Gangtok

There's a big sign in the Gangtok Head Post Office; it says "The Rules of our office are: rule No 1: The Customer is always right; Rule No 2: if you think the Customer isn't right, go back and re-read Rule No 1". I'd gone in to buy stamps for postcards. 7 of them came to 56rupees. This is the equivalent of about 60p. I said "That's very cheap." to the lady behind the counter. "Yes, Madam," she replied, "you are right." Aha, I thought.

Obviously this is a game of somewhat limited appeal, and I was pretty much fed up with it after the one go, so I shut up and concentrated sticking my stamps on my postcards.

This morning I went to Enchey Gompa. The town of Gangtok is wound around a big hill, with Enchey higher up than most of the rest of town. My guide book said it would be a 2km uphill walk, so I'd planned to get a taxi up there and maybe walk back.

After we'd been driving for about twenty minutes, I began to figure that the book had lied. Either that, or it was 2km in a vertical direction, because we kept travelling; through the main drag of Gangtok, with its little tours and trekking offices, electrical outlets and cake shops, up through the green, leafy twisty little lanes. Every time we came in sight of an ornate archway, of which there are several round these 'ere parts, I thought, this must be it. But it wasn't.

I figured out I was OK as long as we kept going in the one direction, but after a couple of switchbacks and directional sleights of hand, I realised that my paltry sense of direction wouldn't be up to the walk back, and decided to ask the driver and his mate to wait at the other end, and take me back. This decision was made easier by the fact that it was absolutely tipping down with rain.

So we're travelling up one of the steeper stretches of road on our journey, and this is where my day started to turn into a Laurel and Hardy film. Suddenly, the engine cut out, and we started to very slowly roll back down the hill. It only needed a speeded up film effect and some plinky planky piano music to turn it into 20s slapstick. Great, I thought, I'm going to fall off a mountain and die. But not necessarily in that order. Just in time, the driver managed to apply the handbreak, or whatever it is, and we stopped. The three of us were just breathing a collective sigh of relief, when we noticed smoke coming out of the dashboard. As one, we all leapt out the car, and stood round it, in a circle, in the pouring rain on an empty road, wondering if it would explode.

Of course it didn't. We were luckily only a short distance from Enchey, so one of the guys took me up there on foot, while the other stayed with the car.

Enchey was lovely. Through the arch and up the lane, and there it is; a temple in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded by the outbuildings. It's a working temple- it looked like they were in the middle of the equivalent of the harvest festival or something, as a table in front of the statue in the temple was laden with food- from the expected (fruit) to the more mundane (packets of biscuits).

It was obviously lunch time, and little boy monks were running across the courtyard with plates of food. I went and had a look at the Butter Lamp room, a dark little room, lit with rows and rows of little candles. There were a trio of boys sat in there, about 9 or 10 years old, who insisted on my taking photos of them eating their lunch.

After mooching round there for a bit, I caught a taxi back to town and bought stamps.

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