3:50 a.m. wakeup call
Last night I was sound asleep by 9 p.m in preparation for my early day today. I was surprised by a knock at my door at around 9:15 when the hot-water-bottle delivery man showed up (could a $12 hotel get any classier?). My 3:50 a.m. wakeup call was unsolicited but I’m guessing my hotel is used to having people sleep though their Tiger Hill sunrise tour. If I’d had my way I would have rolled outta bed about 10 minutes before my 4:30 pickup. As you’d expect for a sunrise trip, it was quite dark as I quietly descended the 5 flights of stairs from my room to the lobby. There I found 4 Indian tourists, the lot of us still locked in for the night. They were not shy though and were running around calling “Bai, Bai” which means little brother in Nepali (the main language spoken in these parts). Bai is how waiters, hotel guys, etc… are referred to and I’m told it is completely acceptable though it seems a tad demeaning to me. When we made it onto the very dark street via a side door there was nothing there - no taxi, no jeep. We hung about for a bit and then a man came down the street and talked to the other tour-goers and then asked me my room number and took only me up the street in the dark (one of the few times I’ve had occasion to use my headlamp on this trip). The jeep was waiting a block away, full of Indian tourists. I piled in the back of the jeep and then off our driver went again to find our last passenger, who, as it turned out, was also staying at my hotel. Not sure why he didn’t fetch us together.
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.
