INDIA BLOG ARCHIVES (6) - 21 Apr 2007

This was posted by me on a/o as Msg# 19538 on 21 April 2007 as `A Himalayan Odyssey - 2`:

The very name Darjeeling has always had a romantic feel about it, maybe one unconsciously thinks of `darling`! However, for me the magic of the place resonated back to my teenage years, when I first read about it, possibly in geography lessons and in Indian literature. So it was in many ways a dream come true after 50 years or more to finally get there, but to do that we had to first take an hour`s internal flight from Kolkata to Bagdogra in north west Bengal.

Two of our group of 11 and the Tour Manager could not get on to the flight because of a cock-up over the booking but the two redoubtable single English women were determined not to miss the rest of the pre-planned programme and so the three of them made an arduous journey by road overnight from Kolkata to meet us for breakfast at our hotel the next morning!

At Bagdogra then we were met by our local guide with a coach (+driver and assistant) which was to be our means of transport for the rest of the trip in W Bengal and Sikkim. The guide, Kiran Rai, an Indian of Gorkha descent (they no longer use the term `Nepalese` to describe the majority people of this region who are of course originally from Nepal; to call them `Nepalese` would confuse nationality with ethnicity and as Indians have now become proudly conscious of a national identity as Indians) turned out to be a smart, articulate, informed, educated, likeable and competent young man of just 31 with a very good command of English. He remained most professional and presentable throughout. From Bagdogra to Darjeeling is only about 95 kilometres, but the narrow, uphill, winding road over varying gradients makes it a slow journey - something that applied all through the rest of the trip. After about half an hour on the road, the landscape began to change as we left the `plains` and to ascend the highlands, and so began a whole long series of spectacular scenery - lush vegetation, distant hills, rich tea plantations, magnificent valleys, streams and an overwhelming feel of nature at its gentlest, most fertile and yielding. In the distant background lay the Himalayas - and from this point on they were a constant presence.

We stayed at the Mayfair Hill Resort Hotel, opposite the Governor`s House on the Mall. The hotel used to be the summer palace of the Maharaja of Nazargung and needless to say we had splendid views of the surrounding countryside all round. We spent 3 nights there. The next day`s highlight was a 45 minute ride on the famous `Toy Train` to Ghoom, the world`s third highest station on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, which is one of only three railways on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. Am sending a picture of us with the train in the background to Dinesh for posting on the LIst if that is possible.

We also visited Ghoom Gompa, a Buddhist monastery (the first of many during the trip). The following day, we did the early morning excursion to Tiger Hill - which meant getting up early enough to leave the hotel at 5.30 am! Tiger Hill is about 11 kilometres from Darjeeling, but again with all other tourist groups making the epic journey, the road (like all roads, narrow, winding, uphill etc) was already alive with a string of 4x4 vehicles and with many groups of domestic Indian visitors doing the hike on foot, trying to get up to the summit of the Hill (some 2600 metres high) where there is a high observation tower (for the likes of us, privileged ones, who were served hot drinks, while most of the locals gathered around at ground level in the open) to await the promised magnificent views Kanchanjunga and the other peaks of the Eastern Himalayas at sunrise - and we were not disappointed! (We were lucky, for other tourists had spent 3 days when cloud and rain had prevented this). So that was our first sight of my wife`s `namesake` (which film incidentally we had seen only two days before leaving London) and she was of course thrilled, as that had been her lifelong ambition too. The atmosphere around the place was electric, with throngs of people mingling with each other and feeling kind of spiritually upbeat for having made the effort in the chilly mist of the early morning. After a much enjoyable warming breakfast back at the hotel, we continued with a second day of our sightseeing of Darjeeling, visiting the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute and the Everest Museum, and later visited a tea estate, which meant descending some 2000 metres down to the bottom of the valley, where among other things we saw the picking of the `first flush` tea leaves - the first in the season.

The general feel of the town of Darjeeling was of course that of a typical Indian hill station, and we walked up and down its narrow, charming streets and shopped and absorbed the atmosphere like all other tourists. On the third morning, we had once again to be on the move, this time across the (internal) state border into Sikkim and that too meant an early start.

RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey, England