Gangtalk

It was 1:45 am on 22nd May 2008. Three of us ran out of R.K. Hall of residence looking for a taxi. No luck whatsoever! Lightning which was striking really hard seemed to be a precursor of things to come. We however chose to ignore the signs. Much to our relief we managed to locate Naaru. He was by no means a taxi, rather was an extremely resourceful guy. Within minutes he got us a taxi. We were off to Gangtok, no wait! We were off to Howrah, then Sealdah, finally to Jalpaiguri and then had to book a ride to Gangtok. Yay! Total travel time: 16 hours. Total enthusiasm: off the charts! We expected a very uneventful 2 hour journey to Howrah. However that wasn't to be. We were traveling without tickets in what seemed to be a reserved compartment (not because we were lazy it so happened that the train was highly convenient as per our itinerary and we didn't have time to book tickets). To our horror, 6 TTs (ticket inspectors) barged into our compartment and tried to wake us up. We feigned sleep - Chirag even tried to snore! After 5 minutes the TTs seemed to be chatting among themselves. Chom whispered, "Koi nahi uthega. Chup chaap so jao!". True to his word, 2 TTs came back and tried to wake us up again to no avail. Finally they gave up and we safely reached Kolkatta. We were supposed to catch a train to Jalpaiguri from Sealdah station. This time we did have tickets (reason: journey was 13 hours). However we were on the waiting list and as luck would have it, the train was fully booked. Wait that wasn't the end of it - we were not even on the waiting list. When we told the TT about our situation, he took kindly to us and offered us one seat - "the post" - his seat at the end of the compartment. It was highly uncomfortable and shabby. Only one of us was brave enough to man the post - Chirag! I and Chom finally located seats that we could share with a group and thankfully the rest of the journey was uneventful. On reaching Jalpaiguri we located a travel agency which was kind enough to offer us cold drinks and tea. We told the agent that we were students and would like to book the cheapest ride to Gangtok. He offered us a shared ride along with accommodation in some hotel. The price that he quoted seemed to be very high at that time - the hotel cost us 1000 a night. So we just took the shared ride. We were a little tired after the 13 hour long trip to Jalpaiguri and finally sought to relax. Suddenly our ride stopped - no biggie. 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes - we finally asked the guy from the agency what the deal was. Turned out that one of the passengers was carrying poultry over to Gangtok and he didn't have the authorization for it nor were the birds cleared of "bird flu" which was looming over Eastern India at the time. So the border patrol at Gangtok stopped us. We got down from the jeep and tried to get some fresh air. We also bought some candies (about 50 of them) from a local shop.

After about an hour it had started raining. Just what we needed! We stood in the rain for about 2 hours and finally, miraculously the border patrol let our ride through. We were a little concerned at that point - we were supposed to reach Gangtok by 8:30 pm - still a decent time to look for hotels. Now after the 3 hour delay we were staring at midnight. Even our driver said that there was nothing much we could do - he gave us 3 to 4 phone numbers and left. At this point, we were starved, tired, tattered, standing with thin jackets amidst a cool breeze and a quickening drizzle. Chom was experiencing nausea and with each step we took, we were giving way to fatigue. Chirag and I tried the phone numbers but no one answered. Chirag tried knocking at someone's door. No answer, someone coughed from inside. Chirag told me, "Abe koi hai undar, uthao usko!" Under normal circumstances I would have deemed this statement ridiculous - harassing innocent people in their sleep but we had no choice. I knocked again. A man answered the door, uttered something illegible and closed the door on us! Chirag was irritated and suggested that we should hang-out outside with the security guards and play cards! That was out of question - we'd have frozen to death, We were wet and did not have nice warm clothes on. I told him that I was going to search for any hotel that was open at this godforsaken hour and would be back in a few. After running a few blocks, I found a light. It was our only hope that night. I ran up to see a group drinking and smoking heavily. When I arrived they seemed wary. I calmly explained our predicament and said that we desperately needed a place - any place - for the night and would be gone by morning. After a lot of discussion, one of the guys said that we could sleep till 6 am on his restaurant's floor. He supplied us warm blankets and said that it would cost us 600 bucks for the night. At this point, this seemed too good to be true. So I called Chirag who arrived with Chom moments later. Chirag is an awesome actor and immediately started rubbing his stomach, "Arrre bahut bhook laga hai! Kuch hai?". One the guys was apparently a cook and felt sorry for us, he said that there were some leftovers in the kitchen but he didn't have the heart to re-heat them. We contently ate the cold rice and daal. The daal was particularly awesome and we had multiple servings. Chirag suggested that we come to this place every night and eat the cold daal! Once we were covered by our blankets, we immediately drifted into the safe refuge of our dreams.

6:30 am 23rd May. The cook tried to wake me up. I got up and told him we'd vacate the restaurant soon. To my surprise I saw families eating breakfast next to where we were sleeping and two children were pulling at Chirag's hair. Laughing I slept off. It was 8 am when I finally felt awake and tried to wake Chirag and Chom up. Chirag got up first. His first reaction: "I saw a weird dream yesterday. I saw that there were kids around me and they were pestering me". Sure enough, he wasn't dreaming! We apologized to the manager for our delay. He was a kind soul and gave us a room till noon where we could shower and change our clothes. We were very grateful to him. We finally had a taste of civilization - a proper room with a shower and what not. At noon, we checked out and tried to find a lodge where we could stay. We realized that the agent wasn't kidding when he said Rs 1000 a night was cheap during this season. We were cursing ourselves to no end. Finally Chirag located a guest house. Upon enquiring, he said that he would charge us Rs 800 a night. This looked promising. We tried to bargain: "We are from IIT Kharagpur, we had a harassing trip here and are left with very little cash. Please help us!". It finally hit him. "You guys are from ITT?" We didn't know what ITT meant, but it sure sounded good and we nodded. He gave us a room with cable tv for Rs 600 a night and also arranged for our trip to Yumthang valley saying that he would book nice rooms for us there. We were excited that finally we had found some luck. The manager also asked us if we were planning to see the Changu Lake and the monasteries. We looked at each other. Chirag said matter-of-factly, "Arrre Buddhist monks toh raste pe dikhte hain, monastery jaa ke kya kar dalein". He also suggested that we should purchase monk costumes and show them off. Anyway, we decided to visit Yumthang Valley and adjoining places only.


We were picked up by our shared ride for Yumthang valley and waited for our fellow passengers. We spotted a group of 5-6 young college girls coming in our direction. Was mother luck finally shining on us? - we were super excited! While we were checking them out, 2 families - 3 aunties, 1 uncle and 1 guy (our age) boarded our ride! $#%@! The only bright spot was our driver - a short Nepali guy. He was awesome; as was his playlist. When one of the aunties complained that it was getting too loud, he increased the volume even higher. He was an adept driver but drove at a break-neck speed (literally - my neck hurt after the drive) throughout the journey. Mid-way, we saw an amazing waterfall. We asked the driver what this place was. He said this was a famous tourist spot and asked whether we wanted him to stop. Are you kidding me? The driver's only intent was to get us to valley and back as fast as possible. He could care less if we enjoyed the trip or not. The waterfall was really beautiful and we managed to click some snaps near it.


We stopped at a couple more places and the driver decided that was it - no more stops! When we reached our supposedly nice "hotel", all we saw was a hut! Technically not a hut but it had potential to be one. Anyway we tried to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. That night we saw "Hum" on my laptop, cheering wildly at "Jumma chumma de de" and memorizing Amitabh's dialogue on "Duniya mein do type ke keede hote hain". The next day we went to Yumthang; the valley was gorgeous - no other word for it. Chom was excited to see Yaks and tried to chase one of them. At this point the driver said that we had 2 options - to return or to pay 100 bucks each , so that he could take us near the Indo-China border. This sounded wicked and we instantly paid up for it. It was snowing heavily there and all we had were thin jackets and sneakers. We were excited to see snow and indulged in a snowball fight. Since we were close to the 10 km stretch of no man's land Chirag suggested we shout out "Yo Dalai Lama" and quickly run back. Chom replied that this was a bad idea as bullets from the other side wouldn't be even visible in the snow-covered backdrop. It suddenly dawned on us that we were freezing. Our initial excitement had slowly given way to fear since our hands were turning blue. Chom's mouth was frozen, so was my nose and so were Chirag's ears! We had to drink something warm.

We saw a camp nearby. We asked for tea - "30 rupees sir!". No way! Are you kidding me? Chom asked, "How about rum?". Same answer, "30 rupees sir!" It seemed that everything in that camp was priced at 30 rupees. We took the rum and drank it bottoms up. We looked at each other for a second ... and then burst out laughing at the stupidity of our predicament. We were utterly unprepared for this trip but we were having all-the-more fun from our jugaads. We asked the family that was traveling with us to snap a picture of us enjoying the life saving rum. One of the aunties sternly remarked that our families would be furious when they learnt of our drinking. We didn't care? It was life or death that day. And we chose life!

During our trip back to the guest house all of us experienced nausea. Chirag had come up with a novel idea that swiveling candies with your tongue helped relieve nausea. It actually worked. I tried to sleep off the entire journey back on Chirag's shoulder. Later I was told that my head was so localized with Chirag's shoulder that that it bounced up and down whenever we hit a bump but somehow managed to find back its way to his shoulder. Upon reaching our guest house, we decided to spend the next day doing nothing - shopping, booking our return tickets and hitting a karaoke bar. We were tight on cash. So our first priority was tickets - which we were able to book (however no reservations again!). We were hungry by the time we finished booking tickets. Chirag said that we should avoid family-restaurants and try something fancy, something different. So we tried this shady looking place. The first thing that we observed were curtains. As soon as the waitress brought food to the table the curtains were pulled back. The "red lights" started flashing in our heads. A haggard man came to us and asked what we wanted to order. Chom asked him for the menu. In reply he said - Roti, Sabji, Daal. When we asked him to elaborate, he asked us to look for some other place. It was pretty clear we were in the wrong place at the right time. That evening we went to the Mahatma Gandhi square and tried a great coffee place. Chirag wanted us to be innovative with our choices - he tried Irish coffee, to be safe I ordered a vanilla latte and Chom looked at us for suggestions. We suggested that he should try the Carribean coffee. Upon drinking the coffee, he winced and remarked that coffee tasted like horse piss.

We finally got him a smoothie and he was cheerful again. The karaoke bar was fun except that there was no karaoke that night! Nevertheless we had a good time that night and finally went back to see a 20-20 cricket match. All 3 of us were sleeping on a king size bed, with Chom in middle which wasn't a great idea geometrically. Chom used to gym regularly and was much stronger than me and Chirag put together. For the female readers, also note that he participated in the Mr. IIT contest. Anyway, in the middle of the night I heard a scream "Arreee Arree! mein mar gaya". Chom had apparently changed sides and his hand had fallen onto Chirag's chest with a dull thud. With some difficulty, I helped Chirag out of his misery. No matter how much adversity we faced on this trip, it dawned to us that we'd be returning at noon the following day. We left with a heavy heart. On reaching the railway station, Chirag received a phone call. It turned out to be a telephonic job interview from Lloyd Shipping. By that time it had started raining cats and dogs. To our surprise, Chirag chose to give his interview in this setting. After he was done, it was back to us in the train, not having a seat, sitting on newspaper eating mixture, Chirag manning the post and us toasting to one of the best trips we have had.

Epilogue:
On our way back to Kharagpur, it was really hot in the passenger train from Howrah. We were all sweating profusely. Chirag said that he was sweating from his head and tried to demonstrate the flow of sweat by touching his nose from the back of his head and dragging it all the way back to his spine.

After IIT, we all drifted apart. Life after college is tough. It chokes our innocence, drags us by the neck making us taste the bitter realities around us. It is in moments like these that happy memories of our past give us the will to go on. Three of us are in three different parts of the world battling life at different fronts - both professional and personal. This post is dedicated to all the good times we have had and to raise my glass to the best of my friends!