From NJP to Darjeeling
I woke up surprised… a gray day was looking at me through the window of the train… the first day without a sun for a long time… since I have arrived in India actually… NJP was as dull as the day and I rushed to the jeep stand to get a vehicle that would bring me further up to Darjeeling.
The jeep accommodated 10 people, including an American family of 3 with a girl speaking decent Hindi, a Belgium girl Nele who has become my travel partner for the North-East hill venture, a man singing religious hymns the whole way long, a big Muslim man in while kurta, green turban and a Nokia smart phone, a man who was getting sick at the curvy roads now and then, two anonymous persons and me…
The journey took us first to Silliguri, as unspectacular as NJP, but the tea plantations around it was where I first in my life saw the green neat bushes of tea. I also tried to identify the common pattern in the appearances of people living in this area and got even more confused: so many looked similar to Tibetans or Nepalis, a few had a typical Bengali face, while the rest looked like neither of those… The border areas are always interesting to visit to see how the neighboring nationalities mix….
Soon we started ascending along a winding road laid on the lush green slopes making up for a landscape completely different from that of the Western Himalaya… It may be right to visit a botanical garden to eventually find out the names of all those plants and trees found in abundance here…. Massive branches of some wild-growing cereal of a human height, the burdocks of gigantic banana leaves, firs twined round with the lianas and the bamboo trees, to name just a few I could identify... Yet for a bulk impression what mattered was that the slopes were as if dressed in a thick coat of the lush vegetation…. And the fog…this kind that does not come in the round wreaths of mist, but rather soaks out from above in layers.. it was covering the remote hills, the tops of the closeby ones and was gradually hiding the valley we left behind us. We were entering this kingdom of the numerous hills covered by the terraced tea gardens and the forests - at times deciduous at times coniferous one. The deeper we were moving the closer we could feel the embrace of the omni-present fog. Whenever you lean over the window of the jeep and look down the edge of the slope you virtually dive into the masses of fog and nothing beyond this....
Now and then we were passing small settlements with the little houses cheerfully painted in blue and green - as high as a person's height - belted with the pots of the beautiful flowers... Women were still wearing salwar-kameze, yet warmed with sweaters and pullovers..yet in many instances wearing flip-flops.. doing dishes outside the houses with the freezing-cold water - just like that...
The jeep accommodated 10 people, including an American family of 3 with a girl speaking decent Hindi, a Belgium girl Nele who has become my travel partner for the North-East hill venture, a man singing religious hymns the whole way long, a big Muslim man in while kurta, green turban and a Nokia smart phone, a man who was getting sick at the curvy roads now and then, two anonymous persons and me…
The journey took us first to Silliguri, as unspectacular as NJP, but the tea plantations around it was where I first in my life saw the green neat bushes of tea. I also tried to identify the common pattern in the appearances of people living in this area and got even more confused: so many looked similar to Tibetans or Nepalis, a few had a typical Bengali face, while the rest looked like neither of those… The border areas are always interesting to visit to see how the neighboring nationalities mix….
Soon we started ascending along a winding road laid on the lush green slopes making up for a landscape completely different from that of the Western Himalaya… It may be right to visit a botanical garden to eventually find out the names of all those plants and trees found in abundance here…. Massive branches of some wild-growing cereal of a human height, the burdocks of gigantic banana leaves, firs twined round with the lianas and the bamboo trees, to name just a few I could identify... Yet for a bulk impression what mattered was that the slopes were as if dressed in a thick coat of the lush vegetation…. And the fog…this kind that does not come in the round wreaths of mist, but rather soaks out from above in layers.. it was covering the remote hills, the tops of the closeby ones and was gradually hiding the valley we left behind us. We were entering this kingdom of the numerous hills covered by the terraced tea gardens and the forests - at times deciduous at times coniferous one. The deeper we were moving the closer we could feel the embrace of the omni-present fog. Whenever you lean over the window of the jeep and look down the edge of the slope you virtually dive into the masses of fog and nothing beyond this....
Now and then we were passing small settlements with the little houses cheerfully painted in blue and green - as high as a person's height - belted with the pots of the beautiful flowers... Women were still wearing salwar-kameze, yet warmed with sweaters and pullovers..yet in many instances wearing flip-flops.. doing dishes outside the houses with the freezing-cold water - just like that...
posted by Olga Tikhonova | 6:25 am
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