Darjeeling, 9th April 2011
WM: So, I’ve just done a Tesco’s order for next Saturday (when we’ll arrive home). How bizarre to be contemplating sliced bread and cat food from here...
We’ve also survived a mammoth hail-storm. The skies went black, there was 30 minutes’ hail (up to the size of big marbles) drumming down deafeningly onto the corrugated iron roofs with growling thunder and streaks of lightning. We sheltered under the awning of a Tibetan Handicrafts shop, watching those braver than ourselves run up or down the road (by now a minor river) – monks in flip-flops, porters leaning far forward, carrying gas canisters and sofas uphill with the weight supported on their foreheads, old men with deftly rolled up trousers and pink umbrellas, boys throwing handfuls of the icy hail, like snow balls at each other - and the market stall holders buttoning up their plastic sheeting fronts to protect their wares.
The storm broke just as we’d signed up for a 3 day trek higher up in the mountains starting on Monday. We’ve been loaned some fantastic 80s down jackets (M looks like some über-cool, retro-chic fashionista in hers*, the rest of us just don’t and WD is having delusional itching already, thinking too much about body lice) and I’ve bought the kids all yak wool hats with ear flaps and daft plaits. I’ve just tucked them up in bed and they’re still wearing their woolly hats, looking ridiculously like the dwarves of ‘The Hobbit’ (M is Thorin, L Boffur, W Fili, WD the Hobbit and WM Gandalf, they’ve decided). *M disagrees fiercely.
Darjeeling is about 2200 m high. We know we are up in the hills but haven’t really seen much of the higher peaks as the weather has been cloudy, though sunny, and visibility pretty poor since we arrived. It’s been great to wear tights and jumpers and vests again (there had to be a point to carrying these through the heat of the plains) – though WD and M are somewhat less convinced. Maybe it’ll aid re-acclimatisation to British weather? WM loves Raj hill stations. My forebears knew how to enjoy themselves – drinking gin (or nimbu pani for the children), playing snooker, idling on benches and pedestrianized promenades, trips to the botanic garden, gymkhana pony-riding , painting watercolours, taking tea at the Planters’ Club – much of which can still be done today... New variants can also be seen – public school year-offers skateboarding in Chowrasta, the main square, and the availability of really quite good pizza spring to mind.
On a fine day, Kanchenjunga (India’s highest peak, the world’s third highest) can be seen from town – and even Everest from certain vantage points – but we’ve seen nothing. Conversely, there are moments when you look down, and the mountainside just falls away vertically beneath you right down to the valley, over tea plantations, and you can’t quite believe a town can manage to balance on this ridge. Walking around, you pass cottages with pots of geraniums and primulas brightening their windows, grander timber-framed mock Tudor houses with wisteria around the door, as well as the bazaars (selling everything from trekking socks, to mini prayer-wheels, to underwear and umbrellas). The central square is a delight: pony rides, the Oxford bookshop, Gorkha flags and statues of local heroes, corncobs cooked on charcoal, a people-watching fest...Happy dogs catnap in sunny spots – they are fluffier, look better fed and a bit more wolf-like, and seem to smile - perhaps prefer they prefer the climate or are better cared for here than elsewhere we’ve been in India? The people look really different too, with their beautiful round faces, flat cheeks and black hair, nose rings and ready smiles. Tibetan grannies sit and chat on benches in their distinctive stripy aprons, passing prayer beads through their fingers. We are staying on the 7th floor of our hotel (in the attic), so even making it to our room provides a strenuous aerobic work-out and WD and my calves ache after several days of climbing up and down hills. Maybe you need to live here to develop the stocky legs of the local school girls and the stamina of the old ladies carrying heavy bags up the steepest of inclines?
We’ve pottered around town, enjoying the more relaxed atmosphere of the place (hill people are different), and the days here are beginning to merge together, although there’s a terrible, rather oppressive sense of finality knowing that we’ll be back home (barring unforeseen eventualities) this time next week. Interestingly, we’ve found a limit to our capacity for sitting in genteel teashops. Remember this is still India, so since Independence, the teashops have morphed into more Indian affairs, with added ‘features’ like mirrored ceilings, loud stereos playing Bryan Adams and bad fry-ups - oh yes, you can get sausages of a kind here - for the hungry foreign trekkers and domestic tourists that flock here. But despite the beans on toast and large jammy buns, sadly they do not come close to Cambodian cafés. L&W also get really fidgety and, unless they can find alternative distractions (like disabled ladybirds for instance), will set about breaking glassware and fighting with each other for entertainment. However, I shouldn’t worry, having read the (Bengal) Telegraph’s report of a recent (Cambridge) study of sibling rivalry which apparently concluded that sibling fighting was highly effective at developing social and life skills, often giving 2nd children a healthy advantage in the popularity stakes. Hmmm. Maybe we should be encouraging them?
The nicest times have been walking in or out of town. One day, we rode the toy train (with a mini diesel engine, not the tourist steam special) to Ghoom, the highest point on the track, 5 miles or so from Darjeeling. It was great fun, the track running alongside the cart road, and coming within centimetres of people’s homes and shops, pedestrians waving to the children and never far from the vertiginous drop. W had a fantastic time hanging out at the station whilst we bought tickets, playing trains on the tracks (with warnings not to try this at home), watching the steam engines stoking their engines, shunting carriages and showering us with lumps of ash. There’s a small museum in Ghoom, since the Railway was accorded World Heritage status (the children were ticking off the World Heritage sites/sights they’ve visited since we’ve been away and we’ve not done so badly) – but there’s a plea to ‘erstwhile masters and past employees’ to return memorabilia to the museum. And then we walked back to our hotel with a detour to see a Buddhist monastery along a quiet road, lined by homes perched on the steep incline, prayer flags, the odd stupa and Shiva shrine, back into town.
Our hotel (the Hotel Dekeling) is jolly nice – a rambling, wood panelled delight over multiple floors, run by an extended and very hospitable Tibetan family. We have an amazing, literally birds’-eye view of the town from our gabled attic rooms. It’s warm and cosy – with sofas and a wood burner in the communal living room, hot water bottles and thick bed quilts, Buddhist art and pictures of the Dalai Lama – if a bit noisy because of its central position, so you wake early to appreciate dawn breaking, myna birds on the roof, ‘Tibetan dormice’ (aka big fat Indian mice) scuttling around in the roof space and George, a frenzied four year old from Liverpool, who terrifies and appeals to W in equal measure. There are a good assortment of other folk staying, mostly older – including a frightening trio of English ‘ladies’ who we imagine to be the matron, Latin mistress and retired Physical Education teacher of some upstanding institution, and they terrify us all collectively with their archaic and forthright language (they do not shy from describing a child as ‘odious’ and ‘frightful’ for instance – not about one of ours I hasten to add).
I had a scary few moments when W disappeared yesterday. He was with us in our room and then he wasn’t. We got more frantic as we realised he wasn’t hiding anywhere, wasn’t in George’s room, wasn’t in the communal living area, wasn’t in the toilet – where was he? Having raced down the 7 flights of stairs, I finally found him sitting right at the bottom of the stairs chatting to the waiters who work in the ground floor restaurant. He’d thought we were going out right then and would follow him downstairs; we thought we were getting ready to go out in 10 minutes or so, not imminently... He’d heard us shouting to him, but said he was too busy talking to the waiters to answer and he didn’t seem in the slightest perturbed – of course, he wouldn’t have gone out on the street by himself... Anyway, all was well – no need for panic (although of course we did) - and hopefully we’ll still make it home with the right number of children.
10th April 2011
A further hail storm and complete grey-out this afternoon – although when we woke, it was clear and sunny and we could see snow-tipped mountains in the far distance for the first time which was amazing.
M: Today we went to a zoo. As everyone knows I hate zoos, but given that this is a recommended zoo (because of the conservation work it does in India) so I went along with it. We were first met by a huge cage with macaws, pheasants and African grey parrots (the ones that can learn to talk really well), then we moved on to the lesser animals section. My favourite animal there was the red panda. We saw lots of them: they were up in the trees, on branches and in bird boxes. Then we went to see the deer and the blue sheep. We saw samba deer which were really big and I was glad they were a good distance away from the tiger (samba deer are tigers’ favourite food). I liked the Himalayan wolves too because they looked wonderful with their furry yellow-white coats in the sun. Then we went to the big cats’ enclosures. We saw a very unhappy leopard who was pacing up and down in boredom and we saw a black panther with warts on its neck, who also was pacing. We saw a clouded leopard and a snow leopard. The zoo has successfully bred snow leopards in captivity when no one else in the world has managed this. I think this is because of the altitude of the zoo which is similar to their normal habitat.
We also went to the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. I found out that Tenzing Norgay [who lived here] was one of the two men who first climbed Everest. I liked their model of a crevasse. They also had a Himalayan Range model, and you pushed buttons and it lit up to show you where particular mountains and rivers were. I want to learn to climb as well as learn to scuba dive.
I’m looking forward to going trekking in the mountains. I hope we see Mount Everest as we trek over the border to Nepal. I love walking so I can’t wait to begin our trek tomorrow morning. We need to buy lots of snacks like dried fruit and cheese straws and chocolate.
WM: So we’re leaving to go trekking for 3 days/2 nights tomorrow morning along the Singalila range. Still not sure if this is a splendid or completely dumb finale to the trip. The children really wanted to walk and sleep out after enjoying the trek in Mount Abu. But we’ll be much higher and the weather more erratic, so we’ll see...L promises to hold my hand and encourage me when I start to whinge and to try and motivate me, rather than telling me I'm a complete failure for the rest of my life if I can't do it (her first idea). Whether or not it’ll just tantalise the WPs as a truncated taster of the full 5-7 day trek, or completely finish us off, time will tell. But it felt important to finish this adventure with another adventure. I need to pack again. We need to tell Harriet, Holly and Max that there’s no room in the ruck sacs for them – will they cope? WD and the children are finishing watching Tomb Raider (obviously for the Angkor shots) and say I need an outfit like Lara Croft’s tight body suit with fur-lined cape in Siberia for trekking. They are destined for disappointment I think.
No comments:
Post a Comment