Tourist Exodus?!

Last Sunday I (along with some fellow volunteers) decided to find relief from pre-monsoon heat of Kolkata and visit Darjeeling. Fourteen hours later and after my first experience of Indian trains we arrived in West Bengal’s most northerly train station; New Jalpaiguri. A one legged shoe shine sitting at the entrance to the train station offered some free advice - a strike had just been announced and it was impossible to go to Darjeeling. I looked down to the newspaper which I was holding and read the front page – members of the Gorkhaland Party were four days into their hunger strike. The strike (or bandh in Nepali) in Darjeeling was in support of the fasters. However, everyone I asked and everyone who offered their free advice told me a different story – the bandh would be over by four pm, the bandh was for 24 hours etc etc. What was clear was that the bandh was to prevent movement of goods and services from Darjeeling to the main town 70 km south – Siliguri. We managed to find a bus to Siliguri.

In Siliguri we were told a similar story “Darjeeling impossible”. All public buses had stopped running and the four wheel drive jeeps with signs to Darjeeling on the windscreen were sitting empty. We walked down to the Siliguri Junction train station which was said to have a 'toy' train that very slowly crawled up the hills to Darjeeling. After moving between the ‘enquiry desk’ to the ‘Reservation desk’ and then back to the ‘Ticket booking office’ multiple times we were told that perhaps the toy train would be leaving but if it did there would be “a ninety percent chance” that it would be stopped on the way. We carried our bags back out of the train station resigned to be spending our first night away from the craziness of Kolkata in the silliness of Siliguri. We walked past a full jeep. “Darjeeling?” We were asked. And the very next second we were piled into the full jeep and careering out of Siliguri.

Now the north of West Bengal is surrounded by recognized and unrecognized countries and states: Nepal to the west, Assam to the east. Sikkim, Bhutan, Tibet and China to the North and Bangladesh to the South. Throughout the morning I had gradually began to realize that I could understand a surprising amount of what was being said, primarily because the main language in the region is actually Nepali. I asked the driver what time we would arrive and his reply (“we will arrive after we leave”) was as nonsensical as my question, but ultimately meant that for the rest of the journey he would refer to me as ‘diddy’ and endeavour to include me in all of the discussions.

The road was not direct though and required stopping at every possible closed shop looking for diesel. The bandh means that all shops, including petrol stations, are forced to close. The lack of diesel is another reason why the movement of vehicles is restricted. Our energetic driver remained on the edge of this seat spinning us through small villages and reversing through alleyways determined and before long the wooden shutters of a shop were opened and a plastic can of diesel produced. We soared up through the mountain hills. The air becoming cooler and fresher and the roads narrower. Soon the fields began to turn into small bushes – full of dark green tea plantations as we twisted and turned our way through hair pin bends up to and eventually above the clouds. We abruptly stopped for lunch – as even during a bandh the driver needs to eat! We piled into a tiny wooden restaurent on the edge of road, which was in turn on the edge of the hill and drank chai and ate momo's while a travelling minstrel silently agreed to stem my curiousity by playing his tiny wooden guitar shaped instrument. I knocked back another cup of chai before we piled back in the jeep with the driver asking 'diddy' if she was actually drinking raksi – a very alcholic Nepali rice brew. I tried to reply that our crazy driver must be the one drinking the raksi, but I think the humour was lost in translation as he continued to negotiate our jeep at the same speed furiously up the hills.

When we eventually arrived in Darjeeling it didn’t actually occur to me as strange that there were crowds of people squeezing themselves into the two buses bursting at the windows, with the roof rack even overflowing with both bags and people. I was too happy to have finally reached our desired destination after nearly a full day traveling. Unlike other places where I had been during a strike the streets seemed relatively busy. All the shops were shut, but because there was no curfew groups of people were walking around, talking or queuing outside of the pharmacies. The pharmacies were the only shops allowed to open, and luckily they do not just sell medicines. Perhaps they used to only just sell medicine, but years of bandhs have taught them an important business lesson and now they are full with packets of biscuits, soups, noodles (apparently the sustaining food of the Nepali Maoists) juice and extremely old Cadbury's chocolate. Again, the rush to the pharmacies to buy everything but medicines failed to make much of an impression on us and we began our search for a guest house. Darjeeling’s tiny streets are crammed high with guest houses once again, they were also on strike. Eventually we climbed up to find one room left in ‘Andy’s Guest house', owned by a Nepalese Lady called Matilda, who has never been to Nepal.

After wandering the streets, harassing the lady selling bootlegged Chai from a kettle disguised in a blanket, admiring the fog filled views, we found the one food substance exempt from the bandh – corn. Several roasted corns later and with a take away dinner of a bag full of biscuits and we returned to ‘Andy’s’ where the night was to become even stranger. At around eleven o’clock people started moving and the previous silence of the hills disturbed by excited chatter. A friend went to investigate and returned to say that tourist were being evacuated and what did we want to do? I replied that we would decide in the morning. “There leaving now” was the response. Hmmm. The occupants of our entire guest house we leaving, and yet we had just arrived – which had been a major achievement in itself. We went to sleep.