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.