Post # 170

Things I learnt on the trip -

Pack Light
Take lots of moisturizer
Take socks
Take clothes that fit
Pack light
Don't spend most of your money before leaving
Pack light
Lose weight
Pack light
Take books, even if you think you won't have the time or the inclination to read
Pack light

Did I mention, pack light?

My bag was the the heaviest and I didn't use half the stuff I had taken. I had it lug the damn thing uphill and up the stairs everywhere. Thankfully, it gave way only when we were back in Bhubaneshwar railway station.

I have also learnt new things about myself-

I have no patience
I have no patience with people who are late, except when it is me
I need my sleep
I hate walking uphill
I hate stairs
I can eat a lot of chinese food
My lips and tongue become numb at low temparetures
I complain a lot, about a lot of things
I like a little silence sometimes - I especially like it when others like to be loud and noisy
I snore

The rest of this post is also going to be about my trip and it's going to be long. If you don't want to read it go here and go wild (read - click on random article).

We left Bhub on the 4th, 8 of us, 10 articles of luggage. We got to Siliguri and had lunch at a "Chinese, Indian, Tandoori" restaraunt pretty close to the station. We were sitting next to a large family with a baby. They kept passing the baby around and then were alternatively walking it. Their food came before ours. We ate a lot and left for Darjeeling. We bought lots of water, Chlormint and Dairy Milk to keep us occupied for the 3 hour ride. It was brilliant. Great views and we were all sort of getting reaquainted. The 8 of us were a weird group. Not all of us knew each other all that well and I guess that made us all stay in our best behaviour. Everybody was most charming and at their funniest best most of the time.

We got to Darjeeling at around 5ish and checked into our rooms. 3 girls in one room and 5 guys in 2. There was a really sweet tempered Alsatian in the hotel. We just walked around the place that night and exclaimed at all the really good looking people. I guess living around steep roads makes people very fit and all that mountain air can't be bad for health. Everybody was pretty. Even the school boys looked very consious of how they looked. They all looked like they got up early in the morning to set their hair just that way. The places we went to must have the highest consumption of Brylcreem and Set Wet. Not to be outdone by a bunch of hill folk, SP promptly went and bought a tube of Brylcreem and tried to do something to his hair. I am not sure it worked. But it was fun watching him try. K also tried but his hair was too long. Poor him. M was constantly being bugged by all the guys. She wanted hot water to shower, the hotel people sent warm water to drink. I bathed in ice cold water that day. When I was washing all the train dirt out of my hair, my scalp went numb. I couldn't feel anything in my fingers and my scalp for a while after my bath. That was one of the quickest baths I have ever taken. After I bathed, the hot water started coming. Just my luck. We went out for dinner at a place close by. I think we slept early that day. It was a tight fit.

The next day we went to Tiger hill. My nose almost fell out. It was really cold and windy and we left really early. To see the sun rise over the 'Kanchendzonga' range. It was brilliant. There were 4 other tam folk there. Anywhere I go, I run into tamil people. We spent some 40 mins there, drinking tea and commenting on the people. V and SP and SD were all camera obsessed throughout the trip. It was almost as if they were looking at everything only through the LCD screen on their digicams. Anyway, they looked for light and angles and poses, I looked at weirdly dressed people. There were a lot of people there. There was this young tam couple; she was wearing 2 cotton pants, one over the other and you could see the lighter one peeking out from under the darker. It reminded me of those "Sunday longer than Monday" times when I was little.

We then went to a Garden, and looked at stuff. There were a lot of vendors there, selling everything from good luck charms to pencils to warm clothing. There was this old lady who was selling socks that were very furry. They looked like they had been made out of yak fur. Or is it hair? We then went to some other places and went and had breakfast back at our hotel. It was quite bad. They just had cornflakes, and puri aloo. We went out again in the afternoon to some shops and exclaimed over the stuff and their prices. The shop keeper refused to even take somethings out for us. They just told us that we couldn't afford it. True, but can't I even look at it? I bought this tiny Tara statue for the sis and a set of wooden coasters with gilt edges. I am too cheap. I don't know why I have to think so much to buy something. I can never make up my mind. There was this Garuda I wanted... Amma and Appa said they were going sometime; I'll ask them to get it for me.
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going out for dinner.. will finish this after I come back.

back. Great food. Rotis, kofta, badam lassi and some stuff off the others' plates.

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It's weird how you remember things differently. I had gone to all these places when I was 11 years old. There was this rock we climbed; it was called Tenzing Rock. I remembered it being very big and me refusing to climb down from it. When I saw it this time, it looked dwarfish. Really unimpressive.

That night, the guys went out before dinner and when they came back they told us that they had booked a table for dinner and that they had bought Rang De Basanti tickets. I was pretty pissed. I didn't want to watch the movie and they were making me cut short my shower in the most amazing hot water. So we went first to Coffee Day near the hotel we were staying in and lo and behold, one of the waiters asked us if we were from Bhubaneshwar. Apparently he had been working in the Coffee Day here that we go to all the time. Small world. Went to dinner next. Damn good food. Chinese. Spicy. Yummy. It was 9.45pm and the movie was supposed to have started at 9.30. M and SK wanted to see the movie really badly (for the 3rd freakin' time) and then the damn fools tell us that they hadn't really bought the tickets, that the movie was at 5.45pm and that it was just a prank. M and SK were pissed! M was steaming. SK was annoyed. This was the second time that they were stopped from watching the movie for the 3rd time. (Did that make sense?) The previous time, the movie running turned out to be Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In Hindi. The guys got the silent treatment. I was very amused and happy that I didn't have to sit through it again, but I wisely kept my mouth shut, sometimes. Though I egged them on to yell at the guys once in a while. It was fun. The really funny thing is that when we bought a Rang De Basanti cassette for the car stereo, the tape was cut! The movie was jinxed! Hilarious.

We also visited a Buddhist monastry that day. It was beautiful. The previous day, we went to a Buddhist Peace pagoda. It was all white and gold and gleaming. There was a monk doing Tai chi outside. It was picture perfect.

Left for Gangtok the next day. It was a long drive. Very very long. We were in a Mahindra Maxx and the roads were quite bad. Thankfully, nobody got carsick. I slept all the way. Got up for lunch. We had rotis, cabbage, aloo, and dal. V and SK took pictures with a white cat. SK looked like she was scared to touch it but wanted the picture very badly. I think it was then. Not sure. More car. More Himesh Resh.. That guy is everywhere. We also listened to a lot of Nepali pop. It was a welcome change.

We checked into a Hotel called Marigold and set out to explore the place. They told us that theplace to go to was M.G marg. So we got directions and left. They should have just told us to go up, up and up. Gangtok is built on staircases. Bloody steep staircases. They just went on and on. No railing. There were water pipes everywhere on the stairs. Atleast I think those pipes carried water. After a million years and totally out of breath, I reached the top of the stairs. I hated the others then. They made it look so effortless and very kindly waited for me every ten stairs to catch up. The last 2 stairs looked like they were each a thousand feet high. I hate being me sometimes.

Anyway, after all that effort, we found out that the market as closed on tuesdays and guess what day it was? You got it. The only places open were phone booths and food places. So we ate and made phone calls. Then we walked up and down the road and decided to look for cheaper accomodation. And we found it. If you ever go to Gangtok and want to stay 4 in a room, at Rs.100 per person, check out Hotel Sernya; right on the market and decent rooms. Indian toilets but beggars can't be choosers. Our rooms were on the 4th floor. Another million stairs to climb. Phew. We moved in the next evening.

Anyway, we ate at this really nicely done up place. Pictures of Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Al Pacino, The Beatles, vintage cars and liquor bottles; Saxophones and wax models of cars on the walls. It looked very nice.

The food, however, sucked. The orange twist was good but they didn't even have dessert. And everythingin the city closed at 9pm. The shops at 7 or 8 and the food places at 9. It was very sad. So muck wakefulness and nothing to waste time on. So we went back to our rooms and played cards, watched TV and slept.

We got up the next day and left for Nathula Pass. We had an amazingly loquacious driver named Sankar Chetri. He pointed out places and had an encyclopediac knowledge of everything. He was also very funny. There were several checkpoints on the way to Nathula as this was the border between India and China and we needed passes to get there. We also had to be the people named on the passes. Unfortunately for us, whoever had got us our passes had totally fucked up our names.

I, Sabyasachi Das, Shobhit Patnaik, Shriyukta Khanna, Maya Shankar, Deepak Menon, Kishore J. and Vimal G. became Meena, S.S. Das, S. Pallangyal, S. Gupta, M. Shankar, D. Menri, S. and V.J. And at the checkpost when the scary military police came to ask us who we were we had to say those names. We found it very funny. I have heard that stress makes people giggle. We were definitely giggly. We started stuffing our mouths with popcorn so that we wouldn't laugh out loud. Anyway, we were stuck at the check post for almost an hour and there started the Pallangyal story. It was hilarious. Kishore, Vimal and Shobhit were the Pallangyal brothers or cousins and they started off on how they were under cover and the Pallangyal race was superior to the Human race and most of the famous people were undercover Pallangyals. Like James Pallangyal Bond and Al Pallangyal and Austin Pallangyal and Alexander Pallangyal the Great and so on and so forth. A brilliant one hour. Then we went on to the next checkpost which was a lot quicker. We finally got to Nathula and damn, it was cold and windy. My lips and hands became numb. We got pictures taken with the Chinese guards and the flag and with each other and we just couldn't wait to get back into the car. After 45mins of biting cold, we got back into the car and went back down, desparate to get back under 15000 ft. I was on the edge of the Silk Route!! On the way up there, we saw warehouses being built to hold Chinese goods after the border is opened up for trade in April of this year. They were yellow with green roofs. We stopped on the way down at the world's highest ATM. It was UTI bank's ATM. We also stopped at Chango lake. Also known as Tsango, Changu, Tsangpo, Tsangmo, Tsangu, Changpo and many others. No two signs were the same. After looking at the Yaks (me) and riding them (others) and having momos and tea, we set back to Gangtok. We had stopped on the way up in a small market to vist the loo. It is one of the dirtiest I have been in. Not bad huh? The highest ATM, the chinese border and the dirtiest loo - all in one day!

We went to Lachung the next day. Went for a walk, sat on the local foot ball field for a while. Watched while the others played tag. They played till SK fell, then we went back to have dinner. Not all that great. I think we had rice and dal. I had paruppu sadam after a long time. That night was fun. We argued with the hotel manager and got an extra room because we didn't want to sleep 3 people to a double bed and then ended up 7 people on a double bed and one guy in the floor. We started telling ghost stories and SK and M got really scared and refused to let the guys go and sleep in their rooms. So they played antakshari till around 3 in the morning and we all fell asleep like that. Their reactions to the stories were hilarious. All shrieks and squeals. We got up the next morning and went to Yumthang.

It was a bit of a let down. We had pictures of it and they looked like they were out of the Lord of the Rings or Narnia but when we went there, it was just a valley with a thin trickle of water running through it. It was pretty even then. SK and V went to the loo there and apparently it was worse than the one we had been to on the way to Nathula. We spent a couple of hours there and then went back. The roads were so bad, it still hurts where I hit my head on the window frame.

It rained the next day. We stayed in bed till lunch time and watched Dil Chahta Hai. Went for lunch. The others went shopping, I went back to my room and slept. It was nice to just laze around for a while. We went out for dinner at a really nice place. Came back and oohed and aahed over what the others had bought.

Left for Siligiri the next day; caught the train to calcutta. Spent the next morning in Calcutta. Had an amazing breakfast at Flury's on Park road, went to the Oxford bookstore and spent a couple of hours there. I bought Mr. Nice by Howard Marks and Literary Lapses and Nonsense Novels by Stephen Leacock. I finished Mr.Nice on the Train back to Bhubaneswar that evening. Good book.

I am tired of momos. We had them everywhere. I also had fish! For the first time! I liked the fried fish.

I have written a lot. Too much. Enough.

Happy holi. Don't have too much bhang.