The scenery changes in a flash and continuous to change as you approach darjeeling from Bagdogra airport. Now a town plastered with hoardings, suddenly a tea estate whizzes by and air starts to bite a bit. Cross quite a few quaint bridges on roads that is barely enough for one way traffic manages two and has more character in 1 km than an expressway in 100.
After all this is what you came here for and the journey resembles, like all journeys in India, the flow of life itself. The world passes by your eyes and though the beauty of the nature takes you in and fulfill all your senses; you still can feel the profoundness of it all.
And than all of a sudden you are climbing a very very steep incline. You are thrilled by the dense pine forest around you but at the same time wondering whether you will actually reach safely to wherever the driver said you are going, your attention grabbed by the Kalimpong town on top of the adjacent mountain, and than by the villages on a steep incline and the mist enveloping you, the village shops built on the slope and than a ghostly flowered laden building looms. The jeep stops, you wonder whether this beautiful place is the end of this leg of your journey....It is. Vow.
The Gurung cottage owner who was watering his plant welcomes you with the broadest smile you have seen since morning; it was the driver who smiled like this in the morning and apologises for a perfectly magical misty weather? because you cant see the Kanchenchunga.
Just in time for the evening guitar session by the young Nepali owner and his cousin and singly amazingly hummable nepali numbers about nepali boy asking for a nepali girl's hand and his father regret to inform him that without a government job it isnt possible.
The night closes in and after a hearty dinner cooked by the owners, you retire for an early night
Tuesday, 23 January 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment