Daling Tea Train: A Century-Old Luxury of British High Society
Visiting and purchasing world-famous Assam tea is one of the two most famous projects in Daling. The other is experiencing the Himalayan Narrow Gauge Railway.
The Himalayan Narrow Gauge Railway of Daling is a 0.6-meter wide track, still using steam locomotives. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999. It connects the towns and the plains below the mountains, and it is one of the few railways in India that is still in operation with steam locomotives. Because Mark Twain took a ride on the Daling miniature train, the Daling miniature train is also called ‘Mark Twain’. Daling was a summer resort for the British a hundred years ago when it was colonized. After a hundred years, the remaining colonial heritage has become a tourist attraction.
This railway line running through Daling is called ‘toy train’ because it is narrow gauge, and the locomotives and carriages are very small.
Now this railway line has also been designated as a World Cultural Heritage by UNESCO.
The fame of the Daling Himalayan Narrow Gauge Railway has completely overshadowed India’s other two World Heritage mountain railways: the Nilgiri Railway and the Cooch Behar Railway.
The miniature train only has two carriages, with a blast of steam from the engine, slowly starting and swaying, the engine sputtering along the two-foot wide track.
The Daling Himalayan Narrow Gauge Railway is the first, and most outstanding, mountain passenger railway in India. It is one of the earliest railways in India and one of the few still in operation today at high altitudes.
Climbing on the toy train, you can still feel the steam power generated by burning coal a hundred years ago. Riding it through the mountains and clouds of Daling.
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