The last three days in Darjeeling were pretty mundane. The
seven point sightseeing turned out to be a big disappointment. Only the zoo was
the most interesting part. We spend quite a lot of time their observing animals
and birds of myriad species found across the Himalayan region. I spent a lot of
time loathing fellow tourists catcalling at the animals. These bloody morons
think if they just make stupid sounds to attract the attention of the animals they
will come up and pose for them as per their convenience. I felt like throwing
them into one of the cages and catcalling at them instead to see if they posed
for us.
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| Golden Pheasant |
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| Macaws |
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| Himalayan wolf. A middle aged man was telling his teenager son very seriously, 'Look dear. You know what that is called? It is a Hyena.' |
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| My best click. Period. |
We skipped the Mountaineering Institute owing to sheer lack
of interest.
The ropeway journey was undoubtedly the most painful part
of the entire trip. There was a long queue and we already got the tickets
before realising how long we had to wait till our turn would come. The ticket cost
Rs. 350 per person. Some asshole who was standing behind us, somehow tricked his
way up to the queue and soon we spotted him and his wife standing far ahead of
us. We got pissed off and started yelling, but the moron couple who were just in
front of us, were apparently too deeply in love to notice such materialistic
loss and kept clicking each other’s photographs and eating snacks. I was
disgusted and hungry and tired and on the verge of exploding. We had to wait
for three hours in that queue surrounded by morons from all over India till our
turn came up. Not so surprisingly, I spotted no foreigner in that crowd. They knew
where and how to avoid the moron Indian tourists. However our ordeal was not
over. We boarded the car with two couples. One of them were those love parrots
(the guy was wearing a parrot green shirt and red pants and the woman was a
human version of disco ball). They got very busy clicking their selfies as soon
as their asses touched the seat of the car. The second pair was even worse. The
guy kept talking during the entire journey in broken English, Hindi and Bengali.
Needless to say, he was nothing but a very commonplace Bengali manchild and his
girlfriend was also the same. During the entire trip he kept on trying too hard
to impress his girlfriend as well as the entire group with his super ‘inability’
of speaking fluent Bengali and his extensive knowledge of South India and its
various cultures and the people. We assessed from his bleached hair and
colourful cheap jeans that he probably worked for some South Indian BPO. I was
pretty sure he was an IIN call centre employee.
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| The hills were littered with garbage |
The view from the ropeway was most pathetic. I could only
see piles of garbage lying across hills. Some construction work was going on
here and there. It was dirty everywhere. If you sit in a ropeway car you will
be able to see how polluted and dirty and disorganized Darjeeling has become. Cheap
Bengali sentiment my foot.
Rest of the sightseeing trip was so insignificant that I am
not wasting my time penning it down. One can as well skip it from their
itinerary.
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| Lunch at Kunga. Thenthuk soup |
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| Pork curry and fried rice |
We opted for the Darjeeling Himalayan train ride on the next
day. It was round trip of Darjeeling-Ghum-Darjeeling with a halt at Batasia
loop. All I could see from the window was a very dirty and congested town but
nothing else. The train halted for quite some time at Ghum station. Ghum is
considered to be the highest railway station in India, situated at an elevation
of 2258 metres. There was a small rail museum at Ghum that was dedicated to the
history of Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. Ghum is famous for its cloudy and
foggy climate and that day was no exception. The old railway station still bore
the signs of the colonial era of Indian history.
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| At Batasia Loop |
Next day we went for breakfast to Glenary’s before heading to the airport. We also bought cakes and cookies for home as souvenirs. As we had already
spent the entire previous afternoon and evening shopping, we did not have
anything else left to buy. I compensated my disappointment with a long list of shopping
and shopped for everyone. I was happy to know that I might not be going home
with best of memories, but definitely bags full of treasures. Only this time
they were purely materialistic.
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| Darjeeling tea |
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| Sumptuous spread of breakfast |
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| He knows how to pose with swag. |
The end
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