Darjeeling to kalimpong

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  Kalimpong, West Bengal, India
Thursday, January 1, 2009

before i start this blog properly i will just note down here - as i'm sure you have all noted already - that this computer doesn't do capital letters. it also doesn't do exclamation marks, so except a 1 as all of that. i have also spent the last hour trying to print out my e-ticket for my flight tomorrow, and look up the ipod prooblems website as this computer had a very bad effect on it when i plugged it in. so this blog is only going to be brief as i was already in a rush...i'm not even going to bother going back through trying to fix up the spelling mistakes from these stickey keys, howabout that1
i am in kolkata at the moment, but just getting in some last back-tracking blogging while i can. kolkata is having an unseasonably hot winter this year 9echoing news the world over i'm sure0 so the temperature today is 28 celcius, with humidity through the roof. i'm not in a terrible good mood1

leaving darjeeling on the 1st of january was so problem for me as I didn't have a hangover at all1 what a novelty. i decided to get a share jeep to kalimpong as i had heard that the roads there weren't too scary. kalimpong is about 1240m high, so it's still a drop of about 1000m, but it is quite a while east as well so it turned out that the roads were not half as bad as the ones to darjeeling. it would have been a little less scary if our driver hadn't spent the hwole time sending text messages and gossiping on his phone, spinning the wheel with the heel of his remaining hand.

i paid for two seats in the front of the vehicle, which gave me approximately 3/4 of a seat. i'm not sure where the other person was supposed to sit, but it proved to be a complete waste of my money. as soon as i reached kalimpong i wished i had never left darjeeling. many of the streets in darjeeling were one way, or pretty much vertical, so cars didn't often venture up them and the big share jeeps couldn't even get around the first bends. not so in kalimpong. it was probably a good re-introduction to india - it was noisy, smelly and it looked like i was the only tourist in town 9which meant a lot...as in, a real lot, of curious staring0. my hotel was lovely and as i was the only guest the family who worked there were very attentive and keen to help me out. the manager kept three dogs, all very cute pekinese, but after my dog-experience in kolkata i was very paranoid and sidled around the corner whenever they appeared. have i mentioned the kolkata dog experience? no? that's probably a good thing.
kalimpong also fell down completely in the food stakes. oh darjeeling how i miss you...but there was nothing left for me to do there, save eat food and buytea, and i'd probably reached my limits for both of those things.
i hired a driver in kalimpong and did a 7 point tour - 3 of which interested mem the other 4 of which may have interested me if...if....no, no, would never have interested me at all - one of them included a cactus farm for goodness sake 9any suggestions that i may or may not have had a small cactus garden myself while very young will not be entertained at this point0

the next day i wandered around town by myself, cringing at the memory of those awful car horns, avoiding the crap littered all over the streets, and eventually managing to find the beautiful buddhist ghompas hidden away in the alleys. they truly do make all the stress worthwhile. the most beautiful one - could have been the durpin monastery - is situated in acres of hillside land that the indian army decided would do quite nicely for an army base. the monastery itself is just beautiful, with lovely views across the hills, an oval for the young monks to play cricket on and all types of other buildings that monks live and work in. a young monk took me for a tour of the older rooms that are being repainted and kindly posed for a photo.

what else can i say about kalimpong? i had a nice lunch and a nice chat to some older men in gompu's restaurant. they were knocking back hot whiskey and i asked them if they were hindi. they were buddhist, and when i asked about the alcohol drinking they said 'naaaaaahhhh it's fine1 doesn't matter at all1' we had a nice chat about darjeeling anyway, as they squickly got very merry. i bought a nice bell from one of the numerous bell shops, and got ripped off by a lovely lovely salesman to the tune of 3000rs.

i just had to turn away from the computer for a second then and calm myself down...it's only money...he's probably got starving children tucked away...lesson learned etc etc.

i also discovered kalimpong lollipops11 actually, these may have made the trip a little worthwhile. it is basically caramel fudge wrapped around a stick and sold for 5rs - they are very good indeed.

so i left kalimpong a happy girl - happy to get out of there. no, it wasn't as bad as i make out. one of the greatest things about it was that everybody - man, woman, screaming child, barking dog, roaring car-buffoons and all - went to bed at 9pm sharp, so i had some peace and quiet after then.

i gave up on the idea of hiring two seats in the share jeep to siliguri and just let the driver choose me a seat. i got a very back window seat, and i stuffed myself in alongside three other squeezed in people. one of us had to be popping out of the bench seat at any one time so that we could fit, and we all obliged in half an hour intervals. i wasn't taking any chances with the roads this time, so i put my sunglasses on, drew my shawl down over my face, turned my ipod up and shut my eyes. the only time i opened them and peeked out from under my shawl i either screamed with terror or screamed with awe, the roads, although treacherous, afford you a view of some truly stunning lanscapes. we only stopped once on this breakneck trip, at a roadside fruit stall so everybody 9except me0 could buy some spinach.

siliguri, back to the real india...i could barely clamber out the back of the jeep so many taxi, rickshaw and autorickshaw drivers were crowding around me. 'taxi sister...' 'rickshaw sister...' my decision to walk baffled them all. i walked until i found an internet cafe and quickly researched a suitable place to eat befroe leaving siliguri for njp station. the staff at the internet cafe were incensed that i planned to walk to the restaurant i had chosen.
'oh no no no ma'am1 you should catch a rickshaw.' 'for us it would take 5-7 minutes, for you it will take 12-15 minutes.' 'you will get lost, you cannot do it.' 'you are by yourself? where are you going by yourself? njp station?1 oh no no no ma'am you cannot.' 'here, ride on my motorbike - it is the only way.'
finally they agreed to draw me a small map, and i left under threats of getting lost, getting mugged, or just everything dastardly happening to me. i was not surprised in the slightest to find the restaurant just around the corner, barely 5 minutes walk straight down the road and to the right. i can't figure out if they thought i was incapable because i was a foreigner or because i was a woman, but i think that it was probably a combination of the two.

siliguri was horrible but this restaurant was pretty good. It was obviously one of the swankiest pots in town, all done up in gold and mirror work, waiters wearing waistcoats and shiny shoes. i had a delicious meal of dahl makani and kulcha (kulcha is stuffed bread - way better than naan - but wherever i went in india, no matter what typ eof bread i ordered, the waiter would always say 'oh garlic naan, yes ma'am' and i would have to plead and beg them to listen to me and look past the tourist tag. i do believe 90 percent of tourists in india order garlic naan0 with hot gulab jamon for dessert plus a bottle of mineral water all for around 170rs. the same meal in kolkata would cost me about 320 rs, it being a big city and all.
i caught a shared autorickshaw to njp 9the people in the internet cafe had told me it wold take me at least 45 minutes, but obviously i looked like a local as it only took ten minutes0 where i attached myself to a group of people and drank chai.

i sat next to an niR from sydney on the way back to kolkata, which was very nice as we could chat in english about things that we were familiar with. the trip was over too soon for me, i just love the night trains1

and then it was back to kolkata1 a cit of 14 million people, all of whom stopped on their way to work in the morning for a good look at me and my bedhair.

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