India Gives and It takes.

Our last few days in Calcutta were not as nice as our first days. I was so sick from “Delhi belly” that after about 14 hours of being sick, I could barely stand up. Jen had to go and find food and other things while I lie in bed and pray for my antibiotics to kick in. It was also sad to be sick on this day because Jen and I had signed up to volunteer at a Mother Teresa house that helped disabled children.

At 7pm, we left for our first train ride–I was feeling terribly sick to my stomach. It was only 24 hours after I first became sick, but I was much better than I had been that afternoon. We took a rickshaw from our hotel to the train station–this was a horrible and bumpy road. I thought our rickshaw driver was suicidal because he crossed this major road with us in the back even though we could have gotten out and taken the sky-bridge. We got there found where our train would arrive and I slept on the pavement with my head on Jen’s lap while having strange sickness-induced dreams as hundreds of Indian people walked talked all around us.

Once we got on our train and got on the top berth of our sleeper non-A/C train, I took a sleeping pill and happily fell asleep for the next 14 hours. It turns out getting a jeep from the train station to Darjeeling was a much more daunting task. When the jeep drivers see foreigners with their backpacks, they charge 300 rupees per person. Which is dramatic because the 50 km jeep ride would cost 600 rupees and a 650 km train ride cost us 680. So after several hours of haggling with taxi drivers, we were off to Darjeeling paying 220 a person; it seems petty but the natives on the same jeeps probably paid a fraction of what we were forced to pay.

Darjeeling was amazing–it is a city in the clouds. I quickly recovered from my stomach ailments and Jen quickly got a head cold from the damp air and cold nights. We met great people on our jeep ride over and met up with them several times in Darjeeling whether we planned to or not. There is a quote I read about Darjeeling, “It is the only place where you can walk around the town once and see the same people four times.” We enjoyed them very much and were given a wealth of knowledge about where people had gone and stayed and what it was ‘really’ like.

We had a horrible time getting a jeep to Gangtok and stayed in Darjeeling one more night–this time in a nicer hotel because the dampness of the first hotel was bothering Jen. Finally we got on a jeep to Gangtok but without the permit we needed to get into the state of Sikkim. We stressed and people told us it was a hassle to stop at the border and get the permit. We were lucky because we had an extremely kind jeep driver who showed us where to get the permit and waited while we were approved, all about 20 minutes time. I think he is the only driver that we have tipped on our travels, most people driving either charge too much or drive unsafely.

We stayed in Gangtok for two nights–the first at a very hip lodge; the restaurant played music as hip as any Seattle club and joked and laughed and took between 30 min to 2 hours to bring you any type of food. We met some of the people from Darjeeling and some new people and had a great time talking. Jen was still ill and the next morning we decided we wanted a room that did not smell like mildew. After walking around most of Gangtok, I found one that worked but was almost as much as our budget for the day. Luckily, we have been spending on average 15 dollars under budget a day in India, so it was not a problem.

Gangtok had fancy stores, nice sidewalks, and many wealthy and vacationing locals. It was not a bad place, but Jen and I were happy to catch a Jeep to the more remote and scenic town of Pelling, located in the west side of Sikkim. It is calm and quite with the occasional jeep chugging along and the cicadas buzzing away. Tomorrow we will travel to a majestic sounding lake. Then on the 26th, Jen and I will attempt a 5 day trek that will end in Dzongri, and the hope is we will have an amazing view of the third highest peak in the world, Kangchenjunga, but we are not counting on it because it has been foggy and raining most of the time. We are excited because we will be trekking with a guide and a porter, and we will get to put our hiking boots to good use.

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