Lost in the Himalayas

OK, I know it's been a very, very long time since I updated this blog, but I've been lost in the Himalayas. Really.

Interesting to note: the Indians put the stress on the second syllable of Himalaya and hardly pronounce the second "a," so it sounds more like "Hi-mal-ya". I'm not sure how I feel about that. It does make it sound a little less, well, Spanish.

So, where to begin? We set off for Darjeeling on a warm day in October. We flew on Air Deccan, which is striving to revolutionize air travel in India by making it accessible to everyone. They offer ridiculously low-priced fares to the first few people who call in - these customers can fly from Chennai to Delhi for $5 or so. The rest of us still get low fares, but they've really taken the last frills out of no-frills. They don't even give you water for free. I wouldn't mind so much except that the food they sell on board is somewhat disgusting.

We arrived in Calcutta late at night, and felt the first hints of urban hostility while still at the airport. We waited in line for about 20 minutes for train tickets, only to find that as foreigners we weren't allowed to use that ticket window. We were told we had to go downtown for train tickets. We then ran into a white guy who also seemed lost and arranged to share a cab with him to the center of town. During the ride he regaled us with his stories of all the Cambodian women he has slept with and adopted (not sure which order that goes in), including some rather tragic incidents involving suicide on the beach and HIV. I don't think he even got our names.

The next day, we set out to explore Calcutta but found that it really wasn't worth it. The place is twice as crowded as Bangalore and half as charming, and that is saying a lot, considering that Bangalore is very crowded and not very charming. We did manage to get our train tickets after waiting in line some more, and we tried to visit a few parks, but we were soon exhausted and frustrated. Calcutta is the first place on earth where I have been afraid of being run over by pedestrians.

We decided to leave as soon as possible, and caught a train to Darjeeling that night. Well, actually we caught a train to the city nearest to Darjeeling on the rail line, and then grabbed a "share jeep" with some very innocent-looking blond English youngsters. They turned out to be 18 and straight out of high school. They were volunteering at a music school near Calcutta, and this was their first trip out into the world. We enjoyed the two-hour trip up the winding road and even got to eat some excellent momos (Tibetan dumplings) on the way. The little girl in the seat in front of us only threw up once, and her sister didn't throw up at all. I should add that this was not the fault of the dumplings. Every time you take a vehicle up a mountain in India and there are children in the car, they throw up. It all makes sense once you've hit your head against the ceiling of the vehicle a few times.

Darjeeling is a pleasant English city with lots of teashops and a few pubs. We found a clean, sunny guesthouse with a view of the Himalayas, and drank some Darjeeling tea at an overpriced tea shop. Then we started to plan our escape from the city into the mountains. We had hoped to go to Sikkim, but that required a permit, and we don't have much luck with permits in India. In fact, we did try to get the permit only to be thwarted by a sign that said the permit office would not be open until Monday afternoon. Since our time in the mountains was limited, we decided to head to the Nepalese border instead. It turned out that Sophie, our young English friend, was also planning on heading this way with a new-found friend, a South African doctor named John. The other English boy, Andy, had not quite decided whether he wanted to go or not. Somehow, the night before we were set to leave he decided he did want to come and quickly geared up with gloves and sweaters sold by the Tibetan women along the pedestrian mall.

The next morning, we all piled into a share-jeep for the 90-minute drive to the trailhead. There, we stopped at a border checkpost and Andy realized that he didn't have his passport. We tried to talk the guard into letting him through, and even to bribe him, but to no avail. Andy got a ride back, saying he would join us later that day, but ultimately he decided to stay in Darjeeling. When we got back we heard that he had headed to Sikkim with some American girls, so we hope that turned out well.

The beginning of the hike was quite difficult. Basically, you get to the border with Nepal and there's a set of staircases going straight up. It was a bit disconcerting to have old ladies, men carrying firewood on their heads, and little kids racing past us, but we did finally make it. I thought the trail was going to be far from civilization, but in fact there's a chai stand every ten kilometers or so. It was a big holiday weekend, so tons of people from Calcutta were hiking. The men were walking with cellphones, the women were carrying handbags, and it did not seem remote at all. Some of the city people seemed to be skipping the difficult part of the trail by riding up in a jeep.
The first night we stayed at a guesthouse run by a Tibetan matriarch. She ran a tight ship, with a dozen women working in the kitchen and men who seemed rather scared of her creeping around on tiptoe. The lodge was very comfortable, with four beds to a room. I am not sure if it was because eight hours of walking in the mountains had made us hungry and cold, but the food was absolutely delicious. We had the best vegetable soup I have ever tasted for dinner and tasty Tibetan pancakes for lunch.

The next morning, we woke up early in order to make it up to the high point of our trek before dark. We stopped at a guesthouse for lunch, and said goodbye to Sophie and John, who were staying there for the night, as they were on a longer trek and could take their time. Then we headed out. The clouds were very low on the mountain, and the visibility was poor. We climbed up the first part of the path on the jeep road, and then found a small path that seemed to cut across the mountain. We started out on the path, which was increasingly green and pleasant. After an hour of walking, however, we realized that the path was going down. We tried to convince ourselves that the path would climb up again, but it just kept going. There were no other tourists on the path, just a young boy and his cows.

We continued on the path for another hour, until at long last we heard voices on the road. There were two voices calling out, either to us or to each other. Further ahead we caught sight of a middle-aged man and a teenaged boy. "Is this the path to Sundakhpu?" we asked.

The man smiled broadly. He was missing a few teeth. "Sundakhpu? Noooo," the he answered. "Rimbik."

Our hearts sank. We had only an hour before dark, and we were headed the wrong way.

"How far is it to Rimbik?" we asked.

"Fifteen kilometers."

We knew we were sunk. There was no way we could walk fifteen kilometers before nightfall. The man and his son pointed out the way back to the last guesthouse and headed off at breakneck speed. We decided to follow them. However, they were moving at roughly three times our pace, literally running along the tiny footpath, so we soon lost sight of them.

Half an hour later, we saw the man and his son again. They were sitting at a fork in the road, chewing on blades of grass like a speedy rabbit in a children's cartoon. 'This way, short," the man said, pointing into some deep vegetation. He offered to take us back along that route. We agreed, and followed the two men. They shouted and whistled constantly, one in front of us and one in back, as though reassuring each other that they were both still there.

We could tell that they were trying to move slowly for our benefit, but it was still an effort to keep up. We ran through bushes, jumped across streams, and scrambled across rocks. Finally, the older man told us he was leaving us in the care of his son and going on ahead. We guessed he was going to tell his wife that they would be late.

Just as dusk approached, we saw the dark silhouette of a cow against the red sky, the lodge we had left at lunchtime in the distance behind it. We entered the restaurant. Our new friend sat at the fireplace, drinking tea with a group of other men. He seemed quite amused at having saved a pair of foreigners from the wilds of Nepal. We were a bit disappointed to have abandoned our trek to the top, but we were happy to be in a warm place.

You Can Check Out, But You Can Never Leave

So, after our little adventure, in which we were saved by two Nepalis cattleherders (who, as a reward, asked for some cup o' noodles), we spent a quiet night at the lodge. In the morning we played with some friendly children who kept shouting "aiyaaa!" I'm not sure if this meant the same thing that it means in Chinese. Come to think of it, does it really mean anything in Chinese? Aiyaa! I suspect they learned it from a kungfu movie.

We headed back on the same road we had mistakenly taken the day before. We decided to forego the peak, Sundakhpu, and just go to Rimbick. it was a little disappointing, because it's always nice to reach the top of a trail, but we were feeling rather Buddhist about the whole thing. It's about the journey and not the destination, right? Plus we had train tickets for Varanasi and to Delhi, where we were catching our flight back to Bangalore.

We were told that there were no jeeps leaving from Rimbick after noon, but we figured that there would be some sort of vehicle on the road, and at any rate we had to go to Rimbick sometime. We reached Rimbick at around 5 in the afternoon, tired from three days of hiking and getting lost. It occurred to us that our Nepali cattleherding friends must have walked to Rimbick and back the day before for some shopping. They were certainly capable of moving twice as fast as us, if not faster.

We entered the Rimbick town square at around 5 pm and started asking around for jeeps, but soon realized it was a futile exercise. The last jeep had pulled out hours ago. We were prepared to spend the night, so when a young girl told us there was a hotel down the road we resigned ourselves to taking a room there. It turned out that she was the daughter of the owner, of course. We asked the owner if we could get a jeep in the morning, and he said yes, starting at 7 am. So we had dinner, watched an action movie, and went up to our room. Before heading upstairs, Gilles asked again if we could get a jeep, and the man at the counter said yes, downstairs at 7.

What we didn't realize is that all the jeeps leave on the dot, at 7, and you need a ticket for them. We thought there were jeeps on the road from 7 to noon. In fact, one set leaves at 7, and another set leaves at noon. We don't quite understand the logic behind this, but who are we to argue with local tradition? So when we went downstairs at 7:05. we were told that the jeeps were already gone. We searched up and down for another vehicle, but the only thing we found were several SUVs belonging to a British tour group. Gilles tried to charm them into letting us ride in the back of one of their SUVs with their luggage, but he was met with quizzical stares.

We gave up on the tour group, ordered some porridge, and explained our situation to the young restaurant manager. When we showed him our train ticket and he realized that there were $60 at stake - our ticket was refundable if we reached the train station in Darjeeling by 1 PM, and worth 50% if we reached it by 2, but after that we were out of luck - he sprung into action. He started making some calls, and with five minutes he had dug up a car. He told us we would pay $30 to the driver, which was a ripoff, of course, but as they seemed to own the only vehicle in Rimbick we had few options.

When we saw the van we had some doubts as to whether it would make it to Darjeeling, but after all it was downhill all the way, so the engine didn't have to be that good. The wheels did seem mildly important, but having chartered the last vehicle in town we were not picky. There were four of them, after all. Not including the steering wheel.

The drivers were two young men with smiles ear to ear. The younger man, who must have been about 16, took the wheel. He started the car and let go of the clutch. The car lunged forward, slamming Gilles and me into the front seats. (Needless to say there were no seatbelts.) He started again and we rolled out of town. We rejoiced to be leaving the town square. Then, at the top of the hill heading out of Rimbick, the car lunged forward again, this time sending the seats about two feet forward. An animated discussion ensued, and the two young men switched places. The second driver seemed more skilled than the first - he didn't cause anything to move in unexpected ways, at any rate. The young two men were quite excited, laughing and shouting "Darjeeling!" out the windows at everyone they passed. We were obviously providing some entertainment to the village. They tuned the radio to an Indian pop station and ploughed down the cobbled road.

About halfway down the road the van finally stopped working. We should have known it was inevitable - after all, was it really possible to escape the Rimbick vortex? Gilles had a look at the back wheel and told the drivers there was no way we were getting back into the car. Apparently something holding one of the back wheels had broken. The boys searched vigorously for some scotch tape, and we started looking out for another car. A driver offered to take us to the next village, and we tried to pay the young men a portion of what we had promised, but they wanted more. Finally, after some negotiation, the new driver agreed to take us to Darjeeling, and the three of them negotiated the division of funds amongst themselves.

We set off on the road again, our new driver shouting "Darjeeling!" out the window at anyone he passed.

We've decided that "Rimbick" will be the name of our first dog.