Part 2 : Aug 6,7 2011

Gangtok-Silliguri-Madrihat

 

 

The day dawned with heavy clouds hanging overhead, spreading a dull and sluggish atmosphere. That is how I picture that day, at least the morning. The day before we had arranged with our hotel to book a cab for our day’s excursion. By 9 we were ready and our driver cum guide- DG was there too. We headed for the Rumtek monastery first; this was only place around Gangtok which I had heard before hand. Ofcourse it says a lot about my ignorance. Rumtek is at a distance of 24 kms from Gangtok but geographically it is on the hill next to it. One has to come down from the city through the same approach road and then turn left crossing over the river Ranikhola climb towards Rumtek. The hour long journey gave enough time to Sudha to get into a conversation with our DG, starting with some small talk. This painted a picture of today’s Sikkim for us. It wasn’t much different from rest of India with the youth shying away from hard physical work of farming and moving to the metros for an easy and glamorous life. There aren’t many job opportunities in Sikkim except farming and the tourist industry. An interesting addition to this is the alcohol factory set up by Danny Dengzongpa, the bollywood actor. He is a Sikkimese and wanted to give back something to his motherland. All this while I made all the appropriate sympathetic noises but my attention was focused on the road now passing through dense deciduous forests with glimpses of Gangtok in between. The soothing sound of the river gushing at the foot of the hill and the prayer flags gust gently in the breeze created a tone to enter the seat of His Highness Holy Karmapa.

 

A couple of months earlier I had been in Tibet. The memories of ancient monasteries with their mud plastered walls and beautifully painted interiors were still fresh in my mind. Rumtek is different. It has history albeit of a different type and it shows in the structure. When the Tibetan Gurus migrated to India in 1959 and after they brought with them their exquisite culture. The structures they built exemplify it. The colours splashed around were fresh, the paintings beautiful and the atmosphere inviting. We proceeded towards it turning the prayer wheels to the chant of ‘Om mane padme hum’. The monastery is a small walk away from the entrance gate which is manned by the Indo Tibetan Border Force (ITBP). We climbed up to find ourselves amidst a huge courtyard lined with two storied buildings. In the centre of the courtyard was an obelisk and further in the line of vision was the main temple. It raised upto a height of more than 15 meters decorated with the Tibetan motifs and coloured in the usual yellows, browns, and gold. Two young monks went past us chasing each other. We entered the main shrine and peace swept over us. The interiors were decorated beautifully in reds and golds. There is a golden Stupa on the premises which shouldn’t be missed. We made our way to it after many left and right turns.  The premises of Rumtek are full of exotic plants and shrubs. The flowers lend colours to the surroundings and the greens create an ambience for introspection. There was a legend for library and we moved towards it. Though it was closed for the day we encountered some lamas making those exquisite butter lamps with fine carvings. Satisfied, we made our way back to the car.

 

 

On hearing our indulgent praise for the Rumtek monastery, our DG suggested a visit to another monastery nearby. We acquiesced and the convoy proceeded in that direction. This monastery was similar to Rumtek only on a smaller scale. From here we proceeded to a no. of touristy places like a waterfall with life size models of the locals etc. As we made our way back to Gangtok we stopped at a point providing a view of the city on the opposite hill.

 

 

 

We could also point out the ropeway running between two of the high points in Gangtok which turned out to be our next destination. It looked quite fascinating from this side but as we reached the boarding point it closed shop for lunch. We too made use of the time and had a sumptuous lunch at the in-house restaurant. The progress of the ropeway was visible from our strategically placed table and once it started we didn’t find it that interesting and decided to skip the ‘experience’. We made way to the DG, who was waiting for us at the car; on enquiry he informed us that it was the holy month of ‘Shravan’ and hence he prohibited himself from outside food to avoid onions and garlic. I am always touched by sincerity in the religious ways of Indians. We proceeded to the Dro-Drul chorten and gompa, a huge stupa. It has a golden apex otherwise it didn’t intrigue me as I wasn’t quite informed of its importance. Here I should mention the setting; the dense woods provide exquisite serenity and mystique to the atmosphere. A stone’s throw away is the Namigyal Institute of Tibetology.

 

It is essentially a learning place but the enriched museum is what attracts the outsiders. I was quite surprised to see one of the most genuine structures. It is a two storied, symmetrical stone structure with straight lines emerging from the ground and meeting in a conventional Chinese roof. This yellow crown is supported by a one story thick red band which turns a more subtle white for the ground story. The most breathing feature probably is the wooden balcony above the entrance. The place creates an impression of ‘authenticity’ which never ceases to touch the heart. The museum downstairs holds one of the most enviable collections of ‘Thangkas’ or Buddha’s paintings. The place is a treasure of Tibetian artefacts which were incidentally brought by His Holiness Dalai lama himself in 1959. A photograph notified the visitor that the foundations of this structure were laid by His Holiness himself in the presence of then Indian Prime Minister Nehru. As much as the museum is arresting with its soft wooden flooring and dim yellow lighting the library upstairs is the real star. Entering through the wooden balcony, the whole of the library is enclosed in wooden panelling, from floor to walls to the ceiling. This whole space is full of ancient manuscripts to modern interpretations of Buddhist philosophy. I had long before formed the opinion that ‘wood’ as a building material lends a ‘living’ quality to the enclosing space; what better place than a library to provide for the environment for ideas to ‘grow’. And it is not queer that I’ve felt the exhilaration of being a ‘thinking’ human in places like this.

By the time we came out of our sortie, the sky was pouring and we made a dash towards the car. There was just the last place on the list to visit, an orchid garden; it would be devoid of any orchids as we were out of season. This time the car proceeded through a complete new route taking us to the ‘ridge’ and in a sudden I was struck by the beauty of Gangtok. It really was in a split second that happened. it felt like being in Simla. Though I have been to numerous hill-stations it was only in Simla that I have felt the atmosphere of being closer to the sky. That feeling of lightness like a walk in the clouds?

On the way we passed the famous ‘Tashi Namgyal School’ where Sikkim’s hero Bhaichung Bhutia has studied. Our DG proudly pointed it out. He mentioned it was a school for the children of the privileged class too. Along with Danny Dengzongpa, Bhaichung is the face of Sikkim and the Sikkimese are proud of their heroes. We passed the ex King’s palace, and the Governor’s house too. Sikkim was an independent kingdom till 1975 after which it joined the Republic of India. We reached the gates of a garden; a small gazebo was visible through it. D.G told us to go straight past this to reach the orchid garden. It was raining hard now, and with our umbrellas open we started this small walk through the garden. I have always felt rain looks most enticing with a green background either of trees, shrubs, or the grass. The half opaque views around gave a mystique hint to the surroundings. We reached a green house and guessed this must be that orchid place. Even without the orchids the place was a kaleidoscope of colours with all different types of flowers. The lilies were the most enticing but the chrysanthemums, jacarandas all were delightful. Satisfied we came out and took the journey. We thanked DG appropriately for his fine service; it had been a pleasant experience.

 

 It was late afternoon by the time we were in our room for a rest and the rains didn’t encourage us to move out any time soon. In the evening, we first made our way towards an adventure sports agency we had had a glimpse in the morning. Though there weren’t any treks on at that time it gave us valuable information for any impending visit to Sikkim, when we would be in season. I had come across an interesting listing in the LP, a pastry shop ‘Tripti’. We hunted it down and discovered the temptations of the devil. Sudha selected a lemon roll while I had my usual, a piece of the chocolate gateau. We weren’t chatting for those 10-12 mins, only smacking our lips in pleasure. They really seemed out of the world, actually no, they were just out of my childhood. I experienced the same taste as the shop opposite my school, ‘Festoons’ had. Smell along with taste is a strong trigger to rake up memories. We proceeded to M.G road for food and cash- a restaurant for dinner and an ATM for cash. After hopping from one place to another we came across a place serving the best Veg momos I’ve ever had, till then; for I was to discover my ‘momo tooth’ yet in the coming days. We had an early night after that as we had to start early morning for our journey back to Silliguri.

The first bus leaves as early as 5.30 am and we were aiming for it in order to reach Silliguri by 11ish. But inspite of leaving a reminder at the reception, the hotel gate wasn’t open in the whole commotion we missed that bus. And now we were early for the next one! And I didn’t know this was going to be the trend of the day. A day of absurd situations, which took its own course. We booked our tickets and took our seats in the bus. There was still a good half an hour for the start and the conductor pointed towards a tea stall. Two young women just like us were conducting the operations; they had set up a portable table holding a huge thermos containing tea and one of them was serving it. On the side was a stack of glasses and a big kettle full of warm water to rinse them after use. The whole set up was concise, clean and productive. Those women are the best example I’ve seen of the phrase ‘dignity of labour’.

As soon as the bus started we became conscious of the damage done by yesterday’s rain. A driver coming from the opposite side had a word with our bus driver and his hushed conversation with the conductor gave us food for thought. No sooner were we out of the city, we experienced the traffic build up. This journey then would take on more than the 5hours we had allocated it; the stationary position was trying our patience. I was already on tenterhooks as we didn’t even know our day’s destination and that is completely against my nature. I always plan my travels to the T, every map, ticket, booking in place. A leopard cannot change its spots. As I have mentioned earlier Sudha had travelled on this route a decade earlier, and she remembered the bigger picture but not the details. She had an idea of reaching the Jaldhapara wildlife sanctuary by taking a bus from Silliguri, but she couldn’t remember the name of the place we had to alight at for it. Sudha has travelled in this spontaneous fashion and it goes with her nature; as against me being the control fanatic it wasn’t easy for me to digest this situation. We both realised at that moment we were as different as chalk n cheese and in turn this trip too is going to be anything but smooth. The bus started and after another couple of hiccups we reached Silliguri by half past twelve. The Silliguri bus station was a complete paradigm in itself. Starving, we first made our way to the refreshments centre. Even after trying every way to attract the waiter’s attention, he wasn’t ready to give us even a nod. He was very earnestly serving the table beyond us. At the moment when we were about to leave, he came to us and asked for our order, with exceptional courtesy. Stunned, we ordered aloo parathas. And then we realised that he had this system of his own of paying complete attention to one customer at a time. We gorged on the parathas which seemed to have come directly from Punjab, so authentic in taste. We moved towards the real battlefield now. The state transport buses were leaving for destinations in the north Bengal, mainly the Jalpaiguri district from here. At this moment when were standing there in a totally confused state a private bus operator approached us. We had had a decent experience till now with them and hence we started to follow him outside the station. Here he handed us over to one of his colleague and we inturn started to follow him, but when this guy transferred us to another person we had had enough. Again we made our way towards the state transport buses. Sudha mentioned ‘Jaldhapara’ to one of the conductors standing near a bus. He nodded and we boarded the bus. He told us to get down at a place called ‘Madrihat’ and we settled back in our seats; looking out at every stop if it was Madrihat. At the sound of that name, something clicked in Sudha’s memory. She remembered it as the place near the town, Alipurduar which housed the nearest railway station. I was at that time extremely annoyed with Sudha for the situation we were in. Though it wasn’t her fault she patiently took in my tantrums, and as I look back I find myself lucky to have such friends. Also it is thanks to her that I had this enriching experience. We were travelling through a region half of the Indians won’t even be aware of. This was the real India, nameless but impressive, poor, happy, hot, dusty, brown, green, all at the same time.

As the bus started to fill up, simultaneously the speed started to decrease. This rickety creature had probably sustained through many many monsoons. It must have transported millions of different type of people and here she was taking me off to an adventure. The grey clouds had started to congregate outside and rendering a stifling feeling inside. After a while the slow breeze had brought in the smell of tea leaves. We were extremely surprised to come across tea gardens here in the plains of Bengal. I had always imagined my tea coming from Darjeeling or Assam or atleast Munnar. Sudha and I started to confer about this occurrence and one topic led to another; it really helped in keeping the immediate discomforts and uncertainties at bay. The bus had stopped now on a dusty road with shops on both sides; the conductor told us this was Madrihat. We scrambled out and bid adieu to bus moving away.

We found ourselves in the midst of a small town where almost everyone was staring at us. I felt quite odd. Sudha, though was her usual unassuming self and went about to enquire. She at once got into a conversation with a shopkeeper manning his steel utensil shop. In the meantime I had moved towards a small tea shop and was trying to be as invisible as possible but without success. Sudha came back with some good and some bad news. The later was that the Jaldhapara wildlife sanctuary was closed for the monsoons, but we had another option. We could actually travel to Bhutan from here as the border was just one and half hour away. I was immediately excited. But it was already 5 in the evening and we decided to rest for the night here. The hot tea was beckoning and we entered the small tea shop leaving our luggage on the small wooden bench outside. I was trying to picture Bhutan, but I knew nothing about it except that it had a handsome young king and it was the happiest country in the world. The tea brought me out of my trance. It was hot, sweet and refreshing. But what was it that I was seeing, a women and her daughter had picked up my bag and were walking away with it. I was stunned. I knew I should shout but nothing came out of my mouth; Sudha had by now looked in the direction of my unwavering gaze and she was gone like a shot behind those two women. She stopped them and by now everyone around too had stopped in their tracks to observe this spectacle. On Sudha’s declaration of ownership, the women just looked back at her and then gave a pitiable smile. The older women said, ‘we thought it was our bag.’ And leaving it there both of them started walking away. I was still sitting there with the half full glass of tea in my hand. My brain was formulating the concurrent reasons- how did the women confuse the bag? There wasn’t any other black handbag around to be confused with. For that matter there wasn’t any other bag around, black or otherwise. If she thought she was confused, where was her bag? Why did she go away without even looking for it? As all these ‘what, when, how’ questions passed through my mind Sudha was back, taking the seat in front of me. We just couldn’t react and laughed the matter out. But I have still not been able to fathom the incident. By this time we were the local stars, people were enquiring if those women were really taking our bag away. I was sure we had provided the whole vicinity a topic to discuss for atleast some time to come.

Sudha enquired at the next door medical shop, if there was any decent hotel nearby; the fellow suggested a hotel nearby and told us to take a taxi. It was only about 300mts from our current position but we didn’t complain, just thankful of finding a place which was clean and safe. In a way it is supporting the local economy too. I wondered why there was a hotel here in the first place, but put it down to the presence of the Jaldhapara wildlife sanctuary in the vicinity. It was actually more of a guest house, than a hotel. The person at the reception told us there was a lady from Calcutta staying, after watching the worry lines on our faces. We met her on our way up, and left it at that after encountering her frosty smile.

We freshened up and thought of taking a walk back to the ‘activity’ area of the town for a cup of tea. There on our way we encountered a tiny ‘tour and travels’ agency. Why was it here? Hmm…That Jaldhapara sanctuary again. We entered and a young man looked up from his desk. We took the seats opposite him and started by enquiring about this trip into Bhutan we had heard a while before. He suggested a planned trip through his agency and indicated a price of about 8 thousand INR for a 3day-2nights trip. We asked for some detailed information and he acquiesced. First we would have to take the one and half hour journey to the border town of Jaigaon and crossover by foot to the otherside of the town called Phuntsholing which belonged to Bhutan. There we would need to apply for a ‘permit’ at the Visa office and would inturn be given back in anything from an hour to 4hours. The next step would be to reach Thimpu, the capital, a good 6-7 hours away on a mountain road. The catch here being that there would be buses for Thimpu only till noon; to avoid any night travel. So we would need to time the journey in a way to reach Phuntsholing early and get the permits before this stipulated time. Also the bus tickets have to be reserved atleast an hour in advance, but we would have enough time for that between submitting and getting the permits. We were overwhelmed by all this information but it was exciting too. Sudha suggested we book the trip there and then but I don’t know what made me stop her and suggest we think about it first. Instead we got train tickets booked for Alipurduar-Guwahati for the night of 10^th August i.e three days from now. We randomly picked up this date with the reasoning of taking a day to reach Thimpu, undertaking the sightseeing the next day and coming back to Alipurduar the day after. Hence we booked the night train, the Kanchenjunga express. The ticket booked, we made our way ahead to the afternoon tea shop. Here we expressed gratitude to the people at the steel utensils shop for helping us out. In the tête-à-tête we found out that we could actually do this Bhutan trip by ourselves. He told us that it had been done and we too could reach Thimpu too if we had reached till here. There was extreme clarity in his thought when he recited a step by step plan for us. He advised us to make an early start as everything ahead would depend on this first step. We thanked him again and this time with extreme reverence. In the most unlikely corners of the world one comes across straightforward and helpful commanding respect with their selfless deeds. He also directed us to the weekly Bazaar which was on that day. On one pre decided day the farmers in the vicinity of a town bring their produce for sale. At the market, it was a sight to behold. Common produce, but so colourful and interesting to the odd onlooker. The yellows of the turmeric, the reds of the chillies in the company of the pinks of the onions and the browns of the potatoes fashioned an atmosphere. The greens of the tender coconuts took it to another level. The picture wasn’t there without the background score with a hawker calling out to a customer, a donkey neighing nearby, and the quintessential cow mowing. A peep into a lane brought me face to face with heaps of fresh water fish while on the other side was a riot of colours with stacks of clothes. I was itching to photograph all this but was too shy for the attention I would receive and I strongly regret the missed opportunity. After all it isn’t everyday that one comes across such unpretentious subjects and a chance for some candid shots.

In an extremely pleased state of mind we returned to our hotel. Dinner was a simple fare served by a young boy of 11 or 12. Sudha enquired into his background and we came to knew that he came from a village on the Assam- West Bengal border. He had left school to support his parents. Sudha knows some Bengali from her stint in Calcutta but this fellow was probably more comfortable in Assamese as we couldn’t get anything more out of him. Inspite that he warmed up to her after a while and told her that actually he didn’t like studying, especially ‘English’. Sudha immediately started teaching him how to introduce himself in English, ‘my name is …’, explaining ‘name’ mane ‘naam’. It was heart warming to witness this encounter. And no it wasn’t sympathy, because it is an act between unequal persons. This was empathy. Sitting there in front of the unfinished bowl of dal, I thought about the day and warmed all over. Inspite of its ups and downs it had been progressive and productive. That in terms of human qualities- that unassuming dignity of labour in the morning, some selfless advice in the afternoon and heartfelt empathy now. I was ready for tomorrow.