On a hot and sultry Sunday, I step out to go to the market. It seems like it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the local roads. Perhaps it has. In the daily hustle and rush to the workplace, subtle things go unnoticed.
Of course the roads are nothing subtle really. One misstep, and the pothole can trip you. It would probably by fair to call it an obstacle course. I wonder if professional athletes train on the by-lanes of Delhi.
But today is different.
Between me and the market, stands a bright, black strip of tar.
I never thought the sight of roads would be so delightful. Like a weary traveller in a desert, I rush towards, what is possibly, a mirage.
I take a step, and my shoes grip the road. The tar has not yet dried out. I can hardly believe that after so many years, we have smooth road. I walk along, sceptical of it all. A while later, I let down my guard, and begin enjoying every moment of the sticky grip the road had to offer.
But thankfully, it doesn’t take long for me to return to reality.
Towards the side of the road, there is a patch of road which has not received the fresh coat of tar. It looks absolutely dry, and almost perfectly circular. It is almost as if it was deliberately left out, just to prove that the road is, indeed, new.
This circular patch presents itself every few metres, like milestones—only much more frequently.
Strangely, I feel reassured. A new road was too good to be true anyway.
I’ve pretty much wasted my free time today listening to old Shania Twain songs. I have a bunch of ideas I’ve been wanting to write about. But today, all I want to do is listen to songs by Shania Twain.
Going through the drafts of my blog, I unearthed this post — written 3 years ago, but never published. Quite like the pot holes of our streets, my blog swallowed this one whole! Oh, well, it’s on lazy, slightly confusing days, like today, that a draft comes in handy.
We had had a rather strange morning. Waking up at 3:30 am, to be stuck in a traffic jam around 5 am, and then racing against the sunrise to get to the top of Tiger Hill. We missed the famous golden Kanchenjunga due to bad weather, but took away some interesting memories nonetheless.
We are extremely slow travellers. And on that foggy morning, we were the last of the tourists to slowly descend the hill, soaking in every inch of the natural beauty and scores of colourful flags. Somewhere along the path, lay a beautiful temple with more strings of flags than any other place we’d seen.
Temple towards the base of Tiger hill.
It was also very quiet, ignored by all the tourists scrambling to get into their cars to visit the next item on their list of places to see. We wondered why this one was missing on anyone’s itinerary.
Our own ‘package’ didn’t include this, and with our driver asking us to hurry up, all we could manage were a few quick photographs from the outside.
I did a quick search on Google, and sadly, could not find the name of this temple; there weren’t any tourist brochures or itineraries that mention this place. I’m not sure if visitors are permitted to enter (they must be, if there are so many flags here!) If they are, and if you have the time, perhaps you could add this to your list. If you’ve visited the temple, I would love to hear your story.
As we were stepping out of the hotel room, we saw a tall, broad man peering through the viewfinder of a DSLR. The SUV behind him was open and the valet placed our bags in the boot.
As we closed the door, the driver kept his camera on the front passenger seat and hopped in. He had a small goatee and wore an earring. His black leather jacket and slim fit jeans completed his look. Like almost all the SUV drivers we had interacted with on the mountains around the river Teesta, he looked like a rock star.
“My name is Mahesh,” he announced in a jovial voice as soon as he closed his door. “So you’re headed to Darjeeling, eh? How was Gangtok?” His laid back manner appeared as if he had known us for a long time. And we eased into a conversation without any hesitation.
“It’s absolutely beautiful! So much to see. So clean. And people are so friendly. We’re already planning our next trip here!” It had rained for three days and there was not one camouflaged puddle, and the roads were free from slush and filth. The hospitality we had received at the hotel was outstanding, and we didn’t really want to leave.
MG Marg in the rain
“Yes, I love Gangtok,” said Mahesh. “Every time I come here I like to take pictures. You’ll see a huge difference between Gangtok and Darjeeling. That’s such a dirty place.”
As we made our way along the narrow, winding roads, we approached a fork—one road led steeply uphill, while the other continued downhill. Wedged in the middle of the fork was an SUV. The driver had apparently taken a wrong turn uphill, and was backing down slowly. Cars had begun piling on all sides. And something miraculous happened—everyone waited patiently as the driver reversed, moved forward, turned a little, and reversed again to repeat these mini movements for maneuvering the tricky slope.
We told Mahesh how amazed we were by the orderly conduct of the drivers in Gangtok. In the Delhi-NCR region, people honk even if the traffic signal is red! And here, people waited silently for what seemed like an eternity for the driver to course-correct. That done, we proceeded downhill.
“There is very good enforcement of law here. People don’t go breaking rules.” Mahesh was clearly happy in Sikkim. “I come to Gangtok every now and then. But one day I will come here only to take pictures. I want to photograph the traffic ladies here. And want to compare and contrast them with police in Bengal.”
As Mahesh was speaking aloud his artistic dreams, the scenery outside took a beautiful turn. Beside the road, a shallow stream was flowing on a bed of hundreds of smooth pebbles, with hills all around. We had got used to the natural beauty of Sikkim by now, but it appeared that there was no way for us to document it through the windows of a moving vehicle. As if reading our minds, Mahesh slowed down. “You can take the picture now! See, I want you take as many pictures as you can. I want, that when you go home and you see these pictures, you will remember me!”
The turning where the road splits three ways. A chance photograph taken from our moving car.
We continued smoothly, when Mahesh parked the car to the side of the road beside a huge boulder. He paused, looked outside his window, and quite abruptly, grabbed his camera and hopped out without a word. Puzzled, we looked at each other, and then tried to follow his movements. A short distance behind us, Mahesh was straining his eyes and looking up. He peered into the viewfinder of his camera while we kept wondering what it was he was looking at. He came back and placed his gear on the passenger seat and we resumed our journey. “There was a vulture’s nest up there on top of the boulder. I thought I saw two baby vultures there. But couldn’t get a decent photograph.” If there was a hint of disappointment in his tone, it went away in a few minutes.
Our next stop was at the ‘Lovers Meet’ viewpoint, from where one could see the confluence of the rivers Rangeet and Teesta. Mahesh asked us to soak in the view and take our time—something, that we later realised, no one had said throughout any of our road trips.
Lovers Meet
Once we had crossed the viewpoint, Darjeeling was not very far.
“Welcome to Darjeeling! I hope you enjoy your stay here. It won’t be as nice as Gangtok, you’ll see. But I hope you have a good time.” As we finished unloading our bags at the entrance of the hotel in Darjeeling, Mahesh’s phone rang, perhaps a relation had called. Still chatting on the phone, he nodded his head in acknowledgement of our small goodbye and reversed the vehicle to begin his ride back home.
Our scenic journey over that week had many exotic destinations and experiences that we would remember for months, if not years to come. And looking back, we now realise how important the role of our drivers was in our journey.
Throughout our trip, we had travelled with many drivers, some for transfers, and some for sightseeing. None of them were particularly remarkable, and stuck strictly to their jobs. For them, it was about getting us from point A to point B, as per the itinerary. While our driver in Gangtok had allowed us a small extension of our sightseeing time to accommodate our slow pace of exploration, the drivers in Darjeeling would keep calling us and telling us to hurry up. Towards the end of our trip, though, one driver left a lasting impact on both of us.
We had left Darjeeling to spend a day in Kalimpong, a town where my father had spent some part of his childhood. It seemed like our driver didn’t want to drive and tried to talk us out of visiting an old monastery by saying that all monasteries looked the same! We got him to take us there, albeit grudgingly, by arguing that it was included in our itinerary, and no, they weren’t all the same to us.
As we were making our way to the hotel after completing our sightseeing, I noticed a sign board.
“Hill top!” I squealed with delight. “That is where my grandfather used to live! Could we stop for a few minutes, please. I just want to have a look at that house.” The light was fading fast, and we had to leave the next day. If we had a shot at laying our eyes on the old house I had heard so much about, this was it. “That’s not part of the package!” retorted the driver and continued onward.
That’s not part of the package. It was simple, and as inconsequential to him, as that. But to me, those words stung. It took a while to get over it, and we both vowed never to take packaged tours after that.
We returned to Delhi the next day, our cameras and phones full of pictures and videos. We told our friends stories of beautiful buildings, clean marketplaces and the blank foggy vistas that hid Kanchenjunga from us throughout. We praised the hospitality of each of the Summit hotels we stayed in, the colourful strings of prayer flags and the scenic routes we travelled. We shared our disappointment of missing the Kanchenjunga, and the little joys of travelling with one very interesting driver who took us from Gangtok to Darjeeling.
It was a pity we didn’t take down Mahesh’s number, nor did we take any pictures with him. But what we do have is the memory of the road trip we shared. Every time you look at these pictures, you will remember me, he had said. He was wrong. We remember Mahesh even without looking at the pictures.
Spinning prayer wheels at a monastery in Gangtok
Tagging the images in this post for this week’s weekly photo challenge for their curves! Here’s my previous entry for the challenge: Lamps in the sun
Tenzing Rock is a beautiful rock nestled between a tea garden on one side and another large rock on the other side. These young mountaineers were learning the ropes on the rock…
To see how bloggers around the world are interpreting this week’s photo challenge, visit the Daily Post.
The phone rang at 3:30 am. The voice of the driver was impatient. “It’s getting late! No no… I don’t know who told you 4 am. We need to leave now. We’ll get stuck in a traffic jam!”
A traffic jam at 4 am? Oh well, we were already up. We scrambled and managed to leave just a few minutes before 4.
The blinding curves on the mountain were dark and quiet. But just after two turns, another car joined our route. In another 15 minutes we had more company.
By the time we reached the base of Tiger Hill, we were at the tail end of a massive car line. The driver took shortcuts off the road to jump ahead. But as we reached higher ground, there was only one road.
“How far is it from here? Can we walk it?” The driver nodded confidently. We hopped out. It was a race against the sunrise. We joined at least fifty other people who were already trekking uphill at a fast pace.
After close to two kilometres of jogging and walking, we managed to reach the top of the hill, where a huge crowd was staring into the distance, camera in hand, waiting expectantly.
“Don’t worry, the sunrise will be only at 6:30! Plenty of time! Yesterday the view was very good. Today let’s hope the fog lifts with the sun! Here, you must be tired. Have some coffee!” The coffee sellers were busy catering to the captive, sleep deprived and hungry clientele.
The day was in full bloom. And yet the coffee seller coolly said it would take another half an hour for the ‘sunrise’.
“Whooooaaaah!” A section of the crowd began cheering, as if having spotted a celebrity. The fans began climbing on every possible vantage point. The paparazzi were clicking away.
We looked in the direction of the cameras. In the distance, an uninterested orange sphere looked into the mist.
Here comes the sun!
Funnily, the crowd seemed to have forgotten for a while, why they were actually atop Tiger Hill. For it was not the sun we were waiting for. It was the promised breathtaking view of the Himalayas drenched in golden sunshine in the opposite direction.
That promised view was sleeping snuggly under a thick white blanket.
Hundreds of travelers from across the globe waited and stared into the white abyss. The mist didn’t budge.
Mt. Kanchenjunga is somewhere there…
We were severely disappointed. For the fifth straight day Mt. Kanchenjunga eluded us. As the crowd began dispersing, we caught sight of a few foreign tourists. We pitied them. At least we were still in our country. These folks had come from much farther away. But they were still cheerful. Two of them even held up a large photograph of the mountain range and posed for pictures!
The mist couldn’t dampen their sunny attitude!
We took their cue and brushed our disappointment aside. It was only while we were walking downhill that we took notice of the picturesque route leading to the viewpoint. In the darkness during our ascent and in our hurry to reach the top of the hill, we had missed the flowering trees and the web of prayer flags above the road.
Praying for a good view?
We missed the golden Kanchenjunga, but we walked away with a handful of other memories. Hopefully, one day we can get back up there. For now though, we have a string prayer flags hanging at our doorstep, to remind us of the things we didn’t miss.
From being a part of one family,
To belonging to two
From the yearly hop between two cities
To a traveling spree
From figuring out two cultures
To switching between three!
From the spoilt n lazy brat
To greater responsibility
From an individual
To managing a team and a family
The image featured above is of “Lovers Meet” – the confluence of the rivers Teesta and Rangeet. The viewpoint is located somewhere between Darjeeling and Gangtok.
Musings of an eccentric mind 