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Published: February 23rd 2012
A dog...
... that is some sort of identifiable breed! Rare in this part of the world..Namaste!!
So sad that this is one of my last posts as the trip is winding down and I'll be heading home in a few days!!
Moving up from Kolkata to Darjeeling was a huge shock to the senses. Kolkata had been really warm and nice and busy and then all of a sudden, we were up in the quiet, damp, misty mountains with a serious chill in the air – luckily, we were well-prepared with lots of wooly socks and toques to keep us warm, but I still found myself wearing about 3 layers on the bottom and up to 5 on the top! We stayed at one hotel the first night that we found with a really lovely British couple, Damian and Rhoda whom we met on the train, but it was like sleeping in a concrete cellar and the space heater we splurged on did little except warm about the first 4 centimetres in front of it, so we moved on to a tinier but slightly cozier room for the next couple nights that was panelled in wood so it gave the illusion of warmth. I get that it gets hot in
Buddhism
Mom doing the kora - spinning around prayer wheels the summer months, but no one seemed to be equipped to deal with the frigid winters that Darjeeling sees – makes no sense!
Anyways, once we had bundled up, Darjeeling was absolutely gorgeous! Pine forests, tea plantations stretching as far as the eye could see, fog hanging over the snow-peaked Himalayas in the background. We spent most days with Damian and Rhoda, visiting the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, the Darjeeling Zoo, and drinking copious amounts of Darjeeling tea in the afternoons with a beautiful view over the valleys. We even woke up at three a.m. to take a taxi to Tiger Hill, a very touristy but very necessary trek, to see the sun rise over the Himalayas. We were lucky in that the morning dawned relatively clearly so we got an incredible view. We had paid for a “super deluxe” ticket which, at 40 Rupees (80 cents) entitled us to a room in a tower that was allegedly heated (it soooooo wasn't) and chai, but one the sun started coming up everyone rushed the windows so I went out and braved the cold and biting wind and had an absolutely unforgettable view of the sun rising over Tibetan
Buddhist prayer flags, lighting up the mountain Kanchenjunga (and apparently Everest, although I believe it was covered in fog so it wasn't entirely visible). We got our taxi to stop at a couple monasteries on the way back and got to watch the little baby monks (I don't know what the right word is for them!) getting up early for prayers and running around the temple eating chocolate. It may have been the cutest thing I've ever seen. Maybe.
Later that morning (and as I am writing this I cannot believe all that we did in a single day, although when you get up at 3 a.m. you can accomplish a LOT!) we visited the Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Centre where, like the name suggests, it is full of Tibetans who are now living in Darjeeling having escaped from Communist China's invasion of their country and raping of their culture (just calling it like it is!). They live and work there making arts and crafts and doing what they can to oppose and fight against China's occupation of their homeland. I learned a lot about the Tibetan conflict when I was in Dharamsala last time I was in
Happy Valley Tea Estate
My new favourite place! India and I am still marvelling at the amazing, positive and forward-looking spirit of the Tibetan people. So many of them have lost their homes and families and are living as guests (for lack of a better word) in India, but they are all so hardworking and incredible and it is so inspiring to see their beautiful spirits again.
That afternoon (it was a very, very long day) we went and visited the Happy Valley Tea Estate (and I am grinning just typing out the name of it – those who know me can probably imagine my joy at a place like this!) where we got a tour of their tea factory and then got to try what is possibly the best tea in the entire world – called, obviously, Super Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe One. Again, I can't make this stuff up. It was delicious and the lady who prepared it for us was amazing, telling us all about how it is plucked and prepared and eventually stuffing our 100-gram bags with loads more of the stuff for a bargain price, only 8 dollars – Thank you VERY much 5-Second Lady (so named because
Tea fields....
... my idea of heaven. she kept bragging about how the tea can be steeped in only 5 seconds, and it can and it was delicious)! This tea apparently only gets sold to Harrods, but every week a bit of it is given to the workers and they pool it together to sell illicitly (so shhhh, don't tell anyone!) to the tourists who come on tea plantation tours. Luckily it was low season so we didn't have to battle it out with anyone for the stuff!
We then had three long, long days of travelling before getting to the beach – a three hour ride in a taxi from Darjeeling to the train station, an overnight train ride that was 3 hours late getting to Kolkata at 8 a.m., 3 hours before we boarded a flight to Mumbai, an overnight in Mumbai (where we ate delicious food at a bakery and a Jewish cafe) and then another half-overnight 12-hour train ride from Mumbai to Goa, where we landed at about 3:30 a.m. before taking a taxi to our lovely little beach hut. I had booked online (one of the rare times I do that) because we were arriving at such an awkward
Tea tasting
Don't know how many of these I've done, definitely a lot, but this was the best by far! time and the people at Sevas were awake to receive us, ushering us into the cutest little bamboo beach hut (or coco-hut as they are called here). Actually I had originally wanted to go back to Gokarna, but Mom made it clear that she wanted an attached bathroom (although the bathroom we have here in Goa is open-air, bucket showers and has a frog in the toilet, something that delights me but not Mom, so much...) and plus, it was really the people I met on Kudle Beach who made the experience what it was and I wouldn't want to go back and have it be disappointing, so we decided on Goa as our little beach holiday destination and it's been pretty decent so far! I was expecting a really obnoxious vibe but it's fairly low-key, the trance music is not toooooo loud and it's not as crowded as I expected. The food has been UNBELIEVABLY delicious so that is a plus too – my heart still lies with Kudle and all of its mellow glory but Goa has pleasantly surprised me 😊
The only thing that has sort of coloured the experience was a little robbery
incident we had last night – Mom woke up at about 2 a.m. saying that she saw a light in the corner of our room. I told her to go to sleep and it was nothing but she stayed awake and got up to turn the (really loud) fan off so she could hear if anything was amiss – it was then that she noticed that our front door (which only closes with a hook-and-eye latch) was open. We immediately went into battle mode, I grabbed my knife and we turned all the lights on to find that Mom's stuff had been thrown on the ground and her purse was emptied of the approximately 600 rupees she'd had in it. Only about a 12-dollar loss but it was still REALLY unsettling knowing someone had come into our room while we were sleeping (and I must add here that I slept through the entire episode, which freaks me out even more). Our neighbours had also woken up to someone trying to get into their hut although the husband there had called out and the intruder left. We all went and woke up the staff in the office who grabbed bats and
Temple Buddha
Amazingly gorgeous temple on the way back from Tiger Hill torches and took off around the property. The dogs were barking like crazy and the staff found that the front gate had been opened, which it shouldn't have been. They kept repeating that in the eleven years that Sevas had been opened nothing like this had ever happened. We kept our lights on and went back to bed around 4, although it was a pretty uneasy sleep. When we woke up in the morning we found that another Swedish couple had been totally cleaned out, having around 400 dollars stolen and their room trashed – again, it had happened while they were sleeping which was really scary for them as well. Hopefully the hotel staff will step up their game on the security detail from now on to make sure this doesn't happen again – I don't know if they'll catch the guy and thank GOD he didn't take the iPods or camera or anything else that was in plain view and only took money – seriously, we were really lucky and it could have been so so so much worse (I am not even thinking about what might have happened if I had been by myself) and so because
Sunrise!
Also, prayer flags. it wasn't, I am so very VERY grateful!
On happier notes, the weather in Goa has been gorgeous and it has been so lovely being back in the ocean. We've found our little spot on the sand and a bar that does 2 for 1 mojitos all day long; another plus about Goa is that there is zero tax on alcohol here! So it's been a pretty relaxing few days. I met some nice Australian and British friends and we rented out a boat the other night for a few hours to watch the sun set on a secluded beach, swimming in the reddish-pinkish light in water that is impossibly warm and laying about on rocks that were still hot from the day – one of those moments where I turned to Tom, the guy sitting next to me, and we both agreed that there was nowhere, absolutely nowhere, on earth that we would rather be, and nothing else we would rather be doing, and how lucky we were. The next day we rented a kayak and tried to paddle back to the beach but got too tired too soon so compromised and found another secluded little area where we pulled the kayak securely onto some rocks (or so we thought) and climbed up more rocks to try to have another “aren't we lucky” gratitude moment, only to find as soon as we'd gotten up that our kayak and oars were being swept away at an alarming rate by the tide. We climbed back down and chased (swam) down our means of conveyance from where it had washed and had a little swim before agreeing to go back to the beach. On the way back we decided to hop out of the kayak for a swim, not even thinking that it would look like we were in trouble and had capsized and so had to assure a passing boat that we were ok before jumping back in the kayak to return to shore, where Mom said that she had been seconds away from sending out a boat because she thought we had bailed! Oops! Hahahaha!!
Anyways, only a couple more days left to go, and I am really hoping that the excitement is all over and we can have a relaxing end to our time here, although in typing this I am realizing how absurd that is – it's India! Of course it won't be easy or relaxing; what it will be is colourful and surprising and enthralling and full of more stories to tell, and I will try to relay them all in my next and last (sob!) posting! Much much spicy love from Hindustan,
Shannon xoxoxoxoxo
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Dad
non-member comment
Your best blog yet!!
I'm counting the hours until you and Mom return!! Safely. Love, Dad