Farewell to the Mountains
The trip back to the plains and a Jesuit with the
name of a steak!
Our last day in Darjeeling dawned with the usual
mystifyingly eccentric cloud-formations, punctuated with the odd glorious view
of the surrounding mountains. The school had generously offered one of their
vehicles (along with the afore-mentioned Jacques Villeneuve-like driver, Sonam)
to drive us down to the
airport.
Accompanying us was a Jesuit named Fr. Mignon who was finishing up his annual vacation in the hills. He was quite an amazing guy - he'd first come out to India in 1949 - so I can only imagine the state of his lungs after 54 years of inhaling diesel! The old boy had spent his entire time in Calcutta so was able to give us some interesting tales of the city before it became the insane place it is now. He' d also been coming up to Darjeeling for all that time and remembered the trip in 1952 (I think) when the Monsoon washed away the road in a couple of places - so they had to walk the whole way down to the bottom! Given those kinds of experiences, his views of the shortcut from Kurseong to Siliguri were a lot more jovial than ours....
You just had to love the road construction going on - just in the nick of time.....and, by the way, how on Earth are we going to get past that minivan?!!?!?
Actually, the second trip on the shortcut didn't seem quite so hair-raising as the first. I guess we'd been dodging traffic for so long in Darjeeling that the fact there was a 1000ft drop mere feet away didn't have quite the cache it did before. Oh well...we'd now become the next in a long line of jaded travellers.
It was quite incredible how the temperature rose in such a short time. In the hour it took to get from Kurseong to the plains, we must have gone from 12 degrees to about 28! The layers of clothing certainly disappeared rapidly. Pretty soon the magical quality of the Himalayas receded (sigh) into the haze of the plains and we were back in the real India once again....
The flight back to Calcutta was rather uneventful - except that I had to remove my shoes for the security dude. Apparently, Canadian shoes have the unpleasant propensity to cause a shrill beeping sound when approached by a metal detector. Who knew? The only other excitement was caused by us guffawing out loud while reading bits of "Uncle Fred in the Springtime" (PG Wodehouse) - this caused the Indian family sitting across from us to throw furtive glances in our direction interspersed with the odd sharp intake of breath. We don't mind being on display.
Calcutta presented us its usual smoky face upon arrival but, as mentioned above, we were now jaded travellers and cruised along to the Tollygunge Club in our taxi with nary a sideways glance at the chaos around us. The first thing we did was order toast and tea....but, of course! That evening we decided to get dressed up and grace the Tippu Sultan room in the main Clubhouse with our presence. En route, we decided some glam picture-taking was in order. You don't seriously think this was posed, do you....?
The main clubhouse, as you can probably tell from the pic, is a very elegant spot. It was built in the late 1700's as the main house for the family who ran the indigo plantation - so has all sorts of cool design cues. Of course, us running around posing led to all sorts of speculation by the members as to just which celebrities we were....far be it for us to burst their bubbles!
Accompanying us was a Jesuit named Fr. Mignon who was finishing up his annual vacation in the hills. He was quite an amazing guy - he'd first come out to India in 1949 - so I can only imagine the state of his lungs after 54 years of inhaling diesel! The old boy had spent his entire time in Calcutta so was able to give us some interesting tales of the city before it became the insane place it is now. He' d also been coming up to Darjeeling for all that time and remembered the trip in 1952 (I think) when the Monsoon washed away the road in a couple of places - so they had to walk the whole way down to the bottom! Given those kinds of experiences, his views of the shortcut from Kurseong to Siliguri were a lot more jovial than ours....
You just had to love the road construction going on - just in the nick of time.....and, by the way, how on Earth are we going to get past that minivan?!!?!?
Actually, the second trip on the shortcut didn't seem quite so hair-raising as the first. I guess we'd been dodging traffic for so long in Darjeeling that the fact there was a 1000ft drop mere feet away didn't have quite the cache it did before. Oh well...we'd now become the next in a long line of jaded travellers.
It was quite incredible how the temperature rose in such a short time. In the hour it took to get from Kurseong to the plains, we must have gone from 12 degrees to about 28! The layers of clothing certainly disappeared rapidly. Pretty soon the magical quality of the Himalayas receded (sigh) into the haze of the plains and we were back in the real India once again....
The flight back to Calcutta was rather uneventful - except that I had to remove my shoes for the security dude. Apparently, Canadian shoes have the unpleasant propensity to cause a shrill beeping sound when approached by a metal detector. Who knew? The only other excitement was caused by us guffawing out loud while reading bits of "Uncle Fred in the Springtime" (PG Wodehouse) - this caused the Indian family sitting across from us to throw furtive glances in our direction interspersed with the odd sharp intake of breath. We don't mind being on display.
Calcutta presented us its usual smoky face upon arrival but, as mentioned above, we were now jaded travellers and cruised along to the Tollygunge Club in our taxi with nary a sideways glance at the chaos around us. The first thing we did was order toast and tea....but, of course! That evening we decided to get dressed up and grace the Tippu Sultan room in the main Clubhouse with our presence. En route, we decided some glam picture-taking was in order. You don't seriously think this was posed, do you....?
The main clubhouse, as you can probably tell from the pic, is a very elegant spot. It was built in the late 1700's as the main house for the family who ran the indigo plantation - so has all sorts of cool design cues. Of course, us running around posing led to all sorts of speculation by the members as to just which celebrities we were....far be it for us to burst their bubbles!
Posted: Sat - November 15, 2003 at 07:41 PM
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Published On: Dec 04, 2003 07:45 PM
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Published On: Dec 04, 2003 07:45 PM