After about a block and 1/2 a guy asked me if I “played Holi” which I poliltely declined but then he suggested “Just a tikka”. (A tikka is the gob or smear, depending on wet or dry, of colored pigment seen on the foreheads of hindus where they have been blessed.) Judging by the fact that this guy looked like a mid-western college football fan wearing team-color face-paint I had the feeling the “just a tikka” would turn into a smear down my entire face, a fear that was warranted when, after ducking his hand, I ended up with a skunk stripe of yellow and orange starting on the back of my head and trailing down my back. The rest of the walk I attempted to skirt the war zone while practicing being invisible, running a gauntlet of water ballons in the last block before turning down the alleyway to my guesthouse where I found pretty much all the guests holed up in the restuarants waiting out the festival. After sundown it was safe to go out again and while the shops were still mostly closed, the restaurants were open.

I took off for the airport the following day with a farewell kata (a scarf used to bless people) around my neck from the Tibet Gueshouse. After a scary/bumpy take-off from Kathamandu (the second storm in 5/12 months) I arrived in Bangkok for my 12 hour layover. Thanks to the Robber Bride, I was able to stay awake and read the entire night. Despite the tight connections in Tokyo and Chicago I made it home without a hitch. My tea came early this morning after my eyes popped open at 4:30 a.m. Suprisingly, my breakfast involved absolutely no butter! Now onto retraining my body on the nights and the days. Thanks for following along. It’s good to be home (just in time for beer dyed green).

Sue Borchardt in Baltimore, Maryland where , despite the rumors that it’s been like late spring, there were big fat flakes of snow falling this morning. March 17, 2006 1:13 p.m.

I had breakfast at an ultra-hip Isreali restaurant high above the street but could still see sprays of water as bags hit the side of buildings. The breakfast at this place is huge: an omelete, tons of potatoes, salad, a basket of bread, butter, cream cheese, and real jam. The welsh guy I met on my earlier trip to Kathmandu told me about it but, up until now, I’ve always opted for outdoor breakfast. This morning I was starving so went for quantity over atmosphere. Actually, it was only outside atmosphere I gave up as this place had atmo to burn: hand drawn menus, psychodelic paintings, blacklights, and techno lounge music. The low tables are spread out in a shoeless area covered with beautiful carpets. You would never find this place but for word of mouth (unless you read arabic). There are no english signs on the street and you need to walk down a tiny hall off an already narrow street, then up two flights of stairs. It’s almost too cool.

I went for my second fitting yesterday and my dress was vastly improved over the first try-on. My guy is closed today for the holiday but is doing a couple more tweaks for me before I pick it up tomorrow – hopefully fitting perfectly. The fabric is a very understated brown raw silk so unless it fits really well it will be kinda bland. I’ve got faith in this guy though. He’s sortof a mini nepali fashion designer. He’s all of 5′1″ and reminds me of a Nepali version of one of my favorite designers from season 2 of Project Runway, Nick.

Very little else planned for today and tomorrow. Just a few more things to pick up in Thamel’s shops and the marketplace to the south. Of course, I’m planning a trip to the south indian snack shop in the morning to stock up for the long trip home. Since this is, mostly likely, my last post before arriving home I’ll give you the run-down of the next few days: Tomorrow afternoon I fly from Kathmandu to Bangkok, arriving at about 6:30 pm due to the time-change. I have a 12 hour lay-over in the Bangkok airport and have scoped out tons of options but at this point I’m thinking I will just stay at the airport, bouncing around the transit lounge, the all night internet, and the kids playground which, reportedly, has a padded floor. The Amari Hotel which adjoins Bangkok airport is charging a steep $250 per night so that’s out. There’s a very nice place called We-train only a few minute cab-ride from the airport. It even has a pool but when I called they told me they are booked with a visiting group for 2 months. After some googling-around I found a website completeley devoted to sleeping in airports! Bangok gets mixed reviews (that’s how I found out about the padded play area) but I’d say the consensus is that if you can find a place to curl up you will not be bothered by security and If you choose to stay awake there is plenty to do. If I can manage to stay up all night It’ll put me on track for the eastcoast timezone. My plane for home leaves at 6:30 thurdsay morning (6:30 wednesday night in Baltimore) by way of Tokyo and Chicago and if all goes well, I’m home by 4:30 Thurdsday afternoon.

By the sound of it, the chaos in the streets of Kathmandu is working up to a fevered pitch. If I end up multi-colored I just might need to post the story from the Bangkok airport.

Sue Borchardt in Kathmandu, Nepal. March 14, 2006 at 12 noon. Happy Holi!!

Post-breakfast I ventured into the more modern neighborhood around Durbar Marg which is home to the fancy hotels and airline offices. My target was an Indian snack shop reportedly selling burfi! This place has almost as much variety as the shiny Quickbite where I got hooked on these little chunks of bliss back in Gantok. They actually call at least one of the varieties of sweets here burfi though again, there are tons of variations. I only tried one but plan on going back to stock up for the plane ride home this wednesday.

The walk back to the neighborhood of Chetrapati took me past the old part of Kathmandu where carvings like the ones shown in the first picture are the backdrops of the market stalls. I think the Hindu festival of Holi has already started in some neighborhoods cause the water balloons were flying. I had a few close calls with my camera so I’m in a bit of a conundrum over what to do tomorrow. I’d love to go to Pashupatinath and see the festival but am not too psyched about risking my camera amidst flying water and “color”. Not sure yet what form the color takes but if the Indian TV ads for cosmetics are any indication there are super-soakers full of thick orange and pink and yellow stuff flying everywhere. If I do go, I’m pretty sure the camera will be tucked safely away in a ziplock bag so expect no pics.

Also in the neighborhood I saw market stalls selling big hunks of Himalayan Salt (shown in the second pic) like the ones they make lamps out of. My friend and Bhutan travel partner, Susan, gave me one of these salt lamps for my birthday and I absolutely love it. Should you want want of these lovely lamps for your very own you can visit her shop, breathe books, in Baltimore where she sells them along with tons of stuff she brought home from India and Bhutan.

The rest of my trip, I fear, will be pretty dull to read about (as if you’ve been on the edge of your seat wondering if I ate a heart stopping amount of butter for breakfast). I mostly have planned a dress fitting (the first fitting left me less than enthused about the chinese style dress I had made – still hoping he can make it fit better), more alfresco dining (peanut masala at the tibet guesthouse courtyard is my lunch plan), and more shopping. There is just too much good stuff to buy in Kathmandu (red-heart beads from Nagaland, wooden Buddha statues, Tibetan door hangings, more varieties of incense than you can shake a stick at) and who knows when I’ll get back here again.

Sue Borchardt in Kathmandu, Nepal. March 13, 2006 at 1 p.m.

The first leg was a shared jeep from Darjeeling to Siliguri, only about 2 1/2 hours (first pic is from the Darjeeling jeep stand). It was the standard steep switchbacks that I’ve kindof gotten used to. It was nice to finally make it to the plains where it was much warmer and the tea in full flush with the spring harvest already underway. The town of Siliguri is someplace to get gotten out of as soon as humanly possible. For some reason it made me think of Joliet Illinoise where I foolishly planned a stop on my trip across the country in the fall of 2005. I was so glad to have a 70 lb dog with me cause the place was suitable only for recently discharged inmates from the prison. Ok, maybe Joliet was worse but then again, I did have a car and could have driven on if I’d had the energy. In Siliguri, I was pretty sure the next town on my trip was gonna be worse, being a border town, so I set out in search of a decent place to stay. After checking out a few places on the main drag, a wide, dusty, and desolate strip of hotels, jeep stands, cane furniture shops, and shacks, I found the only place that seemed tolerable from the lonely planet description. As it turned out, the Apollo Hotel was worth the 1.5 km walk with my pack on. There was a nice restaurant, a clean room, and a big tv – so nice considering I had no intention of leaving the hotel again until I left town the following morning. It was a fabulous evening of room service and movies in between explorations of India TV – Sylvester the cat speaks Hindi… I discovered a new dish while indulging in Indian room service: peanut masala. It was kinda like thai green papaya salad without the papaya – peanuts , tomatoes, chillis, red onion and lemon. Was glad I stepped out of my comfort zone though I had hedged my bets with a cheese sandwich. This time the risky food item turned out to be the edible one cause a cheese sandwich in Siliguri is sorta like a cheese salad sandwich (grated white cheese mixed with spices and mayonnaise(?) on whitebread with the crusts cut off). Breakfast was just so civilized as I ordered room service for the second time in less than 12 hours: my last pot of darjeeling tea and toast. Did I mention the tea billboards on the way out of Darjeeling’s Hills? Even TAZO was represented. Huh.

The lonely planet describes the journey from Darjeeling into Nepal as easy but requiring 4 changes involving buses, jeeps, & rickshaws. yeah… ok, maybe easy if you speak Hindi. I figured it was worth checking into whether a private car was affordable but that would have run me $40 so I decided to get an early start and try for the easy connections. Step one was not too bad. After stopping by a shack on the strip for Indian sweets for the journey I walked the 1.5 km back to the Bus/Jeep stand. A bus was taking off for the border town of Panitaki, only an hour away and a mere 50 cents. Once in Panitanki the fun began. A rickshaw driver grabbed my bag straight off and when I asked him how much it was to cross the border into Karkarbhitta, Nepal it kicked off a argument among the rickshaw drivers. I have no idea what was going on. Nobody even looked at me they just yelled back and forth as if they were arguing about which one would get the fare. After asking a few more times and being ignored I shouldered my pack and took off in what I hoped was the direction of Nepal. About a block down the dirt road of another old-west looking town (this one even older and wester looking than back in Ravangla) another rickshaw driver approached me. Again I tried to figure out how much this would cost but the only reply was a slap to the vinyl seat of the rickshaw instructing me to hop on. As luck would have hit a nice english speaking gentleman did a little translating for me, his parting words being, “I know this guy and he said he’d take you for 10 rupees. If he asks for more money just give him 10.” So up I climbed and off we went. The ride to the border was only about 10 minutes. We stopped at Indian immigration where 8 men processed my departure. Over a bridge and through a gate I was dropped at the Nepali immigration office where my driver did, in fact, demand 20 rupees. Still a reasonable price but locals have cautioned me to pay only what’s agreed upon as paying more can have adverse affects on local prices so 10 rupees it was. After getting my second (and thankfully gratis, as it said on the sign) Nepali visa this year (the first cost $30) I started down the road to the Nepali border town, Karkarbhitta. It was a tad surreal but at the time, I couldn’t really put my finger on why. As I headed for a collection of rickshaws I was approached by taxi driver who said he’d take me to Bhadrapur (where there is an airport at which I intended to hop a flight one day earlier than my scheduled flight) for a mere 1600 Rupees. I didn’t bother to ask if that was Indian or Nepali Rupees cause either way it was a lot of money for a half-hour drive (either $40 or $23, respectively). He said his was the only taxi in town. Perplexed, I continued down to what looked like the center of town. There I found the standard dirt-lot of buses but still something not-quite-right. I did not see a single car, jeep, or taxi. I walked into a guesthouse and asked them how I could get to Bhadrapur and they told me “You can’t. Strike”… You have got to be kidding. I just had to double check this with someone without a vested interest in selling me a room for the night so I asked at a little tobacco and chip shop on the street. They corroborated there was a strike but that the rickshaws could take me to Bhadrapur and the planes would still run. Ok, this explains why the buses are just sitting and the cars are non-existent. At this point, I was still a bit skeptical about the rickshaw thing since the airport is, like, 50 km away but I strolled back over to the rickshaws and was instantly feeling like a piece of red-meat in a dog-pack. Within seconds I’m surrounded by 20 hungry bikers angling for the only fare in town. I’ve got a guy who says he can get me there in 2 hours for about $5 US. Doesn’t look I have many options (I no longer see the one taxidriver willing to flaunt the strike) so I hop in. It’s right about this time that, you’ll never believe this, it starts to rain. Yes, I’ve been traveling in sunny bliss for most of this trip with only one little shower back in Bhutan and now I’m facing a 2 hour rickshaw ride in a steady downpour. Nice. Once I settled in it wasn’t such a bad ride but I did get a little cold. We encountered other rickshaws and ambulances (not to mention oxen, goats, chickens, etc…) but no cars on the road so things were pretty peaceful. My driver struck up a conversation with another rickshaw on our way out of town – a guy driving a Nepali and Japanese guy to the same airport but since he had two passengers we left them behind pretty quickly. As promised, I got to Bhadrapur after only 2 hours (but only after countless questions to passersby for direction to the airport – apparently, my driver had never been there before).

I was relieved to be out of the rain despite my soaked butt and backpack. I’d managed to keep my camera dry with a rain poncho, never before used. So, all excited that I’d dodged a bullet of being stranded in the middle of nowhere in the rain (forgot to note that part of our journey was on an unpaved road) I saunter up to the Buddha Air counter in the one-room airport of Bhadrapur. After about 15 minutes and countless buddha air employees ignoring me I finally get the attention of a guy who cares but he tells me that there is no way I’m getting on a plane today – they are booked with Indian tour groups. My heart sinks but I ask him if it’s ok to wait around and see. It’s only 11 and there are 4 flights out. Plopped on a bench waiting for my pants to dry I watch the Indian tourists come and go (In two days is the Hindu festival of Holi which, no doubt, many have chosen to spend at Kathmandu’s huge Hindu temple, Pashupatinath). I read Tom Robbins. I eat my Indian sweets. I sweat bullets. At one point in Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, Tom Robbins has a character that gets a seat on a booked airplane by offering another passenger $65 for his seat. I start to eye up prospective passengers that might not be with the group and who might consider such an offer. 3 flights later, just pages before the finale of frog pjs, one of the Buddha Air guys comes up to me and motions for my backpack. Stunned, I approach the counter and ask the only guy who appears to speak english if I got a seat and he says YES! During my wait I had run through all the possible scenarios : sleeping in the airport (probably not an option), finding a room in the tiny town of bhadrapur with a wet sleeping bag, miraculously scoring a seat on a plane and dining on fabulous thai food in Kathmandu. Oh joy, I could have kissed this guy.

I only needed to survive the scary plane-ride to Kathmandu. This was quite possibly the scariest flight of my life on a plane the size of a small school bus rocking and rolling though menacing storm clouds. While waiting at the airport, Nepali TV reported that the rain of the day was the first in 5 1/2 months. Yes, 5 1/5 months of no rain and the storms roll in on the one day I take a 2 hour rickshaw ride and a flight through the Himalaya. What a number those rains did on Kathmandu though. The city might not be clean but it is clearer than I’ve ever seen it. I’d heard you could see the Himalayan range from the city but you could have fooled me since I’ve only ever seen white haze in the distance but today the sky was clear and blue and yes, the mountains were there for all to see. I got warm welcomes from my guesthouse (third pic is the rooftop garden at tibet gh), my laundry/internet guys, and the pumpernickle bakers, asking where i’d been. The gayatri mantra wafted down the streets of Thamel, now packed with westerners. Now that the contentious elections are over and the mountaineering season is gearing up, the tourists are back in droves and it’s alot easier to be one of them as the salesman have more targets, I guess.

My first day back I had a fabulous breakfast and lunch, al fresco, with a trip to Swayambunath in between. I think I might be pushing my luck with the monkeys there. I get so engrossed with looking at baby monkeys through the camera view-finder that I’m sometimes oblivious to an angry monkey mama at my feet. These guys move so much faster in the morning! I took about 125 pics and got maybe 3 clear ones. If you’re not completely sick of monkeys, here’s one more for good measure. Incidentally, Tom Robbins has a reformed jewel-thief, born-again monkey in half-asleep in frog pajamas which definitely qualifies as an existential detective novel. I picked it up from the bookshelf way back in Kalimpong at the Cloud9. Coincidence?

Sue Borchardt in Kathmandu, Nepal. March 12, 2006. 3:30pm.

Bhutia Busty is reported to house the original Tibetan Book of the Dead but it is locked up somewhere and not shown to many. I did luck into a very nice old monk who opened the main hall and took me around the murals that depict the life of the Buddha beginning with his birth from his mother’s side in Lumbini, Nepal*. This particular monk spent decades in Nepal at Bodnath (a.k.a Boudha) which I think just might be my favorite spot on this trip, especially in the evening when the butter lamps glow and the Tibetan pilgrims are out in full force. He explained to me that Bhutia Busty was originally located high on what is called Observatory Hill here in Darjeeling which, at that time, was part of the kingdom of Sikkim. Later, he showed me the stick with which he taps the monks when they fall asleep during prayers. He assured me that he does not hit them very hard.

When I left Bhutia Busty I had to climb a steep hill back up to Darjeeling’s main square (where the tourists take pony rides) and then just kept on climbing up to Shree Mahakala Mindhir, the town’s main Hindu Temple. Never have I seen so many prayer flags in one place. They practically create a canopy over the temple grounds which, incidentally, happen to house the only monkeys I’ve encountered in Darjeeling. There weren’t too many of them and they didn’t seem to like to be messed with. While I was engrossed in trying to get a good shot of a baby I was oblivious to the fact that a mama monkey was showing me her displeasure. Yikes they are scary when they want to be.

Again, I indulged with an afternoon pot of tea at the Elgin but, I’m proud to say, made it through a second day without any butter at all! It’s been an egg day despite the threat of illness. I was really feeling the need for the protein so ate a cheese omelet for breakfast instead of my usual apple muffins under an obcene amount of butter. Mmmmm… it has me salivating just thinking about it. Maybe tomorrow.

I got a little antsy at the prospect of another day here in Darjeeling. It’s impossible to stay in go-mode when you’re traveling for two months but I have perfected the art of spreading out seeing, shooting, chilling, and eating. Darjeeling, however, has nothing on Kathmandu when it comes to all 4 of those so I’ve decided to head on out to Siliguri tomorrow to see if there’s any chance of getting on a Buddha air flight one day early. If I could squeeze another sunset at Swayambunath or Bodnath in before I head home I would be thrilled. If nothing else I get to explore another town, Siliguri, my last in India before crossing into Eastern Nepal.
Sue Borchardt in Darjeeling, West Bengal. March 9, 2006 at 5 p.m. where it seems to be getting a little warmer every day.

* India has long claimed the actual birthplace of Buddha is in India and not Nepal. However, archaeologists discovered in 1996 a commemorative pillar placed there by the Indian Emperor Ashoka in 249 B.C. that marked the precise location.

UNESCO has said that Lumbini is one of the holiest places of one of the world’s great religions, and its remains contain important evidence about the nature of Buddhist pilgrimage centers from a very early period.
more info…

So I mostly just stretched out the spaces between meals with short walks and long tea in the afternoon at a rooftop cafe. For dinner, I bravely ventured back into Indian food territory at the Hasty Tasty, a vegetarian cafe that’s very popular with the local students. I got the special thali which was loaded with vegetables though all cooked to the extreme. Homemade bread, rice, dahl, a paneer (fresh cheese) dish, and the previously food poisoning malai kofta all served in little stainless steel dishes on a large stainless steel platter. So far so good.

Good news, I have finally found the Indian sweets here in Darjeeling that I discovered in Gantok – little blocks of sweet something sometimes with nuts or coconut or cardamom. I really have no idea what they’re called since every variation has a different name – some made with ghee, some with milk, and some so sweet they make your teeth hurt. After hunting since my arrival in Darjeeling I finally found them in a tiny stall, down the steep hillside, in the bowels of Darjeeling’s huge marketplace. No slick and shiny mainstreet sweetshops as in Gantok where I discovered these treats.

I’m now at an internet place that doesn’t support uploading pics so I’ll use one from yesterday when I had high tea at the Elgin. Note the scottie dog on the right at his own table.

Feeling a little guilty about having such a lazy day so tomorrow I’ll try and hit either the Japanese Peace Pagoda or the Bustia Busty monastery, both a bit of a walk but in opposite directions.

Sue Borchardt in Darjeeling, West Bengal. March 8, 2006 at 5:51 p.m.

Tiger Hill is your standard tourist experience. I think most countries I’ve visited have had these sunrise or sunset locations where every visitor goes at least once and Tiger Hill is Darjeeling’s version. When we got there we were pretty curious to see everyone facing east – I guess they really did come to see the sunrise but I came to see Kanchendzona, the third largest mountain in the world and the highest in India. As luck would have it the sky was clear enough to see the mountain light up but the valley was full of haze so the pics were not as amazing as the view in real life. Still glad to have seen it since I’d heard from many people they’d made the trip but saw nothing but clouds.

Once the sun was up everyone piled back into the jeeps to caravan back to Darjeeling by way of a couple of other bizarre points of interest – a monastery that was closed but outside of which women line up selling plastic souvenirs and a world war II war memorial that consists of a loop of railroad track and an obelisk.

By this time, I had discovered that the passenger sharing the way-back of the jeep with me was Tony, a computer programmer from New York City born in Rajasthan. Tony was in Darjeeling for one day only and was up for splitting a private car rental with me so we could cram as much as possible into the day. The transportation situation in Darjeeling seems unlike anywhere else in India – it’s very expensive to hire a taxi so I was a bit up in the air about how I was gonna see the places I was interested in anyway. A plan was hatched over breakfast. In keeping with my habit to write about my eating habits I’ll confess to having eaten even more butter this morning than yesterday’s 1/4 stick. If you have ever shared a meal with me than my butter consumption is probably already burned into your memory – I am now legendary on yet another continent. After breakfast we decided to walk to the market to get some paan – this is what they call the beetle nut concoction I described a while back. Tony convinced me that I would be missing an incredible experience if I came all this way and did not try it. I was skeptical but couldn’t help thinking about how I almost left southeast asia without even trying a mangosteen (my new favorite fruit). The basic version of this thang is a split beetle nut and some lime powder wrapped in the betel leaf. We were getting some extra fancy version though from a place that came highly recommended by the locals. I shudder even writing about it – one bite of the leaf wrapped around god-knows-what and I knew it was a taste-sensation I had no interest in. Imagine a soapy tasting leaf filled with silver cookie decoration balls, spices, weird brownish-orange juice, spearminty tasting green gelatinous stuff, and countless other unidentifiables. I spat it out immediately, glad nobody was there pointing a camera at me.

Our next stop was the Toy Train station where we tried to get tickets for the joyride on an old steam engine (my dad would be proud) that travels to a neighboring town with several monasteries. The morning train was sold out so we decided to stick around for pics of the steam engine and then go find a cab to hire. What an ordeal. Despite the fact that Tony spoke Hindi it still took us a long time of running around to different cab-stand negotiating with drivers slipperier than used car dealers. By about 12:30 we had lined up a driver who took us to, i think, 5 monasteries, many of which allowed us to take photos. bonus!

We parted ways at about 4 pm after visiting the Zoo and a tea garden where baby goats grazed. Tony was heading back to the first big monastery we stopped in for the afternoon Puja when the monks chant. I was tanking and could think of nothing but high tea. I’m not even a huge fan of Darjeeling tea, preferring Assam’s caffeine punch and malty flavor to Darjeeling’s perfumey brew. The tea at the Elgin, however, was fantastic and made me enormously happy. The location didn’t hurt either: I sat in a garden, surrounded by orchids, as the sun lit up the city on it’s way down. At the table next to me sat a jacketed scottie-dog just in from his afternoon walk with one of the hotel’s maids, sporting a floor-length frilly apron. ahem. I guess that’s the British for ya. Tomorrow I think I’ll take my tea at the Wyndamere Hotel where I’d planned to go today but crapped out half-way up the hill where the Elgin awaited.

Sorry about today’s pics – there is no single internet place with all the tools I need so I had to mail these to myself at one place and upload them to my blog at another so the quality is a little off. Hopefully, you still get the idea.

Sue Borchardt in Darjeeling, West Bengal. March 7. 2006 at 7:07 p.m. where I’ve been up for waaay too long.

My final night in Gantok I continued the search for a meal containing fresh vegetables, protein or both. I thought I’d hit the jackpot with the Tibetan restaurant in the Hotel Tashi Dalek where the menu lists chinese dishes with tofu! I have not seen tofu on a menu since I left Kathmandu. Alas, there was no tofu in the house and no eggs either but I did get the answer to the mysterious no-egg phenomenon. Apparently, there is an egg shortage all over Asia right now due to the bird flu outbreak. I still had a nice meal of noodles with tiny traces of carrots and hot peppers (where DO all those vegetables in the street markets end up?!). Without Susan’s parting gift of trailmix I think cheese would be my only source of protein in India.

Since I was leaving early (8 a.m. yeah, not exactly early by the rest of the world’s standards but I’m realizing the North Indians like their sleep) the next morning for Ravangla in South Sikkim I knew there would be no breakfast for me unless I got it the night before so after dinner I hit the Quickbite – a slick Indian fast food joint – and stocked up on Indian sweets and pastries I could not identify but that looked pretty tasty. I got about 8 items (they’re really small) in case any of them were awful but most were fantastic and went well with the nescafe I scrounged up in the hotel dining room the following morning. Had to leave the hotel about 7:30 to get to my shared jeep in time and off we went, on schedule.

The ride from Gantok was pretty uneventful – standard switchbacks and steep roads for about 3 hours. Ravangla is a small mountain village looking a little like something out of the old west. I planned to stay only one night before heading onto Pelling in West Sikkim and when I arrived I had two things to do before I explored the town: find a place to stay and book a jeep to Pelling for the following day. This is when things started to fall apart. I think I checked every Hotel in town (of course, with pack on back) and I was in the unfun position of choosing the least of the creepy, smelly lot which turned out to be the 10-zing (get it?). Frankly, I was not sure if I could survive a night here. It was a damp, bare-bones, cell of a room with no sheets on the bed and no toilet seat but I wasn’t ready to deal with the prospect of sleeping there yet and frankly, had no other choices. Bag stashed, I went back out to book my jeep before hiking up the hill to the local monastery for views of the dramatic location. It was at this point I found out that there were no jeeps to Pelling. No sweat, how about Darjeeling? Nope. okaaaayy. So I went back to the 10-zing and picked the brain of the teenage english speaker running the place. She ran down many options all of which involved 3 steps – buses, shared jeeps, connections. hmmmm. She also told me there was no place in town to change money. Somehow I mis-calculated on this but didn’t realize it until after paying my hotel bill in Gantok and it was too early to do anything about since nothing was open. I decided to let all this percolate for a bit while I scoped the town which did not take long. I had visited all Ravangla’s corners and polished off the last of the trailmix by about 1:30 p.m. so I sat on the front steps of the 10-zing and dove into Tom Robbins for a bit until a Spanish couple arrived (via one of those 3 connection days) and we exchanged info until they ran off to turn their geyser which I now know is pronounce geezer. At about 2:15 I decided to walk up to the Jeep stand again just for the hell of it – I mean, there were something like 50 jeeps parked on Ravangla’s side road and I couldn’t believe none of them were going where I wanted to go. As luck would have it I found a guy who said he’d take me to Darjeeling for 1200 Rupees. That’s about $30 and alot of money in these parts but I was beginning to get antsy since I have only 6 days remaining in India. So after telling the driver I did not have enough $ to pay him but would change dollars in Darjeeling, I said “let’s go”. We grabbed my pack from the 10-zing and headed south for West Bengal and out of Sikkim. (I had the Darjeeling province wrong in a previous post. It’s actually in West Bengal).

What a wild ride. The drive took us from a chilly 8000 feet down to a balmy river valley and back up to Darjeeling. Once we passed warm Jorethang on the banks of the Rangeet river, we crossed the border out of Sikkim where they double-checked my permits (even though I was leaving). The lonely planet lists the drive from Jorethang to Darjeeling as taking 2 1/2 hours but my driver said he would take a shortcut that would get us an hour faster. He was right, it was faster but what a road it was. Just barely wide enough for the land-rover, the road took as through tea estates, tiny villages of tea workers, and over axel-busting rocks and ruts. Had we encountered another car on some of the narrower stretches of road there would have been nowhere to go but it wasn’t a problem cause no-one in their right mind would take this road. The tea plants practically skimmed the sides of the jeep. Man are they cool, too. They look like little flat-topped topiaries in several shades of green with the new flush a bright spring green. We drove up, up, up for over an hour before we reached Darjeeling around 5:30 p.m. It was at this point that my driver told me he could not drive me to a hotel which I still don’t understand – something about him being a registered taxi in Sikkim but not West Bengal. We parked the jeep on the outskirts of town at his brothers jeep company and off we walked into the Darjeeling night. Even dropping $30 on a private jeep I still end up schlepping my pack around looking for a hotel! After checking into the Crystal Palace (if the lonely planet describes this place as spotlessly clean I am scared to see the rooms they list as musty) I changed some dollars for my driver (whose name I could not get even after many repetitions) and got a veggie burger at a vegetarian snack place not far from my Hotel (were there vegetables in it? not sure. seems a little like a chick pea cake of some sort but it came with a slice of cheese and I was starving). Kinda weird scoping a town at night. The roads are quiet, dark and yes, steep – almost medieval in a weird way.

I survived my one night at the Crystal Palace but did not get in the bed or use the pillow (again, so grateful for my sleeping bag). It was a challenge to take a breath in the room it was so musty and damp. I was up at 5:30 a.m. and walked the town until 8 when the local western-style bakery opened up where I ate a cheese pie, two pieces of toast, an apple muffin (!), no less than a 1/4 stick of butter, and a small pot of delicious Darjeeling tea served in a silver teapot.

Darjeeling is beautiful and ugly at the same time. There are shells of building that are all but falling down, there are narrow, grey, stairwells up it’s very steep hillsides, there are beautiful raj-era buildings and remnants of British culture: gardens are well-kept and people are very affectionate with their dogs!

Ok, on with the story of my search for a new Hotel. This proved to be really tough as there is, apparently, no correlation between lonely planet recommendations, prices, and actual rooms. Places highly recommended in LP were horrible. Expensive places were horrible. Nice looking places with reasonable prices were full. I even got a little desperate and visited the way upscale colonial era Elgin Hotel (where I will definitely visit for high tea this week). It was expensive and nicely decorated but… musty. My last stop, a place only steps from the crystal palace, turned out to be lovely amd affordable with Tibetan decor, a friendly staff (is there some sort of correlation here?) and a steal at only $12 per night (the Elgin ran a steep $75). So onto the exploration of Darjeeling. There are tons of things to see here starting with a sunrise trip to Tiger Hill at 4 am tomorrow to see Kanchendjonga meet the sun. Other places on my list: tea estates, the monasteries of Goom (a neighboring town), the toy train ( a steam powered mini locomotive that runs to Goom), and maybe the town of Mirik, famous for growing tea and cardamom on India’s border with Nepal.

Sue Borchardt in Darjeeling, West Bengal. March 6, 2006 at 5:18 p.m. where it gets COLD at night and warm and sunny in the day.

Many of the local Indian stations, the BBC, and CNN were all running Bush’s speech to the Indian Parliament last night so I tuned in for as long as I could stand which turned out to be not very long at all. It was painful to watch. He began with Namaste which, of course, is a traditional greeting in these parts but he pronounced it n’-MAAAA-stay and frankly, I think it took the MPs a beat or two to figure out what the hell he’d just said cause there were only a few claps of acknowledgment. The rest of the speech was standard George.

My early start this morning (by Sikkim standards) meant I had to breakfast at the Hotel. After ordering a cheese omelet and pot of tea I was told, about 20 minutes later, “no eggs”. Toast it was. Lunch was a grilled cheese so I am even more committed to finding vegetables for dinner tonight. Tomorrow I leave for Ravangla in South Sikkim mostly cause it’s half-way to Pelling in West Sikkim where there is a very old monastery and the mountain most famous in these parts, Kanchendzonga. It’s kindof a long way to go for not much but I’m pretty much through with Gantok and not quite ready to face the bustling Darjeeling. Rumor has it that neither Ravangla or Pelling have much in the way of internet connections so this might be my last post until Mar 7. If I find a connection (even a shack with dial-up as in Bumthang) I’ll definitely use it though so stay-tuned.

Sue Borchardt in Gantok, Sikkim. March 4, 2006 at 1:30 p.m.

I hopped a taxi up to the Enchey Gompa and while hunting for a taxi stand it occurred to me that this quite an organized town. Taxis do not just stop anywhere, only at designated stands. The only dogs I’ve seen around town were on leashes. There are traffic cops at every major intersection and pedestrians have little bridges for crossing the main streets. I already mentioned the public toilets and firehouses. Other things are baffling in their dis-organization like the aforementioned random restaurant opening times and the mysterious closing of my favorite internet spot today (hence the lack of pics in this post). Their disarray does not hold a candle to the State Bank of India though which I visited today since it is the only place in town to exchange foreign traveler’s cheques. It’s not hard to imagine where Terry Gilliam got his inspiration for Brazil. No doubt he just visited a government office anywhere in the world (even Baltimore city – have you been to the department of records?). The foreign exchange desk was up two flights of dilapidated cement stairs and through some rabbit-warren hallways of a nondescript institutional building. There I had three different men handle my transaction filling out forms, stamping things, handing me tokens. Their desks were covered in giant ledgers, tons of paper scraps, and currency. The man who took my dollars examined them quite carefully but it seemed he was mostly concerned with how they felt as opposed to how they looked. The guy who finally handed me my rupees added my total by hand (at least he did it several times to be sure). He got the coins I was due out of a little plastic jar!

Flush with cash I headed down the street for lunch which I thought should include some vegetables since i’ve been eating way too many grilled cheese sandwiches (more white food). I settled on Chinese food: The vegetables are cooked, the restaurants are well-versed in vegetarianism (the menus here are divided into veg and non-veg sections), and my veggies would be cooked under a high heat to kill any bugs that may send me back to the fetal position. Woah. I have NO idea what I ordered or which part of China it might have come from but it was basically a bowl full of brown gravy in which floated little brown balls of something that tasted vaguely like the insides of an eggroll mashed together with something doughy and then deep fried? Thank goodness for rice.

Post lunch I headed down the hill to check out another Gompa that a German girl told me about over breakfast. The views were amazing and the walk took me down vertiginous windy cliff roads directly under the ropeway which I had forgotten that Gantok had. It must be new since it’s not yet in the Lonely Planet. It makes the place look like the green hillsides of an alpine village where some kook terraced all the hillsides with rice paddies. Amazing. I was thankful for that bonus cause when I arrived at the second Gompa I was completely disappointed. It was abysmal. I think this is the first monastery I have ever visited that was genuinely depressing. I did one look around the stupa and high-tailed it outta there and caught a shared taxi back up to Gantok just in time for the sun to set, the air to turn cool, the streets to be cleared of cars (man i love that!), and the musak to started wafting out of the loudspeakers (my friend shelley said it’s just like m*a*s*h which hadn’t even occurred to me).

I’ve got a big day planned for tomorrow since It’s probably my last day here. In the morning I head to Rumtek and the Darma Chakra Center which is about a three hour roundtrip. In the afternoon I’ll hit whatever else I have time for.

Sue Borchardt in Gantok, Sikkim. March 3, 2006 at 6:07 p.m.