Days in Darjeeling

Sign at the Teesta Bridge “Pay toilet: 5 Rs./ short 10 Rs./ long”

Is that based on being timed or self-reporting?

Roads in Sikkim are long, very narrow meandering affairs of dirt or pavement surrounded by piles of stones, gravel or sand, and dogs. Cross the bridge back into West Bengal and suddenly roads are steep, well-maintained, paved corkscrews twisting straight up into the sky. There are short guard curbs, safety related signs and landscaping. This is not the do-it-yourself road work we saw happening in Sikkim. Money is being spent in this state.

Sikkim is all roadside serene jungle and laid back friendly people in the tidy small towns and villages you pass through. West Bengal is fast and honking and the cities are crowded and chaotic, like the rest of India. Ecology and taking care of the land is very important in Sikkim and the cities I have seen in West Bengal are full of garbage. It’s quite the contrast.

Darjeeling is perched on top of a mountain and runs down the side like chocolate sauce down a sundae. It’s a hectic grimy Raj era hill station with incredible views and fading architecture, famous for Darjeeling tea and the Darjeeling Heritage Railway, which is a small gauge train that belches black coal and wood smoke as it trudges from Darjeeling to Ghum and back again. Eventually the train will run farther afield again after post-landslide repairs are completed. The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute is in town celebrating all things Everest. Mt. Khangchendzonga is the real sight in town. The third tallest peak in the world is visible from my hotel windows when the clouds clear. Although the clouds have rarely been gone long on this visit.

The people are a real mix of Himalayan ethnicities. There are Indians, Tibetans, Nepalis, Bhutanese, Sikkimese, etc. All their foods are represented here as well, including my fave momos and thukpa soup. Wai wai are the thin fried noodles that are the local specialty. That there is a mix of faiths is plainly visible on the windshields of the tourist vehicles. “Om Sai Ram”, “Jesus loves you”, “Swastika”, “Gurudev”, “Shalom”, “Buddhist” read some of the windshield signs on the vehicles you dodge.

One of the defining features of this visit has to be the damp cold. We are layering everything we’ve brought, including while in bed. Everything feels soaking wet when you go to put it on and sheets are damp and cold when you crawl into bed. N & C finally prevailed to get us room heaters to try and cut the damp so we can sleep. It’s much appreciated.

We have done many of the usual Darjeeling tourist things. We saw the red pandas at the zoo. They are like cuter, red-headed raccoons. We checked out the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute with the histories of the Everest attempts and celebration of the sherpa who was really the first man to summit, Tenzing Norgay. I single handedly supported a lot of orphans with the handicrafts I bought from the Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Centre. We even spent 2 hours on that soot spewing toy train, the Darjeeling Heritage Railway with its 100 year old engines. It was so loud and filthy just sending black soot everywhere. By the time I got off I looked like Santa Claus at the end of Christmas Eve minus all the cookies. 

One of my favourite things was to go to Yogesh’s village, Poobun Busty (now isn’t that fun?), to see his uncle’s tea factory. Tea pickers make very little money in the big commercial tea fields so Yogesh’s uncle runs a tea factory that buys fresh picked tea from small local producers, pays pickers more, and they process the tea right there in a little factory in the village. We spent a day touring the village, picking tea, rolling our tea leaves, watching production and doing a tea tasting. They made us a huge lunch and lots of fresh first flush Darjeeling tea. It was a lovely day that rolled into a lovely happy hour.

Now it’s a brief warm night in Siliguri before NEPAL!