Day 02 - Darjeeling

The night was cold and weary from travel, but the day dawned at 4.30 and we didnt feel it was early! We got a shock when we saw the clock and realised it was so early. Darjeeling is in the eastern part of India and so the sun rises earler. and to add to that it is a hill station and it is summer now. so sunlight is longer and comes earlier than usual!

We got up, got ready and left after breakfast. That was in the wooden floored dining room in the hotel which has a beautiful old fireplace. sadly it is no longer used. By the way the hotel had wooden flooring in all the rooms and the false ceiling is also of wood. the real ceiling on top is of shingles.

First was the Japanese Peace Pagoda and the meditation center.. A calm old place with a wooden staircase and paintings of bamboo in brush and ink, hanging on the walls in the upper rooms. Surprisingly there are no grills in the windows. If you lean out far enough, you can fall to your death. It was quite scary for my mom, who has a fear of heights (acrophobia)


The Japanese Inscription


Brush and Ink sketches in the typical Japanese style.


The entrance to the meditation center, with a picture and statue of the founder.


The pagoda itself.

Next we moved on to the waterfalls. down into the valley amidst the tea gardens and rocks, and had three cups of the most beautiful tea I have ever had in my life! Then we came back up again and we bought the same tea for friends and family, some three kilograms of it for about a thousand rupees. divided by five people paying, it didnt cost much..

My brother as usual got carried away and tried to so some stunts standing in the flowing water from the waterfalls and promptly fell into it. Came out dripping wet in ice cold water and downed some three cups of tea at the roadside shop.

Then we roamed around the Indira Gandhi zoo, which didnt have much, tried to see the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute which was closed and came back to the hotel. Then we went out walking into the market street in the late evening. My grandmother had locked her bag and lost the key. We broke the lock and went looking for a new one. We found that and also some warm woolen knitted caps, and a wonderful knife that is carried traditionally by the gorkhas.. It is called a kukri..


The way to the waterfalls where my brother fell into the water trying some stunts, standing in the ice cold water.



My brother dripping wet from head to toe and the driver of the jeep drinking tea


The mist-cloud shrouded tea gardens from the hut where they were selling the tea, which we got.

Then back to the hotel, dinner and bed.. We had to leave early next morning to Gangtok in Sikkim!

Day 01 - Travel

The original plan was that we would go to Jayanagar 4th Block Bus Stand and catch the Vayu Vajra BIAS 5 or BIAS 12, at 6 am on 21 May 2011. But true to Indian Standard Time Schedule, we reached the place at 6:40. And my dad was anxious that we will be late to catch the flight. So we caught a taxi on the road and made it to the airport in less than an hour.

We checked in before 8 for a 9.15 flight and loitered around the departure terminal eating breakfast (which my mother had made and packed the previous night) and watched other people loitering. At 9.10 my mother decided she needed a coffee before takeoff and we had to wait for 15 minutes for her to finish the coffee. And we ended up making the aircraft wait and we were the last people on board! What an roller-coaster!

That is how we started the holiday and it was a bad omen for things to come..

Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain, from the flight deck. We have just taken off from Bangalore International Airport (Thanks, we did'nt know) and are flying in a north-north-westward direction, at an altitude of 37000 feet, at 850 kmph. The outside temperature is -47 Decrees Celsius! Enjoy your flight.. (ya right!)

And my father started telling me that the destination was Hyderabad. I thought we were flying to NSCBIA,(Netaji Subash Chandra Bose International Airport) Kolkota! Its like the Sardarji Joke.. What technology! One plane, two destinations! Then after landing he tells me.. He thought there was a stopover in Hyderabad. But thank god no, we reached Kolkota in exactly 3 hours (12:30). The landing was rough and the plane bounced twice before rolling down the runway and taxing to the domestic terminal..

Time Time Time

Window with a wingtip

NSCBIA Gate 3A

Room Kanchenjunga, The Swiss Hotel, Darjeeling

Some idiot of a travel agent had booked us on a separate plane from Kolkota to Bagdogra. NOT a connecting flight. So we had to check out, collect our baggage in Kolkota and walk all the way around and check in at the departure gate again for the flight to Bagdogra! What a colossal waste of time!

Then we took off from Kolkota late (14:30). We were loitering in Gate 3A for nearly an hour for the flight! The gate was not even open, the aircraft was not even in the airport! Then we reached Bagdogra at 15:30, and started to look for the taxi which was supposed to be waiting to take us to Darjeeling.

We found it at 16:00 and started the drive, having momos in a small wayside tea stall at 17:00 (5 pm) finally lunch! And after a five hour drive up the mountain we reached the Swiss Hotel in Gorkhaland (Darjeeling) at 9 pm and to our chagrin discovered that there was no dinner and had to wait one hour for them to cook it. It was cold and we were tired. my mother who is diabetic started to go hypoglycemic. we scrambled for a glass of milk, gulped down some hard rotis and went to sleep in a icebox of a hotel room..

Thus ended the first day of our travel.. we had arrived battered and bruised in Darjeeling at the height of the tourist season! what rotten luck!

Introduction to Sikkim Trip

It had been a long time since we took a holiday.. And so we just started thinking of places to visit at the end of April. Both me and my brother had holidays and Mr. Anil (My dad) discovered his Leave Travel Concession was due.. Kazhiranga National Park is closed. No. Ranthambore was very hot. No. Madhurai and Kanyakumari are hot. No. Ooty and Kodaikanal are summer resorts, too many people! No.

So where? Sikkim! Thanks to Ms. Ira Pradhan! It was all planned and arranged in a matter of days. We knew nothing of the place and had no idea what to see and do. But thanks to a friend of Ira's, Mr. Bhanu Pratap, it was all arranged for us beautifully and conveniently. Sadly we didnt get to meet Bhanu, as he was very busy and we were roaming. But thanks to Mr. Vikram and Mr. Ajay, who met us and guided us, we had a lot less to worry about and were able to enjoy the places better.

So here goes a big thank you to..

Ira Pradhan,
Bhanu Pratap,
Mr Vikram Thapa,
Mr Ajay,
And everybody else who made this an unforgettable holiday!

The whole thing was ten days and I am going to write about each day in a separate post. Photos in my Picasa Album here. 10 days in 100 pictures.

Books I have read and NOT enjoyed

I have read a lot of books in the last few years, even more when I was not well, and there have been only a few that I would NOT care to recommend to others. People come up with all kinds of suggestions for what you SHOULD read, so I thought I would make a list of the ones I did not like and ask others not to waste their time. So here we go..

1. As you like it, by Shakespeare.
This was a textbook in college for English Literature. Its one of those Pastoral Comedy stuff, dont bother.

2. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.
This was also a textbook in college, depressing dark and boring. Don't even think about it.

3. Far From The Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy.
Same textbook stuff, useless meaningless drivel, but people will start cursing me so i wish to answer them. go to the end of this post.

4. A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams.
Ya right, this is also a textbook, so forget it.

Now comes the more interesting and important part. The above four will serve my analysis perfectly.

All textbooks and award winning literature is bad. And there is a reason for this. Book reviewers and academicians who select texts for young people to study, are depressed sadists and take pleasure in torturing others, maybe because they themselves suffer in life. There are a lot of people out there who feel that suffering is good. And it is an elevating experience that a young man has to undergo to "grow up". Dont get fooled. Its a big load of trash.

Let us see what people say when they talk about the award winning book. They say that the book or story is a faithful portrayal of life and its hardships. Its a brilliant critical analysis of the fallacies of mankind. It serves as a mirror to society by showing it whats wrong with it. It talks about what is and not what should be... etc etc etc..

Now dont get all worried if you didn't get even one word of it. Its not meant to be understood its only meant to make you feel its something important and highly intellectual. And they succeed in giving you that feeling. Dont get fooled.

Now let us see what it is and what it means. They say that mankind can improve only if you show them what they are and tell them what they are doing wrong, By criticism and evoking thought, dynamic change and a lot of other high flown words to go with it.. Add anything you can think of..

But the point I am trying to make is this.

You can never change mankind and the way the people think by showing them their own ugliness. they will only get revolted by it, cover it up, but move on WITH it. What you can do is this. Show them the beauty of life, the hope, the enjoyment, the fun and the excitement. but send a message - in a captivating story about morals and ethics and principle and whatever you hold sacred and dear.

Simply put its this. Jeffery Archer, Alistair McLean and John Grisham can teach a lesson and make people swallow a bitter pill far more effectively than Shakespeare or the Brontes or Jane Austen.

This applies as much to Literature as to the study of literature in college, Authors like Richard Steele, John Donne, Jonson, Johnson, Chaucer or any old coot is bound to bore students.

Conan Doyle, Edgar Allen Poe, Chesterton, Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Agatha Christie, and other exciting authors are far more effective. If you dig deep enough, you will find authors in every period of history who told exciting stories and at the same time have a lesson to teach, below all the superficial excitement..

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Oh god that was a long one, Tell me what you think, I would love to discuss this with anybody who is interested. comment and email me at maitreya . jagalur @ gmail . com

Neglect

I am extending my apologies to my blog, keyboard and head, for not coming up with something interesting for a long time now. My blog archive consists of 29 posts including this one and I have written posts in 8 months, in 3 years.. This is unacceptable! I am studying Journalism and hope to do something with my language and kidney (Kidney = Brain, an old joke at home) abilities in life..

So I am now making a new year resolution (yugadi) to write at least a post a week, and be more productive. A khushwant singh joke comes to mind. A journalist interviewing him on his 90th birthday "How can you be so productive, even at 90?" and he replied "Nobody has invented a condom for the pen you see!" :-)