Barking up West Bengal; The Darjeeling Limited

It became clear rather quickly that I left India in Kolkata, or rather; on my last train north.

I left my "Trains at a Glance" book with a kid from Oz and his Kolkatan street dog, and consigned myself to the shared jeeps that travel beyond the train line and into the strikes that seem inherent around the West Bengal Hills.


Darjeeling

In an ode to the British Raj and their attempts to ignore India, I was off to Darjeeling, the most esteemed place to convince yourself that Orange Pekoe is superior to India's ubiquitous masala chai. As another British municipality centered around a clock tower; the mostly Nepali population makes the ghostly brick buildings that are architecturally akin to Banff about as harmonious as the reoccurring fortnight strikes protesting for an autonomous region called Gorkhaland.

Alcohol is also more accepted here.


Darjeeling is centered around Chowrasta Square; where adolescents play hacky sack as chaperoned by this statue of Tenzing Norgay - the Sherpa who surmounted Everest with Edmund Hillary in 1953. The siren of the mountain people begins.


Exclusive of drinking real chai in Chowrasta, the best thing I did in Darjeeling was take a short mooch to a monastery where this fellow was sculpting Tibetan Buddhist emblems with the mannerisms of an orchestral conductor.


This lyric rushed in: "when the conductor fucks up, you can't blame the symphony", reminding me that my iPod has gone from delivering musical therapy each and every time I summon it to using a more Russian Roulette styled approach.


And the strikes: Darjeeling's strike came after I did, which began with the closing of the government offices the day I went down to the Foreigner's Magistrate to get my Sikkim permit. Conclusively, I attempted getting one at the border (a success), to discover through trickling media that the strike escalated to unanimous shop closures, discontinued garbage collection, and then; ultimately, the asphyxiation of the roads to Sikkim.


Of course, by that time I was in Sikkim; with a week left on my Indian visa. Not getting out of Sikkim meant not getting to Siliguri; a quintessential stop en route to Nepal; Nepal being my ultimate destination in my evasion of alien status.

Eventually I made Siliguri, by a series of luck, undoubtedly. From this bridge I said goodbye to India as a naked kid pulled a dead dog by a string and sent it down the river; much like burying a hampster.


But first, Sikkim.