Return to Ghorkaland
On Saturday(?) make that Friday (it's good to be on holiday!), we had a truly epic day of driving as we left Sikkim and returned to Ghorkaland*. (See map below). After 6 hours in the saddle that day, Al succeeded in repeating his North Vietnam feat of wearing out the horn - the most important piece of equipment on the bike! Luckily we found someone in Kalimpong who could fix it in about an hour for the princely sum of 50 rupees. For those of you playing along at home, that's about $1 Aussie.
We'd originally thought we would stay in Kalimpong for the night, but we weren't overly enamoured with it, maybe something to do with the sudden return to a big city and the pervading stench of rubbish and pee. As there was one more town we really wanted to visit in our limited time remaining, we decided to push on to Kurseong. 'We' being Michelle in this case, and in very small print with this decision was that it was another 75km away, which meant another 2 hours of driving. Luckily after 18 years Al still falls for Michelle's charms and agreed to soldier on. Who wrote this bit?
*Ghorkaland is what the locals refer to this mountain region of West Bengal, which the locals want to establish as a separate Indian state from Bengal. There were several small protests while we were in Darjeeling (including one quite medieval style with people marching through the streets in the early evening with flaming torches). To show their solidarity most of the shops have Ghorkaland written on their signs.
This also took us within 20km or so of Darjeeling, and there must be something about the weather gods that frown on us every thime we ride closeby, because we managed to get rained on, although technically I think we just rode through a cloud (you get really high up when you go close to Darjeeling!) because visibility dropped to about a metre, and we had to pick our way along until we finally turned south and dropped below the cloud layer. This just added to the overall degree of difficulty of driving this road as we dodged the Himalayan Toy Train tracks, "goods carriers" and jeeps swerving in front of us. On the plus side, by the time we eventually reached Kurseong the wind had dried our drenched clothing. Well, I might point out here that Michelle was never actually wet, having been given the full leather jacket-and-pants ensemble by the rental company. Gautam the rental guy had sort of laughed at the time and said 'yeah, I don't have a pair of pants for you (Al).' At the time I was more concerned with what he was saying as he handed over the fire extinguisher - 'Usually fires start up here in the engine area.' As far as I'm concerned, 'usually' and 'engine fires' shouldn't be used in the same sentence. Anyway, as it turned out no fires, and there's only so wet you can get... combine fast drying pants with fast driving Al, and I was dry by the time we pulled in.
After more than 8 hours in the saddle, we felt a bit like John Wayne (involuntarily) swaggering our way into the Cochrane House Hotel. This place was an old colonial-era house that was recently re-imagined as a hotel, but it's lost none of its charm. Being in a tea plantation area, there is a strong tea and train motif throughout, from the tea kettle light fixtures to the giant spout emerging from the picture windows in the garden. We were absolutely charmed, and could have stayed there a week from the ambience alone. Alas, we had only one night.
The next morning we took a tour of one of the local tea plantations, where we were able to see all the steps involved in getting the tea bag to the table! Needless to say, we sampled some of the local wares and are now carting around with us several kilos of the stuff! Darjeeling has recently been granted naming rights (sort of like Champagne) - so now only tea grown in this region can be called Darjeeling Tea . This is because tea grown in other parts of the world and sold as Darjeeling has been destroying one of their only industries. So people - check your tea is the true blue Darjeeling!
After lunch we turned north one final time and made our way back up to Darjeeling town. There were still two things we wanted to see there before we left the region.
The first was the Tibetan Self Help Centre. This centre was set up in the 50's following the invasion of Tibet by China, when thousands of Tibetan refugees made their way into Darjeeling and Sikkim. The centre provided food, clothing, and shelter for them, and over the last 50 years has helped them to become self reliant through the production of traditional handicrafts, including some beautiful woven scarves (check) and amazing rugs made from Tibetan wool (check). The rug wouldn't quite fit in the bag, so it'll be shipped back to us in a couple of months after it's made.
One thing neither of us realised about Tibet was the wealth of minerals and precious metals in the country. Aside from its militarily strategic location (now home to several hundred thousand Chinese soldiers, a bunch of mid range and ICBM missiles including nuclear), the wealth of raw materials is enough reason to believe that China will not be giving it up without a fight - and even if there was a war in the region and Tibet was somehow wrestled from its grasp, methinks the victor might not quite get around to 'liberating' the country for its people. Very sad.
But enough of the preachy backpackerspeak.
The final visit on the ol' agenda was the Darjeeling Zoo, home to the breeding programme for the endangered snow leopard and more importantly the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. Due to Michelle's general distaste for zoos, the only photo Al was allowed to take of the animals was the one below of the bear just before it decided today was the day he was going to leap the narrow trench and enjoy one of the tasty treats he'd been eying off for the last 3 years. We never saw that woman again ( this may be because we walked the other way but why spoil a good story).
Al was looking forward to visiting the HMI because he has always been fascinated, and yet horrified, by the stories from climbers scaling serious mountains (eg. He couldn't put the book 'Into Thin Air' down, but it was like watching a car crash). In reality the museum was quite cool , with some real treasures in amongst a few random knick knacks and mitten displays. witout a doubt the highlights for us were the two scale models of the Himalayas, replete with pushbuttons to light up each of the peaks.
Not surprisingly the emphasis of the museum was on Tenzing Norgay's accomplishment of summiting Everest rather than Hillary. Oops, having just re-read that sentence perhaps we need to rephrase: the focus was on Tenzing rather than Hillary. He was, of course, the Indian-born guide who subsequently became a national and international hero.
...And so endeth part one of the Indian adventure. The motorcycle keys were handed back, and we jumped on our longest train ride yet - an 18 hour odyssey to the city of ghats. Tune in tomorrow* for the next instalment!
*or so
Touching the clouds near Darjeeling
The Cochrane hotel... How many teapots can you spot?
A spot of tea in the drawing room
This was our visit to the tea factory. The guy did explain what all the machines did, but we couldn't follow all the steps...
Then wouldn't it be funny if the headlight just fell off?
The famous toy train. Check out the narrow gauge track - it winds right through all these little towns - and I mean right through.
Back in Darjeeling, the Tibetan Self Help Centre
Spinning yarn.
Makin' stuff
These gals are weaving our rug. Focus!
Road building, Darjeeling style. Note the guy hand placing the small rocks in symmetrical rows.
There's always one in every crowd.
Smog? What smog? Mountains? A what mountains?
The zoo
Just before eating the unsuspecting lady.
Unfortunately no photos allowed inside!!
We'd originally thought we would stay in Kalimpong for the night, but we weren't overly enamoured with it, maybe something to do with the sudden return to a big city and the pervading stench of rubbish and pee. As there was one more town we really wanted to visit in our limited time remaining, we decided to push on to Kurseong. 'We' being Michelle in this case, and in very small print with this decision was that it was another 75km away, which meant another 2 hours of driving. Luckily after 18 years Al still falls for Michelle's charms and agreed to soldier on. Who wrote this bit?
*Ghorkaland is what the locals refer to this mountain region of West Bengal, which the locals want to establish as a separate Indian state from Bengal. There were several small protests while we were in Darjeeling (including one quite medieval style with people marching through the streets in the early evening with flaming torches). To show their solidarity most of the shops have Ghorkaland written on their signs.
This also took us within 20km or so of Darjeeling, and there must be something about the weather gods that frown on us every thime we ride closeby, because we managed to get rained on, although technically I think we just rode through a cloud (you get really high up when you go close to Darjeeling!) because visibility dropped to about a metre, and we had to pick our way along until we finally turned south and dropped below the cloud layer. This just added to the overall degree of difficulty of driving this road as we dodged the Himalayan Toy Train tracks, "goods carriers" and jeeps swerving in front of us. On the plus side, by the time we eventually reached Kurseong the wind had dried our drenched clothing. Well, I might point out here that Michelle was never actually wet, having been given the full leather jacket-and-pants ensemble by the rental company. Gautam the rental guy had sort of laughed at the time and said 'yeah, I don't have a pair of pants for you (Al).' At the time I was more concerned with what he was saying as he handed over the fire extinguisher - 'Usually fires start up here in the engine area.' As far as I'm concerned, 'usually' and 'engine fires' shouldn't be used in the same sentence. Anyway, as it turned out no fires, and there's only so wet you can get... combine fast drying pants with fast driving Al, and I was dry by the time we pulled in.
After more than 8 hours in the saddle, we felt a bit like John Wayne (involuntarily) swaggering our way into the Cochrane House Hotel. This place was an old colonial-era house that was recently re-imagined as a hotel, but it's lost none of its charm. Being in a tea plantation area, there is a strong tea and train motif throughout, from the tea kettle light fixtures to the giant spout emerging from the picture windows in the garden. We were absolutely charmed, and could have stayed there a week from the ambience alone. Alas, we had only one night.
The next morning we took a tour of one of the local tea plantations, where we were able to see all the steps involved in getting the tea bag to the table! Needless to say, we sampled some of the local wares and are now carting around with us several kilos of the stuff! Darjeeling has recently been granted naming rights (sort of like Champagne) - so now only tea grown in this region can be called Darjeeling Tea . This is because tea grown in other parts of the world and sold as Darjeeling has been destroying one of their only industries. So people - check your tea is the true blue Darjeeling!
After lunch we turned north one final time and made our way back up to Darjeeling town. There were still two things we wanted to see there before we left the region.
The first was the Tibetan Self Help Centre. This centre was set up in the 50's following the invasion of Tibet by China, when thousands of Tibetan refugees made their way into Darjeeling and Sikkim. The centre provided food, clothing, and shelter for them, and over the last 50 years has helped them to become self reliant through the production of traditional handicrafts, including some beautiful woven scarves (check) and amazing rugs made from Tibetan wool (check). The rug wouldn't quite fit in the bag, so it'll be shipped back to us in a couple of months after it's made.
One thing neither of us realised about Tibet was the wealth of minerals and precious metals in the country. Aside from its militarily strategic location (now home to several hundred thousand Chinese soldiers, a bunch of mid range and ICBM missiles including nuclear), the wealth of raw materials is enough reason to believe that China will not be giving it up without a fight - and even if there was a war in the region and Tibet was somehow wrestled from its grasp, methinks the victor might not quite get around to 'liberating' the country for its people. Very sad.
But enough of the preachy backpackerspeak.
The final visit on the ol' agenda was the Darjeeling Zoo, home to the breeding programme for the endangered snow leopard and more importantly the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. Due to Michelle's general distaste for zoos, the only photo Al was allowed to take of the animals was the one below of the bear just before it decided today was the day he was going to leap the narrow trench and enjoy one of the tasty treats he'd been eying off for the last 3 years. We never saw that woman again ( this may be because we walked the other way but why spoil a good story).
Al was looking forward to visiting the HMI because he has always been fascinated, and yet horrified, by the stories from climbers scaling serious mountains (eg. He couldn't put the book 'Into Thin Air' down, but it was like watching a car crash). In reality the museum was quite cool , with some real treasures in amongst a few random knick knacks and mitten displays. witout a doubt the highlights for us were the two scale models of the Himalayas, replete with pushbuttons to light up each of the peaks.
Not surprisingly the emphasis of the museum was on Tenzing Norgay's accomplishment of summiting Everest rather than Hillary. Oops, having just re-read that sentence perhaps we need to rephrase: the focus was on Tenzing rather than Hillary. He was, of course, the Indian-born guide who subsequently became a national and international hero.
...And so endeth part one of the Indian adventure. The motorcycle keys were handed back, and we jumped on our longest train ride yet - an 18 hour odyssey to the city of ghats. Tune in tomorrow* for the next instalment!
*or so
Touching the clouds near Darjeeling
The Cochrane hotel... How many teapots can you spot?
A spot of tea in the drawing room
This was our visit to the tea factory. The guy did explain what all the machines did, but we couldn't follow all the steps...
Then wouldn't it be funny if the headlight just fell off?
The famous toy train. Check out the narrow gauge track - it winds right through all these little towns - and I mean right through.
Back in Darjeeling, the Tibetan Self Help Centre
Spinning yarn.
Makin' stuff
These gals are weaving our rug. Focus!
Road building, Darjeeling style. Note the guy hand placing the small rocks in symmetrical rows.
There's always one in every crowd.
Smog? What smog? Mountains? A what mountains?
The zoo
Just before eating the unsuspecting lady.
Unfortunately no photos allowed inside!!
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