OCT-B-12

A FULL LONG DAY EXPLORING DARJEELING,

FROM PRE-DAWN TO POST-DUSK,

FROM TIGER HILL SUNRISE ON KANCHENCHUNGA

TO A WALK ALL AROUND TOWN—TO THE (CLOSED)

HIMALAYAN INSTITUTE OF MOUNTAINEERING AND ZOO,

TO THE “JOY RIDE” ON THE “ROPE WAY” OVER TEA PICKERS AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF KANCHENCHUNGA AND THE TANGEET VALLEY, PREDEDING ANOTHER “WALKABOUT”

October 16, 2003

It begins as a long day if you start by getting up and out for a 3:30 AM ride by taxi up hill about an hour’s drive away to be on Tiger Hill before sunrise to see the sun come up and illumine the city of Darjeeling and its overhanging massif—the white-crowned Kanchenchunga. It is even earlier if you try to call to leave an early wake up call with the operator and the phone does not work, so you get up every hour to be sure you have not missed the ride out.

Six of us (with decided rejections from some of the others who exclaimed that they were “not morning persons~” (but then, how often are you going to be in Darjeeling India for this “must see” experience?) We found out very soon that we were not alone. It looked like the night was clear; from the fading full moon that had illumined us when it could get around the clouds we had hover over us ever since arrival. We were determined to see Kanchenchunga in all its glory—and what better parting shot than to see it in the first rays of the dawn sun gilding it before it awakened the sleeping Darjeeling?

But at least half of Darjeeling had the same idea. This was a rather poorly kept secret spread by Internet, but apparently common knowledge to every Indian tourist who could commandeer a taxi. We did the sema and found ourselves in a steady stream of traffic of jeeps heading to the top of Tiger Hill. We even had to wait in a queue to buy a ticket to get up further. Now, how do you sell tickets to a sunrise? We got up to the top through a jam of a thousand taxi jeeps loaded with Indian tourist s with the same idea, we thought, until we saw where they were crowding. They all went over to the East side of Tiger Hill which has a pavilion and parking lot on top for the people to come to see—and there are first class lounges above second class—and steerage for those of us who stand next to the rail in the parking lot. We were congratulating ourselves for finding our own niche next to the rail on the west side of the crowds as the cars could be seen by the tracking of their headlights like lemmings—hundreds in a long queue climbing the winding mountain road. We were, at first, virtually unmolested as the crowds packed in as many as a hundred deep along the east side, to see—what?—a large red ball eventually come up about a very cold hour and a half later. We could see the outline of the massive white massif of Kanchenchunga on the west and could see the North Star and big dipper to our right. We six knew what we had come to see and were ready for it. We were also shivering. Each had brought most of the clothes they had –in my case, not much beyond my seat shirt and vest—but two of the others had worn shorts and Tevas under their jackets—serious underestimate of the cold damp night sky on Tiger Hill. How cold was it? Well, I pulled out my Nikon pocket teletouch camera to put a Photo Works picture to your internet enjoyment, and a quiet whirring of gears is all I heard for the rest of the morning. It could not open, shut or turn off, so I had to unscrew the battery. Ironically, I tested it here at the Hotel Seven Seventy (I just figured out why the name—we are exactly at seven thousand seventy feet---7,070 ft, confirmed on GPS.

By the light of the half moon, I marked the GPS of Tiger Hill as 26* 59. 28 N, and 88* 17. 29 E—or 7,785 miles from Washington by bearing 348*. I had time to do such things—and shiver. And still they came. As they filled the whole east side of the mountain top, jumping up or hoisting their kids up over their heads to see the first glimmering of the sunrise, we were at first alone looking west toward the mountain. But, they got the idea after a while and could see little in their dense crowds so they came over to our side and pushed, shoved and then just hovered in our space. As is true for many Asians, they had no concept of personal space, so I had not been used to that many hands upon my person. They were not being belligerent or hostile; they just could not se why they could not sit on top of our heads since the globe’s space is not owned by anyone. I was knocked off balance with crying babies snuggled on my shoulder, and I could not raise my telephoto lens with the press of people upon me when the first glimmerings painted the top of the Kanchenchunga Massif.

But, it was worth it. The light came over the top like a cream being poured on a triple dip sundae, and the distant peaks like pyramids shown above the cloud-shrouded lower valleys. For the first time since our trek began, we each saw all of Kanchenchunga in its majestic massiveness. It went for light to pink, to golden then to a glaring white. I shot film with three cameras—until, as noted the NTT failed and then the Nikon N8008 went squirrelly, refusing to turn off. I retired each of these battlescarred veterans, and reloaded the little Minolta. Suddenly the crowd realized—Hey! The sun had also risen!—and started running toward their taxis creating the automotive jam that they had just made earlier with their bodies on the hillside. Even the ticket stubs show a red ball of sun rising---which could have been taken in Hoboken, whereas our scores of pictures will be showing the 180* direction of what it was shining upon—at least some of those exposures will be of a flailing crowd of silhouetted Indians. I do not believe I wish to be a part of the annual ritual bathing in the rush to the Ganges—at least the air up here, even if cold, is breathable, and the thick muddy and polluted waters of the Ganges in a crowd would be hard to breathe.

We got into the jeep and got into the traffic jam. We stopped to try to see the mountain framed by prayer flags, and the warming air from the sunrise caused the condensation of all the leaves of the trees and the even broader surfaces of the flock of prayer flags above us to rain down. We were crawling back to Darjeeling, passing Ghum Gompa and the huge Potola-like Choeling Monastery as well as the Eco-Garden and Ghurka War Memorial at which some of the tourist jeeps stopped on their return from Tiger Hill. But we had to get back to get two of our number off by taxi to the Nepali border from which they will continue their 'Wunderjahr” abroad—Nepal, Thailand, Australia, new Zeeland, next up for Christine from Dartmouth on the special program she has to spend a year after the senior year in extending this as an international program. We barely made it in time for her to get her taxi, and me to run up to my room, drop of exposed film and run into the shower as hot as I could make it to warm back up—see how spoiled I am already in my expectation about facilities and infrastructure, such as hot water and showers? It is OK in this hotel to expect hot water after “turning on the geezer”—but this is still India, so do not expect the toilet to flush!

I SET OUT ON MY “WALKABOUT” OF DARJEELING,

WITH TWO SPECIFIC TARGETS IN MIND—

EACH CLOSED FOR A SPECIAL HOLIDAY—“THURSDAY!”

I stuffed one roll of film in my pocket and started walking up to the pedestrian mall and plaza beyond markets. I stopped in one shop of old curios from Tibet and India and asked for them to show me a sitar. The proprietor said “Oh, no, but K. C. Dey would have it in the Old Supermarket in the Chandra Mall.”

OK, I will go to shop as the last thing I do after taking advantage of the clear day to see the mountain behind the city and go first and foremost to the Himalayan Institute of Mountaineering, which I had heard had been instituted by Tensing Norgay. I also wanted to see the Himalayan Zoological Park. Both were in the same place and could be accessed with the same ten Rupees ticket. Great! Both were there, all right, along the thirty minutes walk advertised on frequent signs. But they are closed today. Why? Because it is a holiday. What is the name of this special holiday? Thursday!

Bummer! I wanted to compare the HIM with the Mountaineering Institute I have visited several times in Manali and talked their with Rajeev and a number of other Everest summiteers who were interested in talking with me and getting some exchanges going with others who had climbed in such parts as South America and Alaska and Kilimanjaro, as well as the Himalayas. Now, I will have to return on some non-Thursday!

THE ROPE WAY—

UP AND OVER THE TEA PLANTATIONS

OF DARJEELING, AGAINST THE MOUNTAIN MASSIF OF KANCHENCHUNGA

I could not re-open the HIM or Zoo, so I just walked another twenty minutes to the North Point of Sikkim. There in a corner of the Zoo enclosure is a walkway that leads to the center of town on the way I had come from the plaza and markets. The Rope Way is advertised in posters as the Joy Ride which can take you in a gondola round trip to the Rangeet River, a tributary of the Teesta, which, in turn joins the Ganges just beyond Siliguri in West Bengal. The Rangeet Valley is well advertised also by a white water rafting group that outfits for rides on the Teesta/Rangeet Rivers on posters all around town. But, more imposing than the river from this distance is the deep Rangeet River Canyon, a valley rising sharply up to the Kanchenchunga Massif—which was still standing out clearly and bright since our first revelation of it this morning by “dawn’s early light,” when “the sun also rises.” I was drawn in the direction of the North Point of the Darjeeling walkway to the Rope Way just to see and take in the massif of the third highest mountain on earth.

I heard an anthem being sung along the way and pulled out to tape and photo an interesting regimented line up of school kids all in uniforms and marching single file into a play yard to start their morning classes. The wrought iron gate announced the school to be the Ramakrishna Sikahe Prasad Boys’ Higher Secondary School. I got just enough tape and film of their morning performance. I strolled on and saw the almost Versailles-like palatial gateway to another school yard with a very large white and blue Catholic School with the crest Sursum Corda, again in wrought iron (the Indians learned a lot from the British about how to take care of all t he better classes) with the students playing and studying against the overwhelming backdrop of the Kanchenchunga Massif. They had seen it all before, of course, so they ignored it as I looked over their playground at the magnificence of the mountains.

I arrived at the Rope Way to find I was the first one there. I was concerned that they might take Thursday as a holiday as well, but was later told that they would open at ten in the morning and I was over half an hour early. So, I sprang for the 75 Rupees price of a round trip and waited watching the mountain gather light.

I was the first passenger admitted not the first gondola of the day, along with a rapidly bubbling over family of Indians dressed in flowing saris, which cannot be too practical for a trip thorough the air and a drop of two thousand vertical feet. I wanted to take the aerial trip for a better view of the mountains, but it turned out that the real scene was below me. I saw steep hillsides in almost honeycomb patterns of hexagonal tea bushes, on very steep slopes not at all terraced, but connected with little footpaths. There were some ravines just too steep—meaning vertical—so no tea bushes were there, and bamboo trees reached up to almost tickle the gondolas passing silently overhead.

After a couple of ridges were passed, I spotted a couple of women tea pickers. They were covered all over and some also carried bright umbrellas as parasols. They had head covers and wicker baskets on their backs and were snatching the tiny little tea leaves from the apex of the bushes and snipping them with fingers into the baskets, which, judging from how full they already were, must have been started very early in the morning, maybe as early as I had begun, to avoid the heat of the overhead sun about starting in serious exposure right about the ten o’clock time I was airborne over them.

I crested another well-manicured step hillside of sculptured tea bushes and saw a whole panoply of tea pickers crawling up the hill toward the summit to get out of the now almost midday sun intensity, all dragging their baskets full of tiny little tea leaves. I learned later about the conal and flowers and the tiny tips of orange pekoe and green tea and the other kinds of subspecialty tea in the Darjeeling Tea Corner where I stopped for a postgraduate course in Darjeeling teas. But, what I saw was reminiscent of my observations in the Tigoni Tea Plantations of Kenyan highlands, or in the huge spreads of Zimbabwean Eastern Highlands, and the smaller undertakings here in Dharamsala. In many of the places in Africa, the tea pickers were not eager to be photographed, since it looked demeaning as heavy work for women. Males did the weigh-in and had to toss out the twigs and other imperfections in the loads brought in by the women pickers, some nursing a baby on one breast, holding a parasol with one hand and their picking basket with the other and seating profusely in the heavy rubber boots and aprons which were less protection to the thick African skin from the tearing and picking of bush twigs than they were the snake shield they had to wear to avoid losing too many tea pickers in the African fields. Her it seemed that the anonymous “field hands” were performing a ritual as old as time and certainly pre-modern, with the exploitation of the plantation very much in mind as the indentured servants worked out their debt to the company stores.

I saw pylons of steel towers erected above the cable cars’ cables as it went under the big power lines from the hydroelectric dams, presuming to protect the cable from having the power lines and their high voltage fall upon the cables and electrocute everyone inside the gondolas and anywhere in contact with the whole Rope Way contraption, updated in 1998. All around the place are big posters of the company that runs Rope Way that must have gone to TQM School—exhortations toward complete customer satisfaction and mission statements that would have made any downtown urban central city medical center proud. Quality is mentioned often—as an item that is rather hard to imagine otherwise—if I could go down on a smooth ride and come up the same way (which I did directly on the next gondola—noting that it was at least 20* hotter down in the Rangeet Valley. This time I was joined by tittering young women in colorful saris, who were first embarrassed, then intrigued to be in the same gondola with an unaccompanied man and a foreigner at that. They babbled as I leaned out of the gondola taking pictures of tea pickers who seemed to me to be women with a far mores serious purpose than the ones billowing clouds of pseudo silk around bare midriffs that looked like—as with many American teen queens Britney wannabes—they might better be covered for any enticement function that could be assumed to be the reason for the style.9In either culture’s couture.)

A FULL DAY’S WALKABOUT IN SEARCH OF A SITAR

CONCLUDING IN A FAILED ATTEMPT AT INTERNET EMAILING AT THE “CAFÉ GURU”

I have been commissioned on a mission. Virginia had made a request in view of a new course she is teaching the second semester, “Music around the World,” and she wanted me to find a Sitar in India. I had begun asking in Kalim Pong, and had been told that they were rare and often came from Tibet or Sikkim, and to try either in Darjeeling or in Delhi. I went to one shop along the upper market who had said he had no such thing but recommended K. C. Dey in the Chandra Mall in the Old Supermarket, above the taxi rank of the old town to find a music instrument merchant named Dey who would have it if anyone would. So, after the Rope Walk, I set out across town, dogging traffic and a few beggars and making great pedestrian distances close to the people and al the pluses and minuses that come from this close association. First—the olfactory! There are a myriad of smells that are overwhelming, and come at me so rapidly that there is first the waft of incense or flowers and then the stench of garbage, followed by the smell of perfumes and spices, then human refuse and burning trash. A long walk through the humanity of India would make one think all the worst and best of humankind, often all at the same time--repulsive and beautiful. Then there are the pastiches of local color which become a kaleidoscope as I move through them and they pass me by. Then the cacophony of sounds—including belching diesels which makes me remember a Dodge Ram 2500, and I wonder how the Turbo Diesel would handle these high mountain narrow roads? There is no question that these little underpowered diesel jeeps make it, but no way to explain how. There will be two or more of them trying to pas in opposite directions on narrow one way lanes with someone parked on the side. How they make it without the additional sounds of rending metal and smashing glass is unknown, but it has to be accompanied by a continual chorus of honking. There is a sign here at a turn along one curve that states “Horn Compulsory!” I have probably honed my horn on the Bronco twice in the last year. Here it is a more important driving necessity than the bumpers.

I about exhausted me, but I certainly exhausted the shops of Darjeeling. “No, we have no sitars, but let me show you a fine antique rug!” I threaded the labyrinth and even found K. C. Dey, who looked at me and asked “Why would you want such a thing?” He added “You will have to go to Siliguri to have any hoe of finding one.” Well, I have been commissioned by someone who is one of the only ones from whom I might take orders, and I continued on.

Finally, I crawled into one of the few internet parlors I had spotted and was going to report my lack of success in the Café Guru. But, there was no word processor program so I could not open the disc I had carried with the messages I had typed up on the laptop to be sent forward for thoughtful consideration before reply. It could neither attach nor copy and paste, so I was out of business. Even attempting to “Reply” to any message, brought out one of my least favorite pop-up messages “This Page Cannot Be Found.” This is a specious excuse, since I want to yell at the machine, that if only you would look right under the superimposed message you will find the “missing page” but there is no way out of this endgame except top close out and start over. So, I believe I have sent a message or two from Darjeeling—that I am in Darjeeling and will soon be leaving to start the long homeward bound trek in the morning via Bagdogra and Delhi (from which I will try again at the last place I had successfully emailed at the outset of this excursion and that in the Ajanta’s internet café) and then on through Paris to Dulles to Derwood—to see what wonders greet me there in the transformation of the Manse! Perhaps I can use the last exposures on the Photo Works roll in the Nikon Teletouch that refused to work in the damp cold of the pre-dawn morning on Tiger Hill to record and transmit to you any images of the new construction and its radical renovation of Derwood where even the woods have been remodeled in my absence!

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