Darjeeling town turns into a white wonderland

Darjeeling: The Queen of Hills turned picture postcard covered in a blanket of snow on Saturday. After 2008, this is the first heavy snowfall that Darjeeling witnessed. The snowfall, that too on Saraswati Puja left both tourists and locals euphoric. The town started witnessing sporadic snowfall from Friday evening. However, owing to accompanying rains, the snow did not freeze on the roads. On Saturday, it started snowing heavily from around 10.15 am and continued for more than two hours covering the entire town in a white blanket. The minimum temperature recorded at Darjeeling Raj Bhawan was -2 degree C. Darjeeling Mall occupied centre stage with tourists and local residents having snow fights and building snowmen. "We have come to Darjeeling so many times but never witnessed anything like this.

Since last evening, it has been snowing. I am so happy playing in the snow that I don't even feel the chill. Words can't explain how beautiful all this is," stated Parinita Banerjee, a tourist from Kolkata. It was equally enchanting for the locals. "I have not witnessed a Darjeeling so beautiful. It looks like Switzerland," stated Adya Baraily, a 10-year-old. However, electricity was disrupted in many parts. The roads turned slippery and traffic was very slow marked with serpentine traffic jams. Many parts of Sikkim also witnessed snowfall. Gangtok recorded a minimum temperature of 1.7 deg C, the lowest in the month of February in the last 14 years, after 0.3 deg Celsius on February 1, 2008.