On a sick leave in Kalimpong

Kalimpong was a perfect place to be sick at: a little charming town surrounded by the hills, where snow never covers its banana and palm trees and the beautiful gardens with flowers; where brightly painted houses are belted with pot chrysanthemums; where people are mixture of Nepali and Tibetan descendants, willingly reciprocating the eye-contact, openly smiling, never intruding and showing all their respect to you (when they give something – they give it with the right hand supported by the left one a bit above the wrist from below); where any shop sells most essential – prayer flags and white scarves for offerings, similar looking packs of noodles and incense sticks; where you get the yummiest veg momos (unless you care for beef ones which are found without any difficulty here) for one rupee each along with hot bullion; where you dine in shop run by a woman and her daughters – around the shelves stuffed with the jars of pickles – cherry-like small Nepali mirchi (chili) and sophisticated mosaics of different roots.


…. So I fell sick. After the cold Darjeeling I felt a bit feverish, but did not take any pill, yet took shower that morning… I ended up with the temperature of 39.2 C which I had no idea how to fight… I could feel every single part of my body that I never knew to exist before. I felt like an old and hopelessly wretched vehicle. Needless to say, the misery was ultimate as my Sikkim plans had to be altered and the initial ambitions were to be cut down. All in all, I felt like dying and somehow I was. The owner of our guest house, a short anxious man, got very worried about me and started getting my rice porridge, tea, hot water, soups etc in the room. It took me a while to realize that even from a local pharmacy I can get a pill with the same composition as the one that my mom gives me in such cases, as I did not take that one in my emergency kit. The pill was found and did wonders – the fever was gone overnight, I took the next day for recovering and then headed off to Sikkim.