I went on another trek this past Saturday. Similar schedule as before: up at 3:30 and on our way by 4am, via taxi, train, two buses and a auto-rickshaw to find the trail head at about 9:15. Two dogs joined us for what soon became a scramble through thorny underbrush which didn't end up leading us to the hilltop fort we were headed for. (We approached the summit from the side with lots of cliffs.) By the time we figured this out, it was around 1pm and it seemed to be the case that trying to find a feasible route up wasn't in the cards. After a lunch stop in a dry riverbed and a rinse off the brush stop at a green one (with water buffalo and baby turtles) we found the village where the easy route up starts. But the road was being redone and there were no rides until the next road, an hour's walk away. We did make it back to a road where an auto-rickshaw picked us up by about 6pm, and then to a moderate town by 7pm. I jumped on a bus, and then transferred to a train to head to Pune and meet up with Joby, who is in India getting the outsourced programmers that his company has hired up to speed. Joby was going to come and visit Jill and I, but his recent adventures with rural India inspired his employer to make him promise not to leave town. Anyway, I made it there before midnight, we wandered around town for a little while and then crashed out in his hotel room. Sunday afternoon I took a very crowded train back to Mumbai. After passing through north Mumbai where all the people live, it was rather empty.
Pictures are here:
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Sudhagad and Pune
Darjeeling to Maneybajang to Tumling
Inspired by the sight of the mountain, we spent the day preparing for the trip. We made reservations to get us back to Mumbai, giving ourselves time enough to take longer than we were planning for the trek, or to visit one or two more places after getting back. It wasn't much simpler to get tickets back than forth, and we still ended up with a long layover in Kolkata. It would have been even more difficult if I hadn't had my passport number on hand to pencil in on the form for a train reservation. (Since we weren't getting Foreign Tourist Quota tickets, I hadn't thought to bring it.) At least I think it was my passport number. It was either that or Inti's cellphone number. In any case, we got out tickets, picked up some provisions (including a jar of Nutella), and repacked our stuff.
I went up to the little rooftop terrace of our hotel and found the sun moving in on the clouds covering the mountain and the wind having thoughts of doing something. The air was bright and I took stock of my surroundings. To my right, the hill dropped off steeply, but not so steeply as not to support a bustling city. By comparison with the other cities of India, Darjeeling is barely a blip. Large town might be more appropriate. But it is far enough removed from the village scale to feel like a city much of the time. The loudspeaker clock bell struck three. The pink cupola of a Hindu temple stood out among the jumble of rooftops, many of them sporting black plastic water barrels and brightly colored laundry. The rooftops scatter themselves for a few blocks and then disappear abruptly as the ridge gets steeper. A vague outline of another ridge was visible beyond, and then all became lost in the mist. The bench I sat on was most recently painted red, before that a mustard yellow, then green, with a lighter yellow and a white somewhere in there. The present pattern would make a good camouflage for hiding something in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. The terrace is filled out with a bricolage of a round table, some heavy stumps for chairs, and some hibernating plants in pots. To the left there were a few trees and then the slope dropped off quickly. I heard the never ending cacophony of horns that is any gathering of people in India above a hundred or so. A few more zealous stood out from the din and I could trace their progress through town. I also heard dogs barking and behind me, the human babble of Chowrastra square. The idea of getting out of a city sounded like the best thing in the world. 
In the morning, we hired a taxi to Maneybajang, a small village sitting on a low point of the ridge demarcating the border between Nepal and India. Our driver dropped us at the office where trekkers are required to register, and we signed our names and passport numbers in a ledger book for the first of many times. I stepped outside the office and found two men - a tall, skinny, and somewhat sketchy guy who played twitchy fingers in his nonexistent goatee and a shorter, quieter man beside him. The taller man explained to me that we would need a guide, and that his guide service was the only one in town. I asked him if his guides were good naturalists, not wanting to just hire some sketchy friend of his who would do little to introduce us to the place. We had briefly talked to a guide in Darjeeling, but the copied-from-the government-pamphlet description of his trek (with copious typos inserted) in that guide's literature, combined with his response to my question about his skills as a naturalist being to rattle of the roster of animals at the zoo (all of which do supposedly live in the park, but are extremely rarely seen) made me wary of what the tall finger-twitcher was selling. He assured me that his guides had all the proper licenses. When I replied that I cared much more about what was in his guide's head than in his pocket, twitchy gave a confused look, but his shorter ally gave a big smile. Our taxi driver seemed to know these people and he indicated that he approved of twitchy's guides. Our driver had quoted us an honest fare for the trip right off the bat (a somewhat rare event in India) , so I decided to take his advice.
In the guide-arranger's office, which was a small room next door to the sign-the-ledger office, I filled in my passport details and gave a one day advance on the Rs. 400/day guide fee. Seeing my American passport, our salesman began to heap praise on George Bush. I told him that I thoroughly dissaproved of the most powerful evil idiot in the world, which shut him up and caused his shorter companion to bust up laughing.
Paperwork finished, I repeated my request for as naturalist a guide as possible. The shorter man smiled as his front man asked him to show me his credentials. Realizing that the guide had been standing next to me the whole time, I was a bit embarrassed and introduced myself to Dabar, who soon showed himself to be one of the best guides we could have found.
Dabar led us through town, pointing out Nepal (the border is marked by a ditch that serves as an open sewer), and bringing us to the office of Singalila National Park, where we paid our entrance fees and signed another ledger. After another stop for breakfast and tea and to fill up on water, we started up the hill.
The trail leaves Maneybajang on a steep jeep road, switching back through a forest of Japanese Pine. Dabar told us about how the Japanese pine is an invasive species, brought here by the British, and about the other trees that we would find at higher elevation. Many of the plants were dormant, and the way was steep and the air thin enough that it was not easy to keep ones breath, but our new Nepali friend excitedly rattled off plant names and facts and queried us about our lives and the forests and mountains where we lived. Dabar told us about his twelve years as a guide, and the work that he did to try to protect his park. On learning that we approved of these efforts, he stopped feeling shy about picking up the litter that lined the sides of the road. (The trip can also be made by Land Rover, and the concept of it being inappropriate to toss whatever brightly colored mylar might have housed one's potato chips by the side of the road does not seem to exist in the worlds of many of the park's motorized visitors.) We joined him in this task, though not as assiduously. Though the trash was distracting, the scenery was even more so.
After an hour or so, we reached the mani, or stupa, on the bajang, or ridge, from which the town gets its name. Strands of prayer flags floated in the breeze, and the fresh whitewash of the shrine stood out sharp against the mountain air. The trees had given way to meadow and the path was less steep, the slope leveling off to give us a clear view of Kanchenjunga. We continued on past farm cottages and stands of Himalayan oaks to the village of Megama. All morning long the sky kept clear, giving us clear views of Kanchenjunga and her attendants, including Jannu, Kabru and Rathong. We stopped in Megama for lunch, a bowl of noodles cooked with vegetables and a cup of tea. A litter of puppies rolled about, chasing after their beleaguered mother. Megama is a border crossing into Nepal, and we crossed this arbitrary line for the first of many times. At each crossing, the Indian military had an outpost. A couple of the soldiers came and talked to us. Most of them were stationed there from Leh, Ladakh, at the other end of the Indian Himalayas. One officer had particularly good English, and asked us about what we did, where we lived, and what sorts of fuel we used to heat our homes and cook with. On learning that Jill made maps, he asked if she could draw a map of him - the confusion coming from the fact that for him, the words map and picture are the same. As we were about to leave, a beautiful old grey cat came out to say hi. Her fur was wispy like a cloud had amazing golden eyes, but the officer told us that unfortunately she was blind. 
From Megama, we crested a hill and then descended along a roughly cobbled road to Tumling. Atop the hill at Tonglu, we stopped to take in the view, and I put on my vest to keep out the wind. Dabar pointed out the peaks. The Nepal Himalaya, including Lhotse and Damagiri were visible, but we didn't yet have line of sight on the planet's high point. On the other side of our panorama was Chomling, the highest point of Bhutan, jutting up stark and white above a black ridge of tectonic crumple. The clouds rolled in beneath us, and I made my shadow dance on the shifting grey sea.
To the left of the road as we descended to Tumling, the ridge was marked out by tall poles with prayer flags held out straight in the stiff wind. The wind made a singing sound as it whipped over the hill and through the poles. 
In the village, we settled into our guest house, run by a family of Sherpas. The sun was about to set, and Dabar pointed us up the hill to the point with the best view of the mountains. The sun touched the ridge to the west just as we sat down. A soft mat of moss, lichen, and creeper with leaves of a dark purple covers the ground. The jeep track, the next day's trail, wound away to the north and west. A sea of cloud extended over the plains to the south. We sit with our backs to the setting sun and watch as the shadows of ridges chased the white of snow across the face of the peaks, the sunset turned the white to pink and red and orange. Avalanche gullies could be clearly seen, and a wisp of snow was blowing from the summit. Looking out over Nepal, some of the mountains in the Everest group could be seen, but Sandakphu, which was to be the high altitude point of the trek, still blocked the view of Chomolunga herself.
The sun dropped into the clouds, Venus emerged and moved towards setting, and Orion began to rise over the ridge we had walked down as I followed Jill into our host's kitchen to join Dabar for tea and dinner.
Dinner was a simple but delicious meal of greens, potatos, rice, dal and papad. Afterwards, our bellies full, we sat around a charcoal fire chatting with Dabar. His environmentalism is rare in India. The philosophy of 'leave the place cleaner than you found it' is often blocked out by the philosophy of 'someone else will pick up after you, and actually, this is a good thing because then that someone else will have a job'. Dabar loves his mountains though, and with a group of people from the area, he put in a number of concrete receptacles where the trash that visitors and residents generate can be collected and burnt. Burning trash is certainly not ideal, but collecting it and doing something with it is a step.
Dabar loves to hear about other mountains, and was eager to copy down the names of peaks in North America and what we could tell him about them into his journal, a small green book where he kept the notes and bits of informations that the people he guided left him with. After a geography lesson about the Rockies, the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada the day's walk caught up with us, and it was time to find some sleep. Outside, the moon was just about to crest the ridge to the east and 6000 stars shone with the fierceness of a clear night nearly two miles above sea level.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Darjeeling
Our first full day in Darjeeling was New Year's Eve, which we spent further exploring the town. On the southern side of town is a peace pagoda, established by Nichidatsu Fujii, and the Buddhist order that he founded that works to promote world peace, in part by building these shrines all over the world. It's quite peaceful and picturesque. 
At the other end of town is the zoo and the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. The zoo has only a small number of exhibits, all of them animals that are native to the region, such as Himalayan black bear (sometimes called moon bear because of the crescent shaped patch of blond hair on their chests), cloud leopards (the keeper was jogging back and forth in front of the cage, playing with one of the cats like Matt and Batman through the window at Matt's apartment), a tiger who had been rescued from the circus, a number of red pandas (like cute Japanese anime creatures come to life), yaks, barking deer, Tibetan wolves, Himalayan newts (didn't see it, but perhaps it was too cold), and a few more. The cages were much larger than I had feared that they would be and the animals seemed well cared for. Of course, it was still a zoo...
The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute was attached to the zoo, and had exhibits on climbs in the nearby Himalayas, mostly Everest. Tenzing Norgay was a major part of the Institute during his post-Everest life. The Institute runs a few mountaineering courses, and Jill and I ran into a guy from Amherst who was planning to join one of them at the start of our trek.
As we turned back towards the zoo, I stopped to ask some Bengalis who were taking pictures about the Indian practice of not smiling in photos. "Oh yes, we are very conscious of it. It is essential!" they said, but didn't elaborate. It remains a mystery, but at least it has been confirmed.
After walking around all day, since it was New Years Eve and all, we went out to dinner at a somewhat fancier restaurant, but it wasn't nearly as good as our momo place. Jill and I had traded hotels to the one next door where our room was significantly more insulated and even had a little wood stove. Mike and Rhi came over and we hung out for a little while as I tried to get a fire going in the strangely designed stove. (The Nepali kid who worked at the hotel, after admitting that where he comes from, it never gets below 15C, had failed to start a fire suing the wet wood and kerosene he had been sent up with). The loading hole, the chimney hole and the air vent were all positioned on the top of the stove, making developing oxygen flow to the fire a bit of a trick. Eventually, I gave up and the fire started on its own.
Midnight didn't seem quite exciting enough to stay up for, so we decided to celebrate 2007 with mimosas at Kunga in the morning. We were only 6:30 past the international date line, so we could sleep in and still catch midnight in the US. 
After breakfast we found the Tibetan Refugee Center, where we ended up spending most of the day. It is tucked away in a neighborhood that spills down the side of a hill near the zoo. We were looking for it when a group of people waved for us to come and join them. They turned out to be the group of Tibetans who lived in the building closest to the back door of the center. They gave us tea and lunch and we sat with them for a while, joining in the fun of their New Years Day picnic. "Since our families came to India, we have adopted a number of new festivals," one of the women told us. "We now celebrate Diwali, Christmas, January 1st, and all sorts of other holidays in addition to our traditional ones. The children like it a lot."
The center has a number of workshops producing various Tibetan crafts and a store where some of them are sold. We looked around at the workshops and milled about in the main courtyard for a while waiting for the store to open after lunchtime. An old Tibetan man walked by with a leopard print hat and a key around his neck, and we started to wonder how many head monks there were in Darjeeling. After the store reopened we went in and all bought lots of stuff. On the counter there were some stickers that we liked, but they weren't for sale there. Luckily they can be found on the internet. They had lots of great stuff then, and since we were picking it up at the source it was not expensive. We all agreed that if mom were with us, we would all have very full bags for the trip home. She'll just have to go there and get stuff for herself. 
So, loaded but not too loaded with our goodies we walked back up the hill to join the first crowd we had met for some more tea and visiting. There was music and the kids (and the Nepali guy who the girl sitting next to me explained was a little funny in the head) were dancing. Earlier they showed off their rendition of the Hokey Pokey and If you're happy and you know it, both recorded in Tibetan. It was interesting to visit this community. Nobody who I talked to about it had actually come from Tibet. (Clearly some of the older people had done so, but my conversations with them didn't get as involved.) There was obvious effort being made to keep their culture alive, but that also meant letting in the influences of the surrounding world, something that the inaccessibility of their country, let alone not being diaspora, made it possible for Tibet to largely do without for so long. 
The next day we took a walk along Tenzing Norgay road into Ghoom, stopping at the Mak Dhog monastery along the way. In Ghoom we had a look at the trains at the hill railway station, and a steam powered one pulled through the station while we were there. We also took a look at another monastery, but the monk who showed us around wasn't as interested in us as the guys who showed us Mak Dhog. Our plan was to walk back along Zakir Hassan road, but we ended up on the wrong road, and while it was a pleasant walk through the cloud, it led only to a military base where we were told that we had to turn around and go back to Ghoom. But the time we got down to town it was cold and we were tired, so we hopped in a jeep back to Darjeeling.
On the 3rd, Mike and Rhi headed back towards home, and I mostly lay in bed fighting with some critters who thought that my sinus cavities looked rather homey.
We hadn't seen any mountains at this point, and the prospect of hiking through a cloud for five days didn't really excite us, especially not Jill, who has many options to do such things in Washington without flying to the other side of the world. the pages that we had copied out of th Lonely Planet mentioned a wildlife sanctuary and a border town where one could visit Bhutan for a day without a visa, so we decided that we would give those things a try and then make our way back to Mumbai and points warmer.
But then on the morning of the 4th, we woke up with a rather defined sunbeam coming in through our window. Jill looked out into the hallway where there was a window looking to the north.
"Oh, I think there is something there!"
The roof of our hotel had a little terrace for looking at the mountain when the weather permitted. We went up there and spent a few minutes jumping up and down with excitement, basking in our first peek at Kanchenjunga, or Kangchendzonga, at 8586 meters the highest peak in India and the third highest in the world. 
It was well past the traditional time of before dawn to go to Tiger Hill, but we went anyway, and had a clearer view of the mountain, plus a hazy peek at Everest. When the clouds rolled in, we made our way back to Darjeeling and had breakfast at a restaurant with a view of the mountain (the clouds had moved off again). The mountains of the Himalayan are to other mountain ranges as the Redwood forests are to other evergreen forests. There is a pure massiveness that cannot be escaped. Sitting drinking our tea and looking at the face of rock and snow, we knew that whatever else we may have thought we would do instead, the trek was going to happen.
Momonkeys and Momos
Beginning when I was five and until I was ten, my dad and I lived at Project Tibet in Santa Fe. Paljor had just acquired the property as a donation, and for the first years of its existence, there was more space than was needed for the office, store and his family's living space, so we rented a corner, part of which was our home and part of which Eric made into his law office. Every once in a while, the little square of buildings in between Alameda and Canyon would play host to a night of poker and momos. The momo is one of the most perfect items of food ever invented. On those days when there were momos to be eaten, I remember helping Tsering make them beforehand, taking little balls of spiced ground beef from a large steel bowl and wrapping them up in a circle of dough, either by folding the dough in half and pinching the edges into a half moon shape, or by pinching the edge to itself, working around the perimeter and closing the disk up to a sphere around the ball of filling. Tsering would stack them in the steamer and after twenty minutes or so, the little packages of deliciousness would be ready to be dipped in chile sauce and enjoyed. My eight year old self once ate thirty momos during one of those poker nights.
Darjeeling has a significant Tibetan population. Before the British carved it off, it was part of Sikkim, which historically had lots of contact with Tibet. Darjeeling comes from Dorje Ling, the name of the monastery that once stood on Observatory Hill. After the Chinese invasion of Tibet, a number of refugees made their way to the area. A Tibetan Refugee Self Help Center was established, and the exiled community is now well into its third generation, numbering more than 500 at the Self Help Center and many more in the city at large. Among the many features of their nation's culture that the Tibetans brought with them came momos, and plates these tasty (but of course inferior to the ones I enjoyed in Tsering's kitchen) morsels could be had at half the restaraunts in town.
After checking in to our hotel, which was a Raj era building close to the center of town (Raj era in both style and time of most recent renovation), we headed out to a late lunch at Kunga, recommended both by the manager of the hotel and the Lonely Planet, and now by Three Spheres as well. They had momos, in plates of ten. When the dishes came out, the momos seemed a bit smaller than I remembered, but then, I wasn't quite so large at age eight as I am now, having not yet eaten so many momos. Among the four of us, we tried their versions of momo filled with beef, vegetables and vegetables and cheese. Rhi even tried deep fried momos, which I hadn't heard of before, and which I now consider a somewhat flawed modification of the food. I had only had the meaty sort as a kid, so these tasted the most familiar, but the vegetarian ones were good too, full of cabbage and ginger. Kunga also made Thenthuk and Bhagthuk noodle soups, and would serve tea made with butter and salt in traditional Tibetan style. If you are expecting a proper cup of tea, it can be a bit of a shock, but if viewed as a whole new sort of thing in between broth and tea, it is amazing and delicious. Kunga's version was somewhat milder than what I have had before, but it was certainly unlike the standard Indian chai that I've been getting elsewhere.
Fortified by momos and tea and soup, we made our way through town and headed up to Observatory Hill. At a red archway hung with various brass bells, we announced our arrival to the inhabitants of the place - the most obvious of whom are a troupe of monkeys who played acrobatically in the kelp forest of multicolored prayer flags. They clearly knew that they were a spectacle, mugging and dancing and humping for the cameras. Flashes pissed them off though. A British sounding woman skip-stumbled past us, a few steps ahead of her chattering subject turned tormenter. A favorite photo spot for one of the monkeys was the back of a concrete bench near the entrance. The backrest also made a good place to stabilize my camera, but when I touched her territory, she made a face and snarled at me. Reacting instinctively, I returned the snarly face and told her that I was just going to use the corner, far enough from her modeling platform not to bother her. She was somewhat shocked at being talked back to and backed off, whereupon I proceeded to take my picture. My friends seemed to think that making faces back at the monkey was not exactly the most natural thing to do in the situation. Anyway, soon after I took my picture, I'm sure some family of vacationing Bengalis wearing balaclavas took her picture and she forgot the whole thing.
After leaving the monkeys, we wandered back through town, where we picked up some drinks at the convenience store. Our hotel's upper story had a chalet-like common room and we made our way there for some brandy and nutella. Since insulation and heating are not commonly included in hotels in Darjeeling, we were all wrapped up in our down sleeping bags.
Before long, dark showed up. There is a clock with a bell in Darjeeling, and it went off a couple times while we sat around in our chalet. (Actually the bell is a loudspeaker, but it makes a sound inspired by a bell). Eventually we discussed going out for momore momos, but Jill had fallen asleep on my lap, effectively immomobilizing both of us, and since our lunch was a late one, our momotivation was not enough to get us back out into the town. Sitting around wrapped into our sleeping bags proved to be momore momomentum than could be overcome even by the promise of plates of those delectable momorsels.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Happy Birthday!
Today is Jill's birthday, but she's back in Seattle, so the TIFR doggies and I will have to sing extra loud to be heard.
It also happens to be the birthday of the protagonist (or perhaps the 1001 protagonists) of Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, and not coincidentally, Republic Day here in India. There's lots of flag waving and military aircraft flying around and such.
So, with Jill gone and Mike and Rhi gone things are back to somewhat more normal here. The next few months will hopefully involve some good math. This is a busy week. Alain Connes is here. Connes is one of my favorite lecturers in all of mathematics. He can give a lecture that is mostly entirely over my head ("You all are familar with Artin motives," in a colloquium talk could be a new record) but is still illuminating and provides more insights than the most talks. I'm working on writing up what I understand of what he's been talking about. And I'm also trying to get caught up with the stories that go with the pictures we've taken over the last month. But that's not ready yet, so in the meantime, take a look at Mike's pictures.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Bombay to Darjeeling
International flights tend to arrive in Mumbai in the dead of night. Perhaps it helps survive the initial onslaught of sensations that greets the visitor to India. Coughed out by the airport at 3am with a body that thinks 3am is any time but now, the foggy intoxication of jet lag provides an advantage over the sluggish city that at most other times would work much harder to jar one's sanity. Bombay does sleep, or at least it moves inside and turns out the lights that can be seen from the street.
Jill arrived a few hours before Mike and Rhi left for Calcutta. Mahindra, our reliable driver and his taxi with the red and yellow flower print velour interior were waiting for us just outside the parking lot (the yellow and black taxis are not allowed to wait at the international airport), and while he carried Jill and I back to my apartment, Mike and Rhi caught an auto-rickshaw to the domestic airport.
After an easy and happy day that didn't stray too far from home, Mahindra drove Jill and I to the domestic airport and we said goodbye to Bombay for a couple of weeks.
In Kolkata, we followed Lonely Planet through the smog and traffic to the Indian Coffee house, a fading hangout of university types and communists occupying the upper floors of a building in the book selling district near Calcutta University. The main room was large and open, and a few crows jumped from window ledge to ceiling fan and back again after a spin on the merry go round. After a couple hours here, we followed a vague idea of finding a certain bookstore or a rumored architectural walking tour through market streets jammed with pedestrians, rickshaws, three wheeled pickup trucks some human powered and some fronted by a beast looking like a cross between a farm tractor and a 1938 Chrysler Royal. A flock of sheep marked for the Kali temple passed us on the corner outside a restaraunt where we tried some of the sweets that West Bengal is famous for.
Tired of wandering the crowds, we headed for the train station, where we camped out in the waiting room until time to catch our train. In the morning, the train dropped us at NJP. A man met us on the steps of the station and brought us to a jeep headed up to Darjeeling. At least in theory. In reality, we sat there for a while as passengers got in and then back out. From a rather bossy but clearly familiar with the routine Australian woman, we learned that taking a rickshaw to the bus station in Siliguri 10km distant was probably a better way to go about things. An enthusiastic kid offered to pedal us there for Rs. 50. Riding through Friday morning Rickshaw traffic in Siliguri was one of the most peaceful transportation experiences I have had in India. Our guy took side streets where for the most part there were no cars. Bells replaced horns, and the creak of pedals replaced the rumble of engines. We were breathing city air, but it was free of the immediate input of so much choking exhaust. The vehicle was an impressive contraption, steel framed with dual top and down tubes, the seat stays replaces with rebar, and the chainstays with angle iron that wishboned out to hold the axle supporting our seat, which was lifted up by leaf springs on both sides, and had a convertible folded back to give room for our taller than average Indian selves. We were dropped at a gathering point for jeeps that left on a schedule, the first in line of which we hopped into after giving our pedaler a big thanks and a Rs. 50 tip.
Our ride soon moved out, and we passed from the outskirts of Siliguri to the shaded tea plantations of the flatlands to the winding path up to Darjeeling, ascending more than two kilometers in the next few hours. The shaded fields of tea gave way to hillsides dotted with uniformly low bushes, creating the appearance that we were driving through a Seurat painting of green hills. We stopped a couple of times, once for a cup of chai and a snack (momos!) and then when one of the totally bald tires gave up.
The trip from Siliguri to Darjeeling can also be made on the hill railway, a famous narrow gauge train (it's a World Heritage site), but it takes three times as long. Shoman (a friend at TIFR) says it is worth it though. The tracks parallel the road in lots of places, and they make a nice sidewalk when the train's not coming. When it is, it comes at not much more than walking speed, so getting out of the way's not too much trouble.
Darjeeling itself is a busy town on the order of 100,000. We hadn't actually made any plans on how to meet up with Mike or Rhi, but luckily they were clever, and not only were they waiting for us when our jeep got to the end of the line, but they had found us a hotel room for the night and a very tasty snail of a cinnamon roll.
It being January in the Himalayan foothills, we were all soon wearing most of our clothing and wool hats. Well, except for Mike. "You all can wear those hats," he said, "I'm going to wear this tiger striped hat, and they'll think I'm the head monk!"
Bombay to Darjeeling, part 0
The trip began, as all trips in India must begin, with a plunge into the insane world that routinely orchestrates the movement of one sixth of the world's people. To get to Darjeeling from Mumbai, we decided to fly to Kolkata (Calcutta), thus saving two days of train riding. From Kolkata we took the train to New Jalpaiguri/Siliguri, and from there, a shared jeep up into the hills.
A friend at TIFR recommended Traveler, a travel agent nearby. We went there and Aref found us a list of a few cheap flights to Kolkata. He tried to look up the available trains, but the Indian railways website (perhaps the busiest website in the world) wasn't responding so well. "It will be better if you just go to the train station and buy your tickets there. Do that, and then call to tell me what flight you want." He printed out our flights and wished us luck.
We had experience with the Foreign Tourist Quota window from buying our tickets to visit Ajanta. That time was not too difficult, the only minor hitch being when he asked for the passports and Rhi mentioned that she hadn't brought hers. The ticket agent bent the rules and sold us an unreserved ticket for Rhi without making us go downstairs and wait in the normal lines, which meant that she and Mike had to share a bunk on the way to Jalgaon. This time, we had to wait behind a long line of backpackers headed down to Goa for New Year's. By the time we got to the window, there was a bit of a line behind Rhi and I (Mike was still under the weather with whatever caught him at Ajanta). It took a little bit of explaining to get the first pair of tickets for Mike and Rhi. Most of the trains were totally full. At one point there was a question of whether or not a connection from flight to train would be possible, and our ticket man (not the same guy as before) called his friend who happened to be from Kolkata to ask him. The ticket guys friend wobbled his head, made a "this far apart" gesture with his hands, and then smacked his hands together in a gesture representing Mike and Rhi missing their train. So they got the other ticket.
Then the confusing part. We wanted another pair of the same tickets for the next day. Since we didn't have Jill's passport, we had to ask for another ticket for Rhi. The idea of her coming back and then taking the same train, combined with the similarities between Mike's passport and mine (he's legally Michael Treisman) had the guy pretty frustrated. Rhi and I tried to explain our scheme, and the guy behind the window tried to get rid of us, and I felt the impatience of the line behind at my back.
Eventually, we walked downstairs with two pairs of tickets from Sealdah to NJP. I called Aref and he bought us the plane tickets. Back at the Traveler, we traded credit card numbers and photocopies of passports for two neon orange envelopes full of plane tickets. Back at my apartment was a bottle of Chimay that we were very glad to have. The hard part done, all that remained was to take a taxi to the airport, fly across India, amuse ourselves in Calcutta for a day, take a train all night, and then figure out the jeep to Darjeeling thing.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Himalayan adventures
Having returned from two weeks above smog level, Zack and Jill are back in the world of warm climates and functional internet. While Jill seems to be typing volumes over at pink bike and flowers, Zack has mostly just been playing with all of their pictures. Here are a few of them. Zack's versions of things will appear in installments, as it was too interesting to talk about all at once.
