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Published: February 3rd 2008
Hello everyone. As most of you know, we are now home in sunny California. However, I would like to have you complete the journey with us so you will continue to get blog updates until you are home too!! Thanks for reading!
We left a very cold Leh early in the morning. The procedures for leaving that area were very similar to arriving. We had to check our bags and then identify them again on the other side. Just as with the flight here, we were not allowed to have a carry-on but we were allowed to carry a book on! Therefore, I figured that it would also be OK to carry my cross-stitch on. Yes, I cross-stitch. It is not just a hobby for old ladies! Anyhow, Molly and Yuri both told me that there was no way that they were going to allow me to carry my needle onboard but I thought they were crazy. What on earth can you do to an airplane with a 1 inch needle? Sure enough, as the nice lady in the "women only" section of the security area patted me down, she also told me that I could not take my
needle onboaard. Great. Now what was I going to do for 4 hours of flying?! I told her she could just throw it away but she insisted that we could put it in my checked baggage. No REALLY, just throw the stupid needle away! She followed me to identify my bag and was having me open it up when another Jet Airways employee saw us. After she must have explained what we were doing in Hindi, he looked at me and said "You can just take it onboard with you!" And with that, I was right and Molly and Yuri were wrong! Just kidding (:
Our flight into Delhi was very late and we had all but decided that there was NO way we were going to make it to our Bagdogra flight in the 15 minutes that we had. Then something truly amazing (for the airline industry) happened. They made an announcement on the airplane that all Bagdogra passengers needed to see the ground crew upon disembarking. When we did that, the ground crew called a Jet Airways mini-van to come collect us and deliver us to our other airplane. Not only that, they went through EVERY SINGLE
piece of luggage to find ours and ensure that it also made it on our airplane. If you have EVER experienced that kind of customer service on a flight in the United States, please do share that airline with me! I'm not saying that our airlines are bad (I love you Southwest), it's just that I don't think they would EVER do anything like that. If you ever go to India, I would strongly suggest that you use Jet Airways. They really were great!
We arrived in Bagdogra around 3 pm and still had a 3 hour taxi ride to get to Darjeeling. A quick visit to the great pre-paid taxi booth had us on our way! We stopped for a tea break (when in Darjeeling area, drink tea!) at a hotel about two hours in so we only had one more hour in our taxi right? WRONG! We drove about 100 feet away from the hotel when all traffic came to a dead stop. We had no idea what was going on, but I'm sure the man driving around in his mini-van yelling something into a microphone that was then being trasmitted through a VERY large speaker on
his roof, was telling us what was going on! We asked our taxi driver and understood something about a strike but that was it. There were tons of large buses coming down the hill absolutely packed with people. What does that mean? We now know!
It took us about two and a half hours to get to our hotel that evening. At dinner the owner explained that the communist West Bengal government was planning to hold a conference in Darjeeling. Those not in favor of the government threatened to strike and close the entire city of Darjeeling down if the conference happened. The government moved the conference so everything was going to be Ok. Or so we thought. The following day one of the Darjeeling Ghurka party leaders was attacked. The strike was then called back on. Everything in Darjeeling closed in the blink of an eye. Restaurants, shops, tourist attractions, the train and even taxi's! Luckily we were staying in the great Dekling Hotel, and they took care of us. We had big plans of exploring for our first afternoon there but that quickly changed when the strike started. The owners did think that the monestary and Tibetan
refugee center would be open though so we headed there.
We walked five minutes down the road and heard some loud voices coming from behind us. We turned around to see a large a large, chanting mob coming towards us! Huh. Should we really be out here walking around? They seemed really peaceful and we wanted to see Darjeeling so we continued on towards the monestary. Well, the owner of the hotel was wrong. The monks were on strike too! Four teenagers sitting on the steps of the monestary (called a gompa in Leh but here we were told to call it a monestary. Don't know why) showed us the super secret trail to get to the refugee center.
Everyone there was having lunch so we started by exploring the handicraft shop! After lunch they opened the photo gallery for us. Wow, was that eye opening, and not in a good way. I am sure we have all see the occasional "Free Tibet" bumper sticker and wondered what exactly that meant. Those poor people have been through SO much. Basically their country has been occupied by the Chinese and many have been forced, or have chosen, to leave
their country and everything they know. Many of them now live in Northern India. In fact our hotel in Leh and the Dekling in Darjeeling were run by Tibetan refugees. The refugee center we visited was founded in the early 60's. They continue to make handicrafts such as beautiful rugs and wood workings. We got to visit the various stages of making a Tibetan rug including spinning the wool, dying it, weaving the wool into a rug and finally clipping the long strands off. The products are absolutely amazing, and everyone knows it! They were on "backorder" under November 2008! Molly bought a small 2 by 2 foot one.
Each night we would eagerly ask the great hotel staff if they thought that the strike would end the following day. Of course they had no idea! However, they did make us aware that if we wanted to go somewhere, the taxi's would take us before 6 am so they wouldn't be seen! You might wonder where on earth we wanted to go before 6 am but it just so happened that we wanted to go to Tiger Hill at 4 am! Perfect! Tiger Hill is a DEFINITE tourist destination,
but also a great place to view the glorious Himalayan mountains. You have to go that early because after sunrise, the clouds start to cover the tops of the mountains. We paid our 40 rupees each (yep, that is one dollar) to have the super duper delux room for our sunrise view. It was absolutely incredible. The pictures will describe it far better than I. Someone told us that our 40 rupee ticket also included a cup of tea. So naturally, when Molly saw a man walking around with a thermos full of tea, she asked for some! His response: "Sure. I brought this from home but you can have some!" She tried to say never mind but he wouldn't listen and gave her some anyway! The legitimate tea man came around a little bit later with the tea we were supposed to drink!
When we got back to the hotel, we learned that the strike had been called off. We were very excited and eager to explore more of Darjeeling. However, after rising at 3:45 am that morning, all we wanted to do when we got back to the hotel was SLEEP. And so we did. Yuri woke
Picture perfect!
There wasn't a cloud in the sky. This sunrise was unbelievable!up before Molly and I, and headed down to the train station to buy us tickets for the toy train. This toy train is one of the main reasons that we even traveled to Darjeeling. When Molly and I finally woke up we headed down stairs to the restaurant to get some lunch. We made it about 10 steps down before we saw 2 of the hotel guests RUNNING back up the stairs yelling that the strike was back on! You've got to be kidding me! So basically the strike was called for the the FOUR hours that we were sleeping. Fantastic! The hotel staff was nice enough to pull a lunch together for us but there was still no sign of Yuri. When he did finally arrive back at the hotel, he was not a happy camper. He was waiting in line for the tickets for almost an hour when suddenly all of the ticket sellers simply got up and left the building. They never said a word to all of the people waiting in line. Maybe a little something like "We are now done because the strike is back on" would have been nice! We did manage to
salvage that afternoon by hiring a taxi to drive us to a museum, zoo and some tea fields! At one point we approached a large crowd of people gathered in the street. They were divided into two groups and facing each other. Several of them had large sticks in their hands and a black dot in the middle of their forehead. Our taxi driver nervously told us that they were.......ready for this.......... gathering for the afternoon market! Now I'm not sure about you but I generally don't take a stick with me to the farmers market! I know this is a different culture and all but our gut insticts told us that this was probably not the reason that these poeple were in the street. Sure enough, when we got back to the hotel the front attendant was telling us that he was calling our taxi driver every 20 minutes to make sure we were OK and had not driven through that section of town. Market my _ _ _ !!!!!
This is going to be a real shocker for you. The strike was STILL NOT OVER the next day! Surprise surprise. It wasn't the last day though so
we still had hope for the following day. At this point we had exhausted most open options in the town of Darjeeling. We did hear about the expensive hotel in town being open for afternoon tea. The prices were ridiculous, and more than we had paid for anything yet in India, but it was an absolutely gorgeous afternoon so that made it all worth. I don't want to come across as a cheap skate so I will clarify that we got two of those small triangle sandwiches, 7 small cookies and two pots of tea for $30!
Our last day in Darjeeling. Would the crazies figure out their differences and let us finally enjoy a day where stores and restaurants would actually be open? Nope. What that meant was that we were not going to be able to ride the famous train that we had traveled many miles to see. Nothing we could do about it though. The hotel staff offered to arrange for a taxi to take us white water rafting but they could not guarantee that we would be able to get back. Not sure what made them think that this was actually an appealing option! By
Monestary dog!
We took a lot of pictures of monestaries but this was the first of a monestary dog! He looks very content doesn't he? this point I had developed quite the nasty cold (thanks to Yuri, who had it in Germany) and was happy to just stay at the hotel and sleep. However, we were intent on visiting all of the places that actually stayed open during the strike and the Botanical gardens was one of them. I tried my hardest to enjoy the native Indian species but really just wanted to sleep!! We got a funny picture of Molly there though!
Our flight was leaving from Bagdogra the following day at 10 am so we were concerned about getting to the airport. Once again, it was OK for taxi's to take people places as long as it was before 6 am. Just to be on the safe side, our taxi wanted to leave at 3 am! We shared the taxi with a girl who had been volunteering at a shelter in Calcutta for the previous 6 weeks. What an angel she was! After the scariest car ride of our lives, we arrived at the Bagdogra airport around 5:30 am. For some reason it shocked us that the gates were closed and there wasn't a soul to be found. The taxi driver dumped
Chicken transportation system
We captured this photo very quickly while riding in a taxi. At least they have a good view I suppose. us off anyway and something very telling about this man's driving skills happened........ Yuri did not tip him. Yuri tips everyone, but this man literally almost killed all of us so that is where he drew the line! So there we sat, against the guard shack, of the Bagdogra aiport in the darkness of an early India morning. We had each found something to consume the time. I opted to eat some crackers that I had hidden in my backpack, Molly was reading her Harry Potter book in French and Yuri also read his book. Thank god for head lamps! We weren't sure how long we were going to be there when all of a sudden, the door to the guard shack opened up! There was NO door on the other side of the guard shack so this man had been there the entire time! Poor guy, we probably woke him up when we leaned against his little house! And this thing was LITTLE. I have no idea how he was even sleeping in there. He didn't seem to be surprised to see us at all because I think travelers from Darjeeling had probably been doing this very same thing
Snow leopard
These are very elusive animals and can be very hard to find in the wild. Some photographers search for weeks on end. This poor guy was in the zoo but seemed fairly happy. for the previous few days. He opened the gates for us but a uniformed military man carrying a large gun would not let us in the actual building of the airport. This time we had chairs to sit in though! The sunrise was lovely but brought with it some terrible little creatures carrying Malaria I'm sure. There were now mosquitos everywhere! Yuri was totally and utterlly disgusted to the point of picking up his backpack and moving to a different section of chairs...................20 FEET AWAY!! I couldn't help but make fun of him about this. Did he think that the first chairs were just a vortex of mosquitos and the other chairs were off limits to the nasty little creatures. Needless to say, his plan did not work!
The military man finally let is about 1.5 hours later (around 7 am). The airport was nothing to write home about but we certainly felt like we were slowly being upgraded! We had another 4 hours of sitting as our flights kept getting delayed. Eventually we had to bid a sad farwell to my beautiful sister as she was off to Delhi to head home and we were off to Calcutta.
LOVE her!
This was the first animal we saw at the Darjeeling zoo. We watched her for a long time and then her boyfriend bear came around too! It was hilarious. Our hotel in Calcutta was BY FAR the worst of the trip. I don't even want to describe it because that would require me to remember every gross, dirty, disgusting detail about the place. It was yucky. We'll leave it at that!
Darjeeling was certainly not as action packed as we had hoped, but we still had a great time. The best news is that we still want to ride that darn train so I guess we will just need to go back someday!
P.S. We got word from the nice French couple we met that the strike ended the day we left!!!
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Nathan Gauthier
non-member comment
Awesome
Sarah (and Yuri) - You're an amazing travel writer (and photographer) and it sounds like a wonderful trip. Thanks for keeping the blog. I really love this part: ...he looked at me and said "You can just take it onboard with you!" And with that, I was right and Molly and Yuri were wrong! Perfect. That's exactly what I was thinking. I hope you won a bet of some kind. I hope you enjoy your time back in the Johnny (heard English people say this about returning home, not sure if it applies to being back in California). Nathan