the tea gardens we could make out a small hut like construction towards which a few guests were making a bee line. We were intrigued.

Chai Tapri

After clicking a few mandatory tea garden photos and selfies we reached the small hut which to our immense delight turned out to be the “ Mayfair Chai Tapri”!
Oh the joy in our eyes, like kids in a candy store! And this tea and snacks was complimentary too! Cutting chai with papdi, gathiya and a cookie. What else does a chaiholic need to be happy?

Chatting over our cuppas we practiced gratitude and sent some of our pics to the family vacation group. My choky feeling had subsided but not totally gone. Even though I was feeling extremely tired, the crisp clean air of the tea gardens amongst the setting sum was like a nourishing balm. As the daylight faded away, we began the trail back to the resort and returned to our room to relax for a while before dinner time.

Dinner Buffet but vegetarian food for me!

We went to have dinner at around 8.30 pm and the dinner buffet was an extravagant affair. Name any dish and it was included in the buffet menu! It took me a lot of will power to control myself from over eating. It was Shivratri that day and I did not keep a fast as we were travelling, but I decided to have veg food for the day. So obviously I had all the varieties of Paneer that was available at the buffet and some more!! The salads were exquisite and the Dahi vada was yummy!

On a more serious note, the food was delicious. One of the best buffet foods and was one of the best buffet foods that we have had in a while. The deserts were good too which usually is not the case in buffets. For desert I had delicious biscoff cheesecake( luckily it was eggless!). After dinner we walked for around 1 hour to try and digest our heavy dinner. After our walk we reached our room totally conked and the first day of trip came an end. We were looking forward to the rest of our trip and visits to some places in Darjeeling foothills like Mirik, Bengal Safari, Pashupati phatak etc.

Part 2 coming soon….

This post is part of  #BlogchatterA2Z challenge and this is the D post