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!"