The North East

From Kolkata I flew to Agartala to meet my father Paul. On the way to the airport I experienced the ‘best’ driving move I’ve seen yet. The taxi driver approaching a clogged intersection found half a lane that I didn’t think he would fit into (and I’ve squeezed some cars through some tight spots). He went straight through the gap on the right hand side without slowing down and then pulled a left turn across four lanes of traffic that was just taking off as the lights changed and zipped across in the nip of time. Then he looked at me in the mirror with a grin to say ‘nice move eh?’, I could only smile back, impressed with his guts and sense of space of time. Thankfully the airline pilots are not prone to these sort of moves and the flight was uneventful.

This time I was greeted by a familiar face. My father Paul was just coming to the end of a four week teaching stint at a Baptist mission in Tripura where my maternal grandmother Hazel had been a nurse in the 1950s and 60s. My presence made three generations of our family there, though my contribution only extended as far as a two hour English lesson in the home school conversation class run by one of the local parishioners. I also sat in on a couple of dad’s lectures which gave me a sense of his work teaching local pastors new ways of interpreting old testament scriptures and how to preach them to the village folk. Other than that we had a couple of relaxed days. We visited what had been the hospital where my grandmother worked – now an army barracks and went to the border with Bangladesh to watch the ceremonial border closing at days end. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a closed border!

After dad finished his teaching duties we headed north to Darjeeling, famous colonial summer holiday spot in the lower reaches of the Himalayas. My grandmother had been here too for her holidays and probably went to the same viewing point to watch the sunrise. We were lucky enough to have a clear morning enabling us to see Mt Everest on the far horizon and of course the much closer Kangchendzonga (India’s highest and world’s third highest peak). To escape the crowds and traffic we decided to head back on foot and had a bit of an adventure in the process. There were two things I’d heard about Darjeeling, the mountains and toy train, yet both were still surprises. Apart from their beauty the mountains were amazingly steep, rising 3000 metres from the plain within less than 50km. In several places there were houses or hotels built with the top floor having access to the street and the bottom floor resting on the ground 4 or 5 stories below! Yet the area is incredibly populated, not in the village style you might imagine but simply by lining every possible piece of mountain road with a house or shop or something. The toy train also follows the main road route – there’s no where else for it to go. However it travels in 10 hours what a car can do in 3, so given you don’t see anything different we decided to skip that particular icon.

The second day I arranged a guide to take me on a day hike. Dad had a bad knee from the previous day’s walking so I paid about $12 for a day of one on one with the guide. We took a back road to the viewing point and then I convinced him to take me further into the hills and forest. He was up for it though he’d not been that way for some time and was a bit unfamiliar with the trail. At one point he thought we had come the wrong way. This just added to the sense of adventure as we walked through bamboo forest thick and tall enough that you can not see out to get your bearings. There are no trees to climb for a lookout and it’s too thick to bush bash so you can only go on (back? – never!). Later we came to a more tree dominated forest which reminded me very much of New Zealand bush. Steep rugged gullies and very wet. But we couldn’t have been in New Zealand because there were monkey’s in the tree tops. Nice to see them in their natural habitat instead scavenging along the road side. In the end we came out where he was expecting and walked back along the road through the local villages. We stopped for a while to watch a local football (soccer) game. The only ground in the area was originally a natural hollow on top of a ridge which has been dug out to a flat soccer ground big enough to play 7-a-side on. So it’s on top of the hill but with high grassy walls/banks on three sides making a natural stadium type setting – and preventing the ball from running all the way down the hill too often. So a nice glimpse of local community and entertainment in a Himalayan village.

Next we return to the hot plains of India but I’m certainly looking forward to more mountains when I visit Nepal in a couple of weeks time.