Making Kathmandu

I woke up on what turned out to be my last day in India with a frantic drive to seek resolution to my soon to be expired Indian visa. In times of indecision it's best to capture yourself on film through a mirror.


After a few chais, I set off with my only conclusion being that I was going to get to the border, at which point the country I was deemed to spend the upcoming days in would announce itself.

I decided I had good fortune for my attempt when the first pharmacy I went to sold me valium. Then I bought a half kilo of oranges, a pack of India's largest selling biscuits, peanuts, dried chilli limes, and assumed, that under the best circumstances; I was going to be on a bus to Kathmandu for the next two or three days.

So it was a local bus to the border, where I stamped out of India, though free to stamp back in (the accessibilities of a multiple entry visa I no longer have). I told Nepali Immigration I didn't want a visa unless I could get a bus to Kathmandu, at which point they let me wander the Nepali side without one. Returning with a ticket and the assurance from a flow of departing buses, I offered the two green-and-white bills (USD) I had been hoarding since Canada in exchange for another pretty rectangle sticker in my passport. The fellow was reluctant to accept my bills for their wear, although in the end he turned away my tape in favour of his makeshift currency repair kit: thin white adhesive paper that he proceeded to dab over with permanent marker. Right.

Over lunch an Indian Christian from Kolkata assured me, after my inquiry as to whether or not the Kolkata Metro ran during the monsoon; that "we Indians aren't stupid, you know." Okay then - thanks for the business card. I'll be sure to call you next time I'm in Kolkata converting myself to Christianity while volunteering at the Mother Theresa Mission.

After lunch I went to formally introduce myself to the bus - make sure we were on good terms. To justify my uncertainty for what lied ahead, I introduced myself as a journalist; and explained that this bus ride was crucial to defending the security of my career. He seemed alright with it.


By the time we left, it was about two hours until sunset. The rolling plains that border the southern band of Nepal (a geographical - and opting to be political - region known as the Terai) were covered in Nepali police, their standard outfits an illogical blue camo. Two of the turtle shell shielded variety climbed onto the roof of our bus a few hours in, roughly around the time the bus boy came up and told me to close my window and curtain because "there's dangerous people out there." Right, valium then.


I woke up only once in the night to see a fleeting glimpse of the geographical sprawl of the Terai, something that in my dreamy haze I categorized as moonlit tundra.


Then it was morning. Suddenly we were stopped by a throttling riverside in the valley, being passed by an array of Goods Carrier trucks hauling petrol from India. This was the venue of our flawless fifteen-minute flat tire change, where I followed an array of biscuit wrappers on a urinary trail to a bush.

An hour later we were in the dust bowl of Kathmandu; the streets ribboned with hundred vehicle petrol line-ups.



We were in the capital in sixteen hours flat, an arrival directly coinciding with the morning that marked the end of the strike. The little belt of a Kingdom was once again receiving imports of Indian Oil, as paid for by a fixed reimbursement plan I was soon to learn of entitled "load-shedding."

Sikkim: "Be Gentle on my Curves"

Until 1975, Sikkim was an autonomous Himalayan kingdom.


Then it got engulfed by India, which I assume was deemed preferable to the otherwise increasing possibility of it being engulfed by China. India's secular policy is just slightly more appealing.

But judging by India's border protection in the area, China's once stated recognition of Sikkim as part of India remains indefinite.



So thanks to BRO (Border Roads Organization), all the Sikkimese roads near China are as smooth as silk.


West Sikkim is otherwise a debatable assemblage of potholes and dirt; but BRO is a multipurpose organization, and I reckon their forte is more candidly the road slogans recognizable the whole state across.


The roads tend to form spirals around the mountain heads, making this my favourite yet: "Be Gentle on My Curves".


So into the meat of it.

Gangtok

Gangtok's the capital of Sikkim, a tiered city fully equipped with a gondola; one of the many parallels that bring me to allude Banff.


The place is affluent - the main street (another Mahatma Gandhi Marg, as marks one street in every city in India) is being renovated into a tiled path with Parisienne street lights.


There was an indefinite hunger strike stationed across from an internet establishment during my time in Gangtok. I failed to look into it.


Tsongmo Lake

A general permit is needed to enter Sikkim, which is fully enforced by writing your passport number in a looseleaf notebook and walking through a disinfectant mat akin to those trampled in the most esteemed mad cow scares in the western homeland.

Tsongmo Lake is about 30 km from the Tibet border in the East of Sikkim, and so it is a trip which constitutes an additional permit issued only to groups of four or more. So we chartered a jeep as a group of six.

We took BRO's long, winding roads there; which is when all the military camps became evident.


While the Bengali tourists seemed to be doing a good job of popularizing the activity of walking on thin ice; I decided to leave the opportunity down below with the yak rides and climb the mountain. Though I will attest that yaks are bigger than anticipated:


An assemblage of prayer flags leading up:


A moment to deter altitude asphyxiation at the last prayer flag checkpoint:


The lake below, at 3,780 meters. So I'd say this is a hundred or so more.


A picture from the highest place I've ever defecated. Tibet looms beyond the hills - a nice "edge of the world feeling", that is - before Lhasa was burning.


Pelling/Katcheopari/Yuksom

I took a jeep from Gangtok to Pelling, which is an exhaustingly dull hamlet of hotels that have erupted due to its (sometimes) jaw dropping view of Kachenjonga. Prayer Flags on concrete.


And some escorting up the path to the monasteries. I took a lot of pictures of prayer flags in Sikkim.


...and a hellipad that evoked my first salivation for skating on virgin pavement I've had in six months. But otherwise it was incentive to walk on, indeed.


From Pelling I walked to Katcheopari Lake and then to Yuksom.


Prayer flags and bridges - what a combination.


In Katcheopari Lake - a holy Tibetan lake next to a momo shack - I stayed at a family's word-of-mouth known guest house hidden at the top of the hill. Old man Pala was once apparently the Dalai Lama's cook; an idea we generally deemed as a conspiracy; for he's a man whose stories are more interesting the way he likes them. I liked his Beijing Olympics winter jacket myself.


His kids, are capricious ones. Yuni looked like a four year old nun; though the kind that uses sappy burning embers to burn holes in plastic bottle caps, so you don't have to remove the cap to drink the water. As for other areas of innovation: our rooms didn't have windows, just panels.


After Katcheopari it was off on foot to Yuksom - up a mountain, down a mountain through an array of Sikkimese houses, with teal being the colour of highest fashion.


But after a few days in the rural hamlet with more yaks and even more yak cheese; my head became increasingly concerned, more and more candidly, with an escape plan to get out of the country. Eventually, I came to many more stupas reminiscent of this one:


To making Kathmandu.

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.

Kol-ka-ta-ti-ki-di-do

It took me two days, one "you are seeing Kolkata in limbo", and one newspaper headline regressing to the colonial spelling of the city ("Cowardice in Calcutta"); to realize that the reason Kolkata appeared to be in this much of a reverie, was because there was a strike.


"Oh, that's why the only Bengali restaurant that was open made me eat upstairs out of public view."

Maoists!


All the buses and trams were completely empty, rolling around on their routes.


While there is no counter (pop) culture (the unanimous love for Bollywood) in India, there is definitely a real counter-culture in West Bengal, baring the hammer and sickle and carrying hoards of the population along with it. In fear and/or support, I'm not really sure.


But after two days of the city running with as skeleton with only a few muted operations; Kolkata came back.



Beedies.


British buildings.



Box-cars.



An air of minds.


The perpetual scent of the carbon monoxide oozing from ubiquitous charcoal burners, a world painted in Bengali script, a confluence of refined colonial style and innovation Indian logic. A hyper-sense buzz.


I fancy getting a crumbling decrepid apartment, where we can hold our heads high together during the monsoon.


Yes, Kolkata - you and me, dressed in pink.


Yar.