Photos: Toy Train / View from Toy Train chugging uphill past a monastery / Statue of Tenzeng Norgay with dedication plaque by Sir Edmund Hillary revealed in 1986 / View of tea trees looking down at the red roof of the Happy Valley Tea Plantation
Darjeeling. Aug 27 2009. 1537 local time. The weather is truly awful this time of year. Monsoon. Rain, damp, can’t see anything, cloudy, and friggin COLD. I leave tomorrow for Mumbai where it is also wet but won’t be as cold. I am sitting here with gloves, 2 sweaters and a scarf. I think I planned too much time in Darjeeling. Even the tea factories are closed so visitors can’t get a glimpse of the processing. It’s the time of year. I tell ya. Couple days back I went on the Toy Train run by the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway from Darjeeling to Ghum, that was fun. Choo choo! Slow chugging train. Yeah. A Toy Train. Literally. UNESCO designated. The power outages here are a real pain. Means there is no hot water when this happens and the hotels run their backup generator. Today has been really bad. On and off, I think about 15 times since 0900 this morning. It is cloudy today can’t see anything beyond the building across the street. So I am staying in to pack for my all day trip tomorrow. Then it’s catch up with Neelam and her family in Pune on the weekend, then back to Mumbai to catch up with a couple of travelers I met in Delhi before I fly out on Sep 1. I used to work with Neelam at a project 2 years ago in Silicon Valley. She and her family moved back to India sometime last year, I think. The one thing I have been doing is drinking lots of the famous Darjeeling tea. There is so much tea one can drink before going crazy. With the damp weather laundry takes forever to dry. Took 4 days! Boy I really can’t wait to get out of this wet weather.
Darjeeling. Aug 25 2009. 2220 Local Time. The frequent power outages are a real pain. This plus the rainy overcast cold days make being in Darjeeling miserable. Apparently the rainy season started late this year. So far visibility to the mountain range has been only clouds. Yesterday I ventured to the zoo to visit the Everest Museum and paid homage to Tenzeng Norgay’s resting place. Today I took the Toy Train from Darjeeling to Ghum and back. Enroute the train stopped at the Batasia Circle. I am having writer’s block at the moment since the weather is so depressing. Yesterday it rained non stop. My pants got all wet and so did everything in my bag. The trouble with such damp atmosphere is that everything doesn’t dry in the normal time. My laundry from 2 days ago is still as wet as it was when I first hung the clothes up. Pretty annoying considering I don’t have too many essentials, i.e. under clothing and socks. The hotel offers laundry service and it is not cheap. They charge by the piece. But I guess I have no choice. I figure if my laundry doesn’t dry by morning I will pay to have them dried. What a pain. I walk around with my headlamp and look like a real dork. That and an umbrella. During this season, you don’t know when the power will go. Like the other night, in the middle of showering, the bloody power went out. Luckily I had my headlamp hanging on the towel rack to turn on and see what I was doing. The power didn’t come back for another 3 hours. Everything also stinks of dampness. The bed sheets really stink. I think it is the blankets which stink. I guess when they are cleaned they don’t completely dry and the damp stench remains. About the interesting thing going on in Darjeeling for me is my daily morning conversation with the proprietor of the hotel. I go upstairs to their dining room for breakfast every morning and we talk about Tibet, more specifically, my recent visit to Tibet. They are Tibetans and have been in India since 1959. They wander if they will ever get a chance to visit their birthplace, Lhasa, in their lifetime. Since the Chinese are very selective who they grant permits to relocated Tibetans outside Tibet don’t stand a chance of getting issued a permit. So understandably the proprietor and his wife are very interested in seeing my Lhasa photos from my recent Tibetan trip. Today the proprietor walked me to the train station to show me the way. After I got my ticket to the Toy Train (run by the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway) he took me around town and showed me the old railroad tracks which were used up to 20 years ago to haul tea and food up to Darjeeling. Pretty interesting. Then he told me that the government, state and the Gorkhas will resume their talks on Dec 21 to see if an independent state will be granted to the Gorkhas (of Nepalese origin). If the outcome is not successful, then protests will probably lead to more trouble. This is an ongoing thing over the past 100 years or so. That’s why one always checks the political situation before heading this way. The power outage in Darjeeling is by far the worst I have encountered in any town. I never thought I say this but I am actually looking forward to heading back to Mumbai! Wet but warmer. Really tired off this dampness crap.
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