why is nobody writing?
its so dpressing to check the page everyday and see nothing new that ive finally decided to contribute something....
this is taking a lot of thinking... and i really, really
hate that...
so have decided to tell you the story of my great Darjeeling trip... we had a four day term break in december and 15 of my class mats decided to go
to darjeeling and i tagged along. unfortunately the trip ended up being more of a journey to darjeeling than actual sight seeing there.
In true "younger gen" fashion the first thing we did was to miss our connecting train from Kolkata.
Darjeeling, like Ooty has really bad connectivity, so our journey was planned in 3 stages - train from Bhubaneswar to Kolkata, train from Kol to Siliguri [ a place at the foothills, like Mettupalayam and Ooty] and finally, taxi to Darjeeling.
We started off well enough. Caught the train from BBS and in spite of dire predictions to the contrary, reached Kol 45mins before r next train was due.
on the train from BBS
at the BBS station
We reached Howrah station at about 6.am. Our connecting train was from another station called Sealdah at 6.45. We even made it there on time but unfortunately asked the enquiry desk what time our train would arrive. they said it was running late and would arrive only by 8. so we went off happily to eat breakfast, returned at 7.30 and found that r train had left just 5 mins back.
Howrah bridge at 6 in the morning
So naturally, the next step was to go have a shouting match with the station master. It wasnt very satisfactory but he did sugest that we catch another train which left from Howrah station at 9.30.
Back to haggling with the taxi drivers, a drive at breakneck spped across town and
we reached Howrah station to find that no one in that place had ever heard of such a train.
so we were back
to squre one again, wondering what to do next.
And across the same bridge again, a little while later.
While we were sitting outside the sation, racking our fine MBA brains for ideas, we realised that it was Christmas. So we bought a cake at the station and had a very wierd Christmas
celebration there.
Then someone suggested we catch a Bus to Siliguri. As it is a 12 hour journey nobody was very enthusiastic about taking a gov bus. So grown wiser with experience, we sent only two guys to the bus stand to make enquiries. They discovered a really nice sleeper bus there that lef
t at 5 in the evening and luckily we got tickets for all of us on the same bus.
One problem solved, now we had to figure out what to do for the rest of the day in Kol. We had among us a 'local' who had lived for 12 years there but knew next to nothing about the place, which we did not discover until too late and so ended up spending the day in Kol's very nice shopping mall.
It was a pretty fun day..... just shopping and eating. Actually... it was an almost perfect day...
Well, we caught the bus on time and expected to be a Siliguri at 6 the next morning. But as they say man composes and god disposes... or something like that at any rate.
We woke up at 3am and discovered a huge traffic jam which postponed r scheduled arrival to 10am. Woke up again at6 o'clock, we had perhaps moved 5kms further along the road.
The great traffic jam.... the line of lorries really stretched for miles
To make a long story short we spent 28 hours on that bus. Apparently some CPI MLA had been killed nearby, so the party was calling a 12-hour bandh. Traffic would apparently start moving only at 5 in the evening. It was really not our day.
in the fields near where r bus was parked during the bundh.
We finally reached Siliguri at 9.30 in the night, after several fights between r driver and some party workers. But luckily we reached ther in one piece and found our taxis waiting for us [ we did do some thing right].
Had dinner in Siliguri and then finally started for Darjeeling at about 11pm. Reached our guest house at 2.30am, just waiting to fall into nice cozy beds..... but it was not to be so.
Our marathon tour of Darjeeling was due to start at 3.30 am.... dont ask me why....
will tell u abt it in my next post....
bye bye
sindhu
