Darjeeling Debrief

We came to Darjeeling to rest. The quiet hill town, full of tea and snow-capped mountains, was meant to rejuvenate. And yet, it was incredibly overwhelming. Not in the way India is overwhelming... but because in the way it is so un-Indian.

It was a long, 24-hour journey. We left Varanasi around 4 pm sometime last week with mixed emotions. Varanasi is an incredible, spiritual, pulsing city, but our non-refundable train ticket and limited cash meant we were headed to the Himalayan Mountains, whether we liked it or not.

After getting yelled at by the Station Manager for asking too many questions, we found our train and met our newest batch of single-serving friends; our train birth was complete with the quintessential French couple, a Punjabi man in the Indian army and a Delhi businessman selling PVC pipes (which were fully stocked in his briefcase).

Juliana and I, now pros at Indian conversation (i.e. every personal question you can imagine about marriage, jobs, income, and caste), easily make new bffs. The Frenchies took some warming up... I think they were a little taken aback when I started asking them really personal questions, and Juliana reminded me that even though we're in India, not everyone is okay with this.

The Punjabi guy pulled out his liter bottle of home-made sugar-cane alcohol and wanted to start a party. Food was passed around and our little family birth was born. Perhaps most notable was the PVC salesman telling us a story about a time he got too drunk, poured his roommate's shampoo down the toilet, flooded the bathroom, and never drank again... ???

Fast-forward fourteen hours and we arrive in Siliguri. We find a shared jeep with the French couple and take a bouncy three-hour ride up the hill to Darjeeling.

After finding a hotel, etc etc, we do a little walking around town, when Juliana stops and says, "Do you realize what's happening right now?" I didn't know what she was talking about. "What?," I said. "No one is talking to us."

I didn't even notice. But holy shit, no one was talking to us. There was no, "Madam, madam, come look at my shop, you want scarf?" There was no, "Madam, madam, where you going? You want rickshaw?" ... Nothing. No one was staring. No one was hassling. We were totally confused. We were not in India anymore.

We were in Ghorkaland. Little did we know that Darjeeling is part of a fairly intense separatist movement, trying to establish Ghorkaland as a new state. In Ghorkaland, no one speaks Hindi - Nepalese is the local language - and most of the population consists of Tibetans and Nepalese. Buddhist monasteries abound the region and most people practice some mix of Hinduism and Buddhism. Northface gear and tight black jeans are the norm and young couples hold hands on the street. People are allowed to get love marriages (instead of arranged marriage, which 99% of the Indian people we've met thus far have), and the caste system is diminishing as more and more people with different faiths and castes intermix.

J & I needed to debrief. We sat for two cups of Darjeeling tea in a very British bakery and once again, couldn't believe our eyes. There were women working at the bakery, and there were more locals than foreigners eating there. Trust me, I know how ridiculous this sounds from a Western point of view. But it's different here. I never see women working at the forefront of a business. Never. And although we do try and go to local eateries as much as possible, there is a certain type of person (i.e. tourist or very Westernized Indian) who eat at such European-influenced restaurants. But not in Darjeeling.

I just didn't understand. All of these nice luxuries were so affordable in Darjeeling. All the kids went to school in uniforms, the roads were maintained, I saw maybe two beggars the entire time I was there... it just didn't make any sense. Why was the rest of India ... so poor?

I mean, I guess it makes some sense. Darjeeling exports an insane amount of tea all over the world, in addition to supplying 25% of India's tea. And, when the British set up Darjeeling, they established infrastructure - railroad, schools, hospitals, etc... which is, I'm learning more and more each day, essential.

So anyways, we decided to take a new perspective. We had left India. Mini-vaca to Nepal, and we didn't even need to visa.

Darjeeling certainly had its fair share of characters. Perhaps taking the cake was the "Five-second lady," who describes herself as the five-second lady, claiming her world-status for brewing tea in five seconds. Her tea plantation sells tea exclusively to Harrod's, but she sells under the radar, out of a big burlak sack in her living room. Classic.

We also met the most enthusiasic travel agent in the world. After realizing that we couldn't buy train tickets out of Siliguri from the inept Darjeeling train station, we stumbled into a travel agency - which was one tiny room, with one desk, with one enthuastic man, with an even more enthuastic mustache. Everything he said, he said with such passion, his eyes almost popping out of his head, his mustache bouncing up and down. When we were having some trouble finding an affordable ticket from Varanasi to Chennai, he cried out loud, "Oh this is SO HORRIBLE! Isn't this HORRIBLE, Juliana?! ISN'T THIS HORRIBLE?" And then he would pull out his giant map and start plotting new train routes, as if he were Sherlock Holmes and no matter what, he would find a way to get us there !!!!

I could go on with the character list, but Darjeeling turned out to be much more than that. We visited monasteries, accidentally attended a wedding after-party, and cozied up next to fireplaces, actually feeling like winter was upon us for the first time.

Homesickness crept in with the cold weather, and so Darjeeling also became a time of internal reassurance, and external gratitude. I've found that almost anything can be cured by Vipassana and laughing.. separately, of course.

Separatist protests for Ghorkaland forced us to leave a day early. Tourists and locals alive left in masses yesterday morning. So now I'm back in Siliguri, about to get on a train, back to Varanasi. For the third time.