travel diary day 21
i can’t believe i’ve been in india for 3 weeks … despite everything, time is going so quickly.
day 18 – in the morning i got a taxi up to durpin gompa. it’s the biggest gompa in kalimpong and the views are sensational. unfortunately, the entire darjeeling district has been quite hazy for the past few days, which means that there are few photo opportunities through the hazy landscape. after that i had a mini pizza for lunch and an afternoon kip before a late thunderstorm ruined the rest of my day’s plans. i settled into my bed with my book, which i finished, and checked my email. i ended up spending much of the evening talking with the hotel’s owner, tempa, who is a tibetan. he told me that his computers had viruses and i showed him how to clean them off.
i also began to suspect that i have a stomach bug commonly known as traveler’s diahorrea.
day 19 - i checked out early and got a shared jeep ride to darjeeling. lonely planet says that shared jeeps are faster and more comfortable than buses. well, having taken both, i can say that while shared jeeps may be faster, they’re not really very comfortable. i was in the back of a 9 seat 4wd which was packed with 12 people (including the driver). there were 4 people in the front seat and the driver was jammed into the right door. i have no idea how he was changing gears. the 12 people in our jeep doesn’t include the guy sitting on the roof and the other guy hanging off the back. so, in total, 14 people in a jeep hurtling across windy, narrow mountain roads.
the views were spectacular and so were the near misses. once we came to a screeching halt as our vehicle and an oncoming jeep nearly colided. in fact, i envied the guy on the back, because he was the only one who had a chance in hell of jumping ship if our jeep became a 3 ton screaming torpedo of death on one of the many dangerous mountain roads.
however, we arrived in darjeeling safe and sound … just as it started to rain. i checked into my hotel (which has no running water at all), i walked around town, checked email and had all my other plans again ruined by an afternoon thunderstorm. with nothing better to do, i slept all afternoon and all night (except when i was woken up by people from another room looking for an italian).
day 20 – with oodles of sleep, i was feeling energetic and made an early start. i visited dhirdham mardin (which is a small hindu temple) and bought my train ticket to kolkata on the 28th. while i was at the station i also got a ticket for the darjeeling hilltop toy train which runs to ghoom and back. ghoom is a small town which is part of the darjeeling district. it’s about 11km by road (or train) each way. the toy train was lots of fun. i stood at the very back of the train, leaning out to take photos. i didn’t get many good shots, and the weather was lousy, but i had a lot of fun.
while at ghoom (the train takes a 30 minute break) i walked down to sakya choling monastery to get some photos. i got one great shot of an old monk which i am very happy with. it started raining again so i went back to my hotel. however, not long after, the weather cleared and i walked to chowkrasta (the main bazaar), bought some medicine for my bombay belly, and went for lunch in a popular tourist cafe. the cafe was full, so i sat with a girl called sella. she was irish and we drank tea and talked for a while.
after that i headed out to the markets (walking all the way around the top of observatory hill) and checked my email. another thunderstorm hit town and we had a complete blackout. i walked home in the dark and had to negotiate the climb down the 30 odd narrow steps that lead to my hotel. it was pitch black so i waited at the top of the stairs, in the hope that the power would miraculously return. it didn’t, so i ended up following a woman down the stairs. she was using her phone as a light and it was enough for me to see too (barely). i got to my hotel, was given a candle by the hotel’s owner, and went to bed.
day 21 – this morning the weather was beautiful, so i started off early and walked up to observatory hill again to try and find a particular monastery. while there i coincidentally ran into sella again and she pointed me in the right direction. i walked 1.5 km down narrow winding paths to the bhutia busty gompa. this tibetan monastery is rather small but has the remarkable honour of housing tibet’s original book of the dead. i wasn’t able to see the book (which they’re not keen to show to foreigners) but i had a look around the temple and talked with one of the senior managers. he wasn’t a monk, but he’s lived in darjeeling all his life and is part of the committee that cares for the temple.
the guy (whose name i don’t remember) is 70 years old. he complained that darjeeling has become a horrible, dirty town due to the influx of indians who want to move here and make their living. he told me that twenty years ago darjeeling was the most beautiful town in india. i can see his point. he said tourists weren’t to blame, but there are too many cars (and jeeps) too much trash and too many people who have no interest in the town except to make money. darjeeling itself isn’t exactly a pretty place. from afar, it’s a beautiful hillside station. but up close it’s quite dirty, noisy and polluted by the diesel and dust from cars.
after, i made the long trek up the hill and back into the markets. i wandered into a shop and ended up buying a thumb ring with the buddhist mantra “om many padme hum” carved into it in tibetan script.
at lunchtime i made the brave decision to get a taxi to ghoom. as i said, ghoom is 5km from darjeeling (as the crow flies) but 11km by road. the road and the toy train follow the same rout, so it’s simply a matter of following the train tracks all the way back to darjeeling.
the taxi dropped me off in ghoom and i planned to walk back to darjeeling. there were three monasteries i wanted to see along the way. the first was yiga choling, the second was samten choling. the third, which was by far the biggest, was druk sangak choling monastery. this particular monastery was opened by the dalai lama 10 years ago. it’s an educational monastery and houses over 200 monks from bhutan and other countries. there are numerous young monks too and they’re all there to learn. the monastery doesn’t just teach buddhist philosophy. it also teaches practical stuff like dancing, crafts, language, and various other subjects.
after looking around the three monasteries, i was still left with a 5km walk back to darjeeling. while it wasn’t hot, the walk was tiring from the dusty roads and the constant honking of cars.
just as i was prepared to give up and get a taxi, the darjeeling train station loomed into sight. i was home!! i walked up the hill and had a beer at a small bar. to my surprise, carlsberg beer was available. i drank a large bottle of that, which made me feel very, very good. the last time i had carlsberg was in thailand when i bought two cans from some street vendor. before that, i had fond memories of drinking carlsberg, getting a little drunk, and cheering on liverpool at the red lion pub in london. sitting in the bar, drinking my carlsberg brought memories of england gushing back … that carslberg beer tasted really, really good.
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