Big move days are always difficult and today was no exception. Yesterday I described the efforts my Bhutanese guides had made to see me off into India. We ended up with none of the earlier plans but yet another - a shared jeep to Kalimpong from the Indian border town of Jaigaon. When I showed up this morning I saw that the same company had jeeps to Darjeeling which left me baffled as to why they didn’t buy me a ticket there since they knew that was my intended destination and Kalimpong was chosen as the only nearby place I could actually get to. I will never know.

I hung out on the streets of Jaigaon for an intense hour waiting for my jeep to finally load up and hit the road, only about 45 minutes late. What an awful place it was. Grey as can be, rubble everywhere (gravel and disintigrating cement), cinderblock buildings blackened from exhaust (?), and *lots* of people and animals. It was a place to move from as fast as humanly possible. My fellow passengers (mostly bhutanese, including a couple monks) spent the time setting up their morning beetle nut fix (*). One of the monks had an entire bag of the nuts and leaves in which people wrap them along with a smear of lime paste (the stone, not the fruit). He and a few of the older ladies prepared their nuts and popped them into their mouths. They later spit out the leaves, thankfully before we took off since I had the window seat. This, of course, costs extra and I was relieved they thought to splurge on my behalf when buying the ticket ( a whopping $3).

It wasn’t until we loaded up that I realized there would be 14 of us plus a baby crammed into the jeep about the size of a suburban. There were 4 across on the bench behind the driver that I’m pretty sure was designed to fit 3 - me, a normal-sized man and two of the largest Bhutanese woman I’d seen my entire trip. The round lady next to me quickly fell asleep and spent about half the 6 hour ride uncounscious with her head on my shoulder. The drive took us through some lush terrian with tons of monkey sitings to distract me but I was thrilled to escape when we finally arrived in Kalimpong after a short detour to a crossroads where our driver found a new jeep for the passengers heading onto Gantok in Sikkim, the Indian province to the north of here. It was a bit like leaving the frying pan to enter the fire as I began my hunt for a place to stay with way too much on my back (I can’t figure that out. My pack was incredibly light when I left Kathmandu and the only things I bought in Bhutan were prayer flags and a prayer flag wooden printing block.) My first stop was the Crown Lodge listed in the lonely planet as the “best choice” in the budget section. It was $10 for a not-so-clean room with a squat toilet so off I went in search of my second and third choices which were thankfully close together. Unfortunately, they were about 1 km hike uphill from town. With my LP map out I eventually found Cloud 9, a really nice little place with lots of windows but there was no room in the inn so off I headed uphill to the Kalimpong Park Hotel where they had room for me but only only for 2 nights. It’s pretty upscale for me: $25 for a musty room with a tv but the common areas are just fantastic as the place was originally the summer residence of the Maharaja of Dinajpur. After settling in and handing over my laundry, I headed back to Cloud 9’s restaurant for a little lunch and tea. What a treat! It was the first real tea I’ve had since leaving home. Actual tea leaves brewed strong in a pot and served with milk on the side. The owner is a very friendly man who plays Eric Clapton cds and stops by all the tables to chat. I will try and get a room there when I have to leave the KPH in a couple days.

Post tea, I headed into town to explore a bit and find internet. What little I’ve seen so far is a big improvement over Jaigaon. Kalimpong has an amazing number of things in bloom right now: banana trees (I’d forgotten about banana flowers!), pointsettia (yes, as big a trees), rhodadendren, orchids, bougainvilla, azalea, lantana, hibiscus, nasturtiums and things I’ve never seen before. I saw an amazing stand of bamboo in town that’s at least 60 feet high, each stalk almost too big to get your hands around. No pics today as I spent too much time catching up on paying bills and personal emails. Write if you have time! I long for electronic connections since my travel partner Susan has gone home : (

Sue Borchardt in Kalimpong India. February 26, 2006 at 6:17 p.m.

* Beetle Nut - From the Middle East through Asia to Solomon Island this fruit growing on palmtrees is even more popular than alcohol and cigarettes. The nut is wrapped in the leaf of the betel pepper and sprinkled with burnt lime, catechu gum from the Malayan acacia tree and nutmeg, cardamom or other species. This is placed in the mouth and sucked on for several hours. Arecoline, a central nervous system stimulant, is released from the nut by the action of saliva and lime. It increases respiration and decreases the work load of the heart. Betel leaf has mild stimulating properties. Frequent use of beetle nuts stains mouth, gums, and teeth deep red. Long-term overuse of beetle nut is said to weaken sexual potency.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 26th, 2006 at 5:22 am and is filed under travelog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.