Into India

An early start today breakfast at 0600 and on the road by 0700. Breakfast was amazing - a wide selection including a choice of fried, boiled and a choice of orange or ginger marmalade. Our long drive today would take us across the border into Indian and the state of West Bengal.  

The border crossings weren't as horrendous as they could have been between two states with a love of detail, forms and general bureaucracy - all many thanks to the long departed Raj. Bangladesh emigration was fine - we didn't even have to get off the bus. Rowthin our local guide just took all the passports into the office, they were stamped and an officer came out to count heads.

A short walk across a dusty no-man's land took us to a higgly-piggly set of small corrugated metal sheet shacks - none with any clear indication of whether they were something important or just somebody's shop or house. We negotiated our way along a windy dirt path over a narrow bridge over a dried rubbish choked stream bed.


Now we encountered the full force of Indian paperwork - a table outside behind which 3 or 4 uniformed police officers held court. We were given a long form to fill in and had been warned that we must only use block capitals and should not make any mistakes. Every seasoned traveller keeps a stock of pens ready for such events but what wasn't provided was a writing surface - so everybody improvised whatever they could. With trepidation, as I had to make a couple of small corrections, I handed my form into the Sub-Inspector in charge - he was all smiles and said it was fine. Then it was inside one of the shacks where there were even more officers sat behind an even bigger desk - each poised over a large paper ledger. Taking our passports off us, they wrote down of lodsa unknown details, asked us our professions and required us to sign our entry - job done ! Customs hadn't even exercised their right to inspect our luggage. A fairly painless session of money changing followed - good rates had been arranged for the whole group which all the change booths honoured - they even provided a free cup of chai whilst we waited.

Then we boarded "Thunder King" for so was our new conveyance named - 'new' was a bit of a misnomer if not prosecutable under the Trades Description Act. We had been promised a bigger bus - it wasn't - it had certainly been well used. There were electric fans on each side of each row of seats : the individual switches were in plastic blocks usually seen in houses back home. They were positioned just right so that if your head lolled as you snoozed or on a bump, you came in contact with a sharp hard corner. The doors were secured by bolts you would normally buy from B&Q and the window catches looked as if they could easily be opened from outside - so no more happily leaving stuff on the bus whist we visited a site etc.
As soon as we entered India we stared to notice changes :

- the lush green wet paddy fields gave way to scruffy dusty fields dotted with livestock but little seemed to be growing.

- there was now litter and rubbish everywhere - gone were the well swept villages, now there were scruffy towns. This might have had a bit to do with the fact that the Bangladesh government had banned plastic bags some years ago.

- In Dakah we had seen the full range of cars but once outside there had only been trucks, buses, pedal rickshaws and a few small motorcycles & 4x4s. As soon as we crossed the border the were cars & motorcycles clogging the road.

- Most of our travels around Bangladesh had been on the floodplains of its massive rivers - greenery to the horizon : rice, tobacco and maize broken only by the occasional stand of trees giving shade to small villages and what seemed to be ever present brickworks signaled by smoking chimneys. Now we actually encountered inclines and even hills.

- Whilst in Bangladesh we were constantly the centre of friendly curiosity. People would stop and watch us walk past, ask us where we were from and ask to take our photograph or have their photograph taken with us or for us to take their photo. Any smile and/or wave was usually returned with interest : overall very friendly peoples. In India were were ignored !

Towards the end of our journey we started the climb into the foothills of the Himalayas. We twisted up the sides of steep sided ravines with sheer drops down to the rocky river seen fleeting through the thick vegetation. We passed a massive hydro-electric dam already halfway across the river - evidently there had been objections both on the grounds of environmental impact and because it was being imposed by the central government and the local region would see little benefit.

We eventually reached the the hill station of Darjeeling. In the days of the Raj the Bengal government escaped from Calcutta Summer's heat to take up its official summer residence here and today's city dwellers still do likewise with Darjeeling being a popular holiday spot.

At 2,134m, the town is beautifully situated on a mountain ridge; the near vertical streets are crowded with a colourful mixture of Hindus and hill tribes – Lepchas, Bhutias and refugee Tibetans among them. On a clear day the views over the mountains to the snowy Himalayan peaks are magnificent or so we were told - during our visit the mist swirled up, over and around the hills.

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway connects the town with the plains and has one of the few steam locomotives still in service in India. Despite being a 'Heritage' facility it is falling into disrepair and the steam trains are now very old asthmatic and lacking enough power to be of any real use. They pull the small number of carriages that make up the tourist 'toy' train but soulless diesels now undertake the daily grind.

The town, with its neighbour Kalimpong, was a centre for the demand of the Gorkhaland movement in the 1980s. In recent years the town's fragile ecology has been threatened by a rising demand for environmental resources, stemming from growing tourist traffic and poorly planned urbanisation. We were told of increasingly agitation for more autonomy and a greater slice of the national budget. There are many points of conflict - eg they have only few MPs and so its voice is only faintly heard in Government and Darjeeling's water system was originally installed by the British but it hasn't been improved or even maintained - despite now supporting a population three times its design capacity. In protest, many of the local population have neither paid taxes nor utility bills for up to three year. The Government has threatened to cease generating hydro-electricity but the locals have said "Fine we use very little when compared with the heavily populated plains with its heavy industry.