Friday June 27th
We arrived at the
train station around 10:30 PM and it was filled with people. We
checked the boards but saw no mention of our train. Jack told us not
to worry and he asked around to find the platform it was supposed to
arrive at. We walked with our heavy packs through a sea of people,
mostly laying on the ground with blankets or plastic tarps waiting
for the various trains. We got onto platform 2 and sat down. The
stagnant air on the platform was stifling and it was already past our
bedtimen so I was feeling hot irritable and sweaty, but I kept
reminding myself, “you can't get impatient”. There were screens
that reported the delay of each train. There were reports of trains
being 1, 2, 3 and as many as 7 hours late. We kept hoping not to see
our train number appear on that screen with a
western-punctuality-standard shattering delay.
Our train arrived
right on time and we fought our way on board immediately. If you
don't assert yourself then people push right past you. You have to be
forceful without ever being emotional about it or taking it too far.
We got caught in a stream of people passing in both directions down a
single-person hall way. It was a mess with our bags that were as wide
as the corridor. Uncle Jack wormed his way through quickly and we
tried to batter our way in behind him. Fortunately, there are
assigned seats so you don't have to worry about finding a spot.
We reached Uncle
Jack in our berth containing our sleepers, number 41, 42, and 43.
Each berth contained six beds in two opposing stacks of three. During
the daytime, the middle bed is folded down to be the backrest for a
seat that is made by sitting on the lowest bed. Only the top bunks
will remain beds for the entire journey. Everyone else filed in and
took their spots until nearly every bed was full. The train left
about 20 minutes late which is practically on time in comparison to
other trains.
The ticket man came
through and checked our tickets. I had stowed my bag under the seat
and Leslie had put hers in the bed. The ticket man seemed very
concerned about our luggage and tried to tell us we must hold it the
whole way. Uncle Jack talked him down and he moved on. It is nice to
see that they were looking out for the tourists.
I was
slightly nervous about riding the train for two reasons. First, on
Wednesday there was a train crash that killed four people and injured
hundreds in the northern part of the state, not too far from Patna.
Some people thought the crash was foul play by a communist extremist group
while others thought it was human error. Either way, it was not the
best news to get the day of our trip. The second reason I was nervous
was because we had heard many stories of people making friends on the train,
as you do in sleeper class with so many grueling hours to spare, who
then offer you food (which is considered rude to decline). These
people eat it and then wake up 2 days later in the hospital with all
of their stuff stolen. It happened to one of the Jesuit fathers so we
heard the warning of “don't accept food on the train” many times.
As soon as the train
started to move, however, I felt good about it. Everyone quickly settled down
and started stretching out to sleep. I took the middle seat and
quickly fell asleep with my head right next to the window for a cool
breeze. I woke up to the scream of another train passing the opposite
direction a few times but otherwise my sleep was very peaceful.
I woke up around 6
the next morning and seeing Uncle Jack was already awake, I offered
to put my seat down so we could both sit comfortably. We sat and
watched the many farms pass by growing rice, pineapples, bananas and
many other products that can only be grown in the wet, hot planes. As
we got closer to our destination, Siliguri, the train began to thin
out. Eventually there were only a couple of people around us so we
spent a pleasant ride reading, sleeping and letting the country side
roll by.
When we arrived at
the station (a full three hours late) we secured a ride to the Holy
Cross convent where Uncle Jack insisted we should wash up and eat
lunch. We quickly ate while we waited for Sagar to arrive from the
airport with the jeep to take us up to the farmstay near Darjeeling.
He finally made it, briefly met Uncle Jack, and then we loaded our
bags into the jeep and were off! Free at last!
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| our departing pic with Uncle Jack |
We were excited at
the prospect of being on our own so we were thoroughly enjoying
ourselves as our driver worked his way through the sprawl of the
plains towards the wall of fog that we knew covered the hills and
behind them, the Himalayas. As we drove, we saw a strong military
presence in the area due to the proximity to so many borders (Nepal,
Malaysia, Bhutan, and China).
The Jeep finally
started the hair-raising ascent into the hills. Although still
referred to as “the foothills of the Himalayas” these “hills”
were massive, steep, and heavily jungled. The switchback road rose
quickly and before we knew it we staring a looooooong way down to the
valley floor. Our driver seemed unperturbed and maybe even a little
annoyed at the steepness of the road, the sharpness of the
switchbacks, or the slowness of other drivers. He drove confidently
to the point of mild aggression as he passed every other car we came
to, honking his horn once or twice before darting into the oncoming
lane and speeding by. The experience was mildly terrifying, but like
so many things in India, we just had to surrender ourselves to it and
trust that this guy had made the drive enough times to do what he did
safely. It didn't help that the roads were wet and on the way up we
came across a Jeep that was smashed into the cement barrier.
As we climbed higher
and higher into the hills we began to see little villages on and off
the road, scattered through steep, green hills. As Sagar commented,
“Indians live the hell out of everwhere”. The hillsides seemed
inhospitable yet they obviously yielded some form of living. The
higher up we got, the more people we saw that appeared “Himalayan”
as opposed to “Indian”. I'm sure that I'm over generalizing the
distinction, but there were many people who looked much more like
they were from Nepal or Tibet, having features that were a mix
between Indian and Chinese. In many places in these hills, Darjeeling
included, the main language spoken is, in fact, Nepali.
When we got to a
certain point, we saw little train tracks running parallel to the
road. These belong to whats known as the “Toy Train” which is a
little coal-powered train that travels around the villages up on top
of the hills. We passed it once on our drive up as it was heading
down. I will try to get a picture of it if we run into it again.
Eventually, after
about 2 hours we got the top of a ridge with houses and shops lining
the road and were told that we were in Darjeeling. Darjeeling is at
an altitude of about 7000 feet and since we started at almost sea
level, you can imagine how steep that two-hour drive must have been.
The farm we were staying at was another 16 km away according to our
driver but it would take us a full hour to get there. I couldn't
believe it would be that slow but then I saw the road we had to go
down. From Darjeelng we started a decent into a valley on a steep
gravel road that only allowed travel at a few mph. We found out later
that it hadn't been serviced by the government in 14 years.
Finally, at long
last, the driver stopped the car and showed us to a path lined by
large, colorful prayer flags that zig-zagged down the steep hill. We
walked in the darkness down to the bottom where we met Navin, the
owner of the farm, who showed us our room. We had a large tent with a
double bed and a single bed. The bathroom was attached through a
zippered canvas door. I went in to go to the bathroom but when I took
the toilet seat down, a spider, almost the size of my hand, ran
across the toilet onto the floor. The bathroom is exposed to the
outside so it gets a lot of bugs (especially gigantic spiders) which
is why it needs to be sealed off from the main tent.
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| Stick bug from our room |
Navin invited us
down to have drinks and dinner. While we waited for the food to be
prepared, we were offered strong beers (%8 alcohol content) and
talked with Navin and his friend, Ashish. They both spoke excellent
english and told us how they are both from Darjeeling originally and
both work on organising the small, organic farmers of the area into
coalitions to get fare prices on their produce. Navin is a farmer
and grows all his crops organically. He admits that his farm would
not be financially sustainable if not for the income from the
farmstay he established about 7 years ago. They told us many stories
about Darjeeling and this area and how much it has changed over the
years. Once food was ready, we ate an amazing meal of rice, chicken
curry, dahl and these spicy red peppers that he called fireballs. We
retired early feeling exhausted but content.
There are many
things that I see or learn that don't make it in to these posts
because they don't fit in nicely to the narrative so I decided to
start ending each post with a list of three things I have learned.
Here are my first three:
1) the handmade
snacks on the train cost 10 rupees
2) the hindi word
for water is “pani” (pan-ee)
3) The majority of
the weaponry in the Indian military comes from old soviet stockpiles.
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