This adventure did not started right and continued with lots
of challenges. Departed in the middle of
March and returned the beginning of April.
The original flight to Delhi via Boston was delayed and was moved to
another flight going via Atlanta. This was
also delayed due to a damaged tire; no more connections available this
day. So the next morning were flown to
Kennedy connecting to Air India. Finally,
after 13 hours direct flight arrived in Delhi but lost two days in the field
due to internal flight and land travel connections. Arrived on a Sunday, all the tourists’ sites
were closed but the flying carpets stores were not. I got to see the cobra
dancing to the sound of flute player as well as other sites.
Departed Delhi on a
Monday and flew to Bagdogra where a driver was waiting to drive to Manybhanjung
to spend the night. Next morning drove
to Tumling in Singalila Park in an antique Land Rover via extremely difficult
stone roads climbing to up to around 12,000 feet, where home was to be for 5
days. Home was split between Tea Houses
at Gairibas and Kalapokhri. The accommodations
were spartan the nights cold and the food simple; drank lots of tea…which I
really don’t like. But the people
compensated for all the travails; all friendly and willing to assist despite
the communication challenges. Entering
Kalapokhri there is a lake with the shoreline lined with flags and not far from
it, a Buddhist praying wall.
Below is the main drag in Kalapokhri and the red house was
my home and just across the street, the kitchen. As I walked for lunch the first day, I saw
this plastic chicken hanging in the wall.
The cook came, took it and say that was going to be lunch. It was a real
chicken that was embalmed with special oil for preservation. Well, the chicken appeared in a sauce but
they prepare it by chopping the whole thing into small bites. There was no much meat so I gave up because
feared getting choked with the tiny chips of bones; did not want to risk the
rest of the adventure. They also use a
strange design terracotta fireplace. At
this altitude there are not many trees so the firewood came from the lower
elevations of the protected Park forests. There is/was a
communal water faucet in the village that appeared that was no longer working.
The daily routine was to wake at day break and hit the
bamboo forest in the search for the elusive red pandas. In the early mornings it was cold but after
walking the steep trails for ½ an hour, it was time to remove some layers of
clothes. The trails were going up and
down the trails in the mountains; we did this for most of the days with not a
panda to be seen, in fact, no wild animals at all. As you know, cows in India are everywhere,
and to my surprise, occasionally I will run into a cow in the forest trails, they
just stood there and watched this stranger walking by. The absence of furry and for that matter
feather ones too, was compensated by flowering trees. Rhododendrons were numerous exhibiting a
variety of colors, but in the USA these are small bushes but here they grow into
huge trees. The magnolias were also
flowering with huge white, and sometimes with a slight pinkish color flowers.
The ground was covered with bunches of pink flowers.
After roaming around the Himalayas, it was time to descend
to the lowland and drive back in the antique Land Rover to Maneybhanjung to
catch a train to Guwahati where the next saga will begin. About these old Land
Rovers, they were made with aluminum bodies that were usually painted
green. As you can see below, now these
vehicles had the paint removed showing the aluminum metal that is kept clean
and shiny. Most of the mechanical parts
and the instrument panels are not original ones but of mixed ancestry. But they still work and wondered how those
tires held together riding over those stone roads. More about this trip coming soon.
