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Hey there everyone, I have made it to Kathmandu and am taking a well deserved break. I thought I would catch you all up on the last travels in India seeing as the internet was really crap in the last few towns. Great towns but power went out whenever it wanted to.
Anyways, this entry will deal with the strike and near riot we were involved in. The ful story.
We were travelling to a town called Siliguri in North East India on what we new was going to be a national day of striking. We wee unsure if we would stopped as we are only tourists. The day started out great with no traffic on th road and everytime we came to a village we just explianed that we were tourists and the people moved the road block aside and let us past. it was all good until we got to a major village close to lunchtime and there was a few hundred people at the major intersection. Several of them we found out later were either drunk or stoned on local bad homemade booze or weed.
Anyways we tried once again to talk our way thru
but the crowd was having none of it this time. Then our driver made a critical error. When dealing with an angry crowd you do not try and force your way through them. Well he did, the truck lurched forward a few feet and all hell broke loose. Chairs were swung at the truck and one of the widows was smashed in showering two passengeres with glass. A few of the other passengers wanted to get out and fight but we held them back. The police counldn't help as there was only six of them and by this time several hundred Indians. Nobody spoke English and the drunk people were getting the crowd wound up. We eventually backed down the road followed by aboiut 100 people. After about a mile we parked and several police showed up and sourounded our truck and kept the people back. Nobody was trying to gewt at us but the police were just being carefull. After about an hour several of us got off the truck to stretch our legs. All the locals were doing was staring at us like they always do.
The press showed up and started asking questions and a few
of us gave interviews which amazingly enough were brodcast on the news and in the paper the next day.
Eventually we got a police escort to a nearby hotel were we had to stay until the scheduld end of the strike (6:00) pm. After that we got an escort out of town and eventually made our way to our next campsite.
That's pretty well it for that day. Exciting, scary and all part of the adventure rolled into one.
I have attached a few photos of the crowd and some birds that I saw. Nothing else to do so I took random shots off whatever I could see.
Next update will be about Darjeling.
Ciao, Mike.
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Heather
non-member comment
Wow, Mike! I really enjoyed your post about the near riot experience you had, and I'm glad to hear you escaped it safely! My blog is looking for travel tips (like how to pass through a riot safely! ;) , photos, etc, to share. If you have the time, check it out at dirty-hippies.blogspot.com, or email us at dirtyhippiesblog@gmail.com. Continued fun on your travels, and good luck in Darjeeling! Heather :)