It was a beautiful sun-drenched morning and they had decided to take a mini tour of the town.
‘It’s surprising just how quickly the temperature warms at this altitude,’ said Grace. ‘I’ve never been this high and it was really surprisingly chilly first thing.’
Madge was overwhelmed by the view; verdant green tea plantations were perched above sweeping bamboo jungles. The predominantly Nepalese population greeted them with smiles and cheery waves as they wandered across the beautiful hill station, which was a remarkable piece of engineering in itself, surrounded by astounding views of the Himalayas.
‘What amazes me about this lovely town,’ said Madge, ‘is that it’s built into the side of such a steep hill. The waiter at breakfast this morning told me Darjeeling is close to seven thousand feet above sea level.’
Thousands of feet below the plains stretched for miles into a pastel grey horizon. The tour included a visit to the impressive Loreto Convent, which looked more like the main house of a French country estate than a boarding school. It was where the Macedonian-born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu completed her novitiate before becoming known as Mother Teresa. Grace was impressed to be told that British actress Vivian Leigh was a former pupil of Loreto Convent.
‘She was absolutely wonderful in Gone with the Wind,’ said Grace. ‘It’s my most favourite film of all time.’
‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,’ quipped Madge, making Grace chuckle. ‘I was far more impressed with Clark Gable.’
During a late lunch that afternoon, Madge and Grace met a pair of young army officers who said they were planning to see Mount Everest from Tiger Hill, the best local vantage point, early the following morning.
‘We’ve been warned that heavy rain has made the roads far too dangerous so we’re playing it safe and are going to go on mules instead,’ one of them said.
‘It will mean leaving at two in the morning if you want to see the dawn rise over the Himalayas, but apparently it’s so amazing that it’s really worthwhile making the effort,’ said the other, a blond-haired lieutenant.
The girls asked where they could hire guides and mules and within an hour had booked the trip.
That night the girls were given a warm welcome when they went to dinner at a restaurant where the pianist heard that Madge had celebrated her twenty-second birthday a few days earlier. As a treat he played and sang ‘A Sentimental Journey’, one of her favourites. The pianist, Tibor Stary, even bought them a birthday drink. He told them that he was Austrian and his father Elias had been so worried about the Nazis that he had changed the family name from Starykoff, which was Russian, to make it ‘sound less Jewish’. Tibor said he had made his way towards India after escaping from Vienna, but his father had been arrested and he thought he may have been sent to a concentration camp.
‘Tibor is such a lovely man,’ said Madge as they waited for the bill to arrive. ‘I can’t begin to imagine the utter despair he must feel not knowing what’s happened to his father.’
‘So many people in Europe must be in similar situations right now. It doesn’t bear thinking about really,’ said Grace, after which both girls fell silent, contemplating the horrors they had been hearing about as news of the full extent of what the Nazis had done was slowly making its way around the world.
The girls left the restaurant to get a couple of hours’ rest before their Himalayan adventure, but all too soon they were back on their feet and walking down to the meeting point with the guides and mules. It was a bitterly cold Himalayan night, but they had taken Phyl and Vera’s advice and were well wrapped up. This birthday scarf is a real bonus, thought Madge as they began the eleven-kilometre ride to Tiger Hill.
A vicious wind whistled down from the mountains, which were shrouded in clouds and mist. It was so cold that Madge pulled her new scarf up to use as a face mask. The mules were startled when a ghostly and surprisingly large creature fluttered past to leave them in a grumpy, skittish mood, but as the guides spoke little English it was impossible to find out if it had been a bird or a bat. A smattering of rain, usually the prelude to a full-scale Himalayan downpour, didn’t exactly lift the spirits.
With a 4 a.m. dawn approaching, the drizzle stopped and the clouds drifted away on the swirling wind that slowed to a gentle breeze. Tiny lights flickered ahead and Grace, who was used to night hunting on the family farm in Yorkshire, told Madge that they were within minutes of their destination.
‘Those firefly lights are people smoking,’ she said.
The girls were stiff and more than a little sore after almost two hours on bony and uncomfortable mules and when they reached the foot of Tiger Hill they simply couldn’t believe the number of parked taxis.
‘Well, Tiger Hill itself isn’t exactly anything to write home about,’ said Madge, as they surveyed the plateau that jutted out from the side of the hill on which they were standing.
‘Absolutely right,’ said Grace, ‘but I am surprised that there’s such a big flat area on such a huge slope.’
They continued to walk towards the car park when they spotted two men in a car with their feet hanging out of the windows.
‘Just look at those rascals over there,’ said Madge, as she pointed to the two men, who were holding steaming mugs of Darjeeling tea in their gloved hands. ‘Isn’t that the two who told us it was far too dangerous to travel by car?’
The girls gave the chortling pair a fearsome telling-off but were placated by early
