November 27-30, 2013: Into Burma, to Mawlamyine

Getting a later start than I had hoped, I took a songthaw the five miles or so from Mae Sot in Thailand to the border with Burma and crossed the border about 10 in the morning (9:30 in Burma) on November 27.  I had been to this border in 1992 to see the Burmese market on the Thai side of the narrow river that is the border.  Back then it was a very simple village with only small boats to take you across the river, with only Thais and Burmese allowed to cross.  It has completely changed, with lots of big buildings and traffic and a big bridge over the river.  I checked out of Thailand, walked over the bridge to the Burmese town of Myawady and was quickly processed by the very friendly Burmese immigration officials.  One told me about 15 foreigners a day have crossed since the border opened in late August

I was able to change 1000 baht for 31,000 kyat, a very good rate, and almost immediately left in a small station wagon for the city of Mawlamine at a cost of about $10.  Surprisingly, there were only four passengers, one in the front and three, including me, in the back, so the seating was quite comfortable.  The road, however, was a different matter, very bumpy and dusty for the first hour and a half or so on a road rising to about 2500 feet above sea level through jungle clad mountains.  This part of Burma is inhabited mainly by Karen (or Kayin) people, one of Burma's many minority groups.  In 1992 I had traveled north from Mae Sot along the Burmese border on a newly paved road, hitching a ride in the back of a speeding pick up along with two Australians who were heading to an unofficial crossing of the border to visit the headquarters of the Karen insurgency army then fighting the Burmese government.  They said they were journalists.  Now the Karen have signed a ceasefire with the government and won seats in both the national parliament and the Karen State one. 

The road over the mountains is one way, eastward and westward on alternate days.  There was a lot of traffic, and some great views, on the bumpy road, but our driver was very skillful, and even daring, in getting us around the big buses and trucks.  When we came out of the mountains, reaching the plains, he stopped, had us roll up our windows, and washed his car from a couple of the many hoses waiting for cars wanting a wash after the mountain passage.

We headed west towards Mawlalmyine on the coast on a still bumpy, but paved, road, with a lunch stop at a little outdoor cafe, where I had chicken and rice.  The waitresses were very friendly, but shy.  One walked by me and then said, without looking at me, "What is your name?  My name is . . . ."  When I looked up, the others all laughed.  I guess I was quite the celebrity, or oddity.  On the way to Mawlamyine we passed rice paddies ready for reaping, banana trees, and sugar palm trees.  Many of the houses were simple shacks with big broad leaves used for both roofing and walls.  I saw almost no horse or bullock carts.  I had seen plenty twenty years ago when I first visited Burma.

We crossed a wide river on a new bridge, passed some steep sided, rocky, little hills, and reached Mawlamyine about 3.  I took a motorcycle taxi to a backpacker's hotel on the waterfront and had a choice of a very small room with a very thin mattress for $10 or a larger room with a much more comfortable mattress for $20 and chose the latter.  To my surprise, it also had air conditioning.  In Burma, it seems, you pay for hotels in dollars and almost everything else in kyat.  And the dollars have to be pristine, with no tears, marks or even folds, and dated 2006 or later. I brought almost $1600 in cash with me, but it turns out there are now quite a few ATMs where you can use your credit or debit card to get kyat.  You still need the dollars for the hotels, though.

Mawlamyine (formerly spelled "Moulmein," as in "By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea," the opening lines of Kipling's Road to Mandalay) is a city of about 300,000, though it doesn't seem so large, at the mouth of the Salween River (now the Thanlwin River; it seems the British had a very hard time hearing Burmese words correctly), which has its headwaters far to the north in Tibet, near the headwaters of the Mekong and Yangzi.  It is the capital of Mon State (Mons are another of Burma's many ethnic group, though apparently very closely related to the Bamar, or Burmese, who make up about 70% of the country's population) and was the first capital of British India, captured by the British in the First Burmese War (of three) in 1824 or so.  There is a large island just west of the water front, so it doesn't seem like the sea, though it clearly is tidal.  I walked north along the waterfront and was disappointed to see that the waterfront below the street promenade served as the city dump.  Lots of garbage dumped there.  People along the way were very friendly.  I watched some feeding a large flock of pretty gulls that caught the food in mid air.  There are some colonial buildings along the waterfront and the downtown streets further inland, including three mosques that served the Indian Muslim population, but all are pretty dilapidated now.  I ate dinner outdoors on the waterfront just after it got dark about 6.  Back at the hotel I washed my very dusty clothes and self.

I got up about 6 the next morning.  Mist sat upon the river, almost obscuring the island to the west.  It quickly dissipated, and after breakfast, about 7:30, I walked up to the ridge, rising to about 250 feet, just to the east of the downtown.  On the way I passed a group of guys making very thin rice pancakes, one guy kneading the thick dough in a wooden tub and others taking fistfuls and then spreading small amounts on metal griddles over basins full of charcoal.  The pancakes cooked quickly and then were collected and stacked. One guy gave me one to eat and it was good.  I think they were amused that I watched them for so long.

The ridge above town is crowned with pagodas and I walked up the steps under a covered walkway, with a few red clad monks for company, towards the Kyaikthanlaw Paya, Kipling's "old Moulmein Pagoda."   This complex centers around a tall, gold plated stupa, called a zedi here in Burma.  There are all sorts of buildings with altars all around it, full of white faced, very feminine looking Buddhas of many different sizes.  The attendants are all, it seems, pretty young women with the traditional yellow sandalwood-like paste called thanakha on their faces.  It seems that almost all women wear this, as do many children and young men.  It serves as a combination sunblock, skin conditioner, and make up.  Some women draw swirls or dots or lines on their faces with the thanakha, which is made by grinding a type of wood, which I've seen on sale in the markets, into powder and then adding water.  From the pagoda I had great views to the east and west, with rocky,steep sided hills to the east.  I could see the wide Salween which reaches the sea just north of the city.

I walked around the stupa several times.  There were few others there.  Eventually I walked north along the ridge to the Mahamuni Paya, with a mirrored inner chamber, set with diamonds and rubies they say, containing a large gold Buddha with a silver face, a replica of one in Mandalay.   I stopped for an early chicken and rice lunch about 10:30 and then walked south along the ridge as the day got hot.  Just south of Kyaikthanlaw Paya is a wooden monastery with very interesting wooden carvings, including a carved wooden throne.  It, too, was almost deserted, except for a few monks. The queen of King Mindon, Burma's penultimate king, fled here from Mandalay after his death in 1878.  I don't know why, but I suspect it had to do with his son and successor, Thibaw, killing off all his male relatives, as was traditional.

Further south on the ridge is large shed protecting a fairly recent large Buddha made completely of bamboo, very interesting and beautiful.  I walked to some other pagodas, or paya, further south along with ridge, and had good views out over the town to the west.  It was hot, though, and eventually I retreated to Kyaikthanlaw about 2:30 and stayed there until just after sunset, which was about 5:20.  The pagoda still wasn't very crowded as the sun set, though there were more people than earlier in the day.  I walked down the dark, covered staircase in the dusk and ate dinner again on the waterfront.

The next morning while waiting for a bus I watched a guy wear latex gloves (to my great surprise) while preparing betel nut packets, coating the leaves with a watery lime mixture and then sprinkling something on them before adding the chopped betel nut and wrapping it all up.  About 8:30 I left on a bus heading to Thanbyuzayat, about 40 miles south, a journey of about two hours.  After the town of Mudon, the halfway point, the road deteriorated and we had a bumpy ride past rows and rows of rubber trees on both sides of the road.  Thanbyuzayat was the terminous of Siam-Burma Railroad built by the Japanese during World War II with POW and local conscripted labor.  Something like 13,000 POWs and 80,000 to 100,000 Asians are thought to have died building it from October 1942 to December 1943.  (The Japanese invaded Burma in January 1942 from Thailand pretty much along the route I had taken from the Thai border and chased the British out of Burma by May of that year.)  This is the railroad featured in The Bridge over the River Kwai (in Thailand).  Just outside Thanbyuzayat is a well maintained Commonwealth cemetery with almost 3900 graves, mostly British and Australian, but also over 600 Dutch and a few Indians, including Muslims, Hindus and Gurkhas.  Each group has its own section of the cemetery, which is laid out in a great semi-circle.  The small headstones contain names, ages, dates of death, military insignia, and quotes that must have been chosen by surviving family members.  One British grave had a paper poppy flower wreath that must have been recently placed. The cemetery dates from after the war, when the bodies were brought from camps and remote areas along the railroad line.  The American dead were repatriated. 

I spent about an hour looking around and then ate some quail eggs (at least they looked like quail eggs) I had bought in the market in Mawlamyine before catching a bus back.   Maybe ten miles from Mawlamyine I got off to see a newly constructed reclining Buddha that is enormous, about 560 feet long.  Inside were scores of life size painted figures, including several scenes obviously depicting the horrors of Buddhist hell.  The life of Buddha was also depicted, as was a harem scene with a king cavorting with several half naked women.  I wonder if that was meant to be illustrative of one of the ways to find yourself eventually in Buddhist hell, although it looked like it might be worth it.  Nearby were a couple of almost vertical craggy hills with pagodas on top.

I caught a covered pick up with wooden benches in the back and was back in Mawlamyine about 4:30.  I took a motorcycle taxi to Kyaikthanlaw Paya and watched the sunset from there again.  This time I stayed until well after dark to see the tall golden stupa illuminated by electric lights, quite a beautiful sight.

The next morning I walked along the waterfront to watch the fishing boats, ferries, and all the other activity.  Moulmein was an important teak port in the 19th century, but seems pretty sleepy now.  Eventually, I took a motorcycle taxi about 12 miles north, first crossing the wide Salween over a modern bridge and continuing along a not very crowded road.  I saw yellowish white sheets of rubber, maybe two feet by four feet, drying on poles along the way.  I was heading for Nwa-la-bo Pagoda, but once delivered by the motorcycle I had to wait for over two hours before I could board a truck for the steep final climb to the pagoda.  There were over 40 of us sitting on maybe eight rows of four inch wide wooden planks in the open back of the big truck.  The climb was steep, about 1700 feet over twenty minutes.  You had to hold on as best as you could on the ups and downs.  At the top are three seemingly precariously balanced gold covered rocks with a little gold stupa on the top of the highest.  There are also great views of the countryside below, including the sea, the Salween, and Mawlamyine.   Except for four of us foreign tourists, the rest were all pilgrims, some of them applying some sort of gold attached to paper onto the rocks.

After about 45 minutes we all reboarded the truck for the steep descent, quite a ride with those friendly pilgrims.  I am happy to say the brakes didn't fail us.  I returned to town by motorcycle and had lunch.  I walked around the town a bit, passing the Judson Baptist Church founded by Adoniram Judson, an American missionary who established the Baptist Church in these parts.  In the churchyard is the grave of a one year old son who died in 1841 and a 40 year old granddaughter who died in 1911.  From there I walked past wooden houses along the bottom edge of the ridge in a very friendly neighborhood of Mon people.  I made it up to Kyaikthanlaw Paya for sunset again and then walked down after dark.

November 21-26, 2013: North from Bangkok

In late August Burma opened several border posts along the Thai border, enabling tourists to reach the center of the country overland.  So instead of flying, I decided to go overland.  By bus from Bangkok to the Burmese border at Mae Sot takes 8 or 9 hours, but I decided to make a couple of stops on the way.

On the morning of the 21st, after taking a city bus through Bangkok's dense morning traffic for well over an hour, I boarded a bus heading north to Kamphaeng Phet, about 200 miles from Bangkok.  We drove through the flat, fertile central valley of Thailand for about five hours, reaching Kamphaeng Phet about 3 in the afternoon.  Lots of rice growing on the way.  I took a motorcycle taxi into town and checked into a very nice little guesthouse, with friendly owners and a nice garden.  About 5 I walked down to the Mae Nam Ping (the Ping River), which flows south to join the Chao Praya River, which runs through Bangkok to the sea.  I walked along the wide river, maybe 400 feet wide, to the night market and ate there.  It was dark by about 6, with the trees full of noisy black birds settling down for the night. The market had all sorts of food, including eight types of insects and worms at one place.  Some of the grasshoppers were perhaps three inches long and there were some ugly black bugs perhaps an inch and a half or two inches long.  I was told the worms taste spongy.  Two booths away sushi was on offer.  I choose neither, but settled for pad thai. People in the little town of about 30,000 were very friendly.

The next day I rented a bike from my guesthouse and explored the ruins of temples dating back to the 15th century in and around the town.  In 1992 I spent almost two months traveling through Thailand and saw the ruins at Ayutthaya, Lopburi, Sukhothai, and Si Satchanalai, plus the Khmer ruins in the northeast, but did not visit Kamphaeng Phet.  The old city walls remain, made of laterite bricks and enclosing a long quadrilateral about a mile and a half by less than half a mile.  Inside are two wats (temples), also of laterite bricks, in ruins with chedis (stupas) and statues of Buddha.  The area is grassy and tree covered and very pleasant.  I seemed to be the only tourist.  Nearby was the city pillar, now encased in glass with offerings on tables in front, including bottles of liquor and two enormous scalded pig heads.  At a nearby altar women were tossing sticks from a holder, telling their fortunes, I guess.  I biked along the city walls, stopping to visit crumbling bastions and gates.  Trees grow along the wall tops.  I bicycled out one gate and to the ruins of about 40 wats in a forested area outside the walls.  This area, too, was almost deserted of tourists and I enjoyed bicycling around and then walking through the ruins of the wats.  Some were just piles of bricks, but others were quite interesting, with tall chedis and statues of Buddha.  One had the front halves of 68 elephants carved along it sides.  Another had very tall laterite pillars, maybe 20 feet high.  Laterite is a clay like substance that hardens when dug up and exposed to air.

About lunchtime I arrived at the air conditioned information center, where outside there were food carts and a busload of very friendly schoolkids.  From there I took another leisurely bike ride through the forest and the wats back to the city walls and rode along the outside and then the inside of the walls, again stopping at gates and bastions, before getting back to my hotel about 4:30.  I had left about 8.  Just before nightfall I biked down to the river and the night market, where I again had dinner.  I had worried about taking the bike, as it had no lock, but the guest house owner said not to worry.  There were few bikes at the market. Motorbikes, however, were everywhere.  An old man, perhaps even older than me, was selling ice cream cones.  I bought a scoop of rum raisin ice cream for about 30 cents, and then came back twice to get new cones, much to the amusement of the old guy and his family.  Who knew you could get sushi and rum raisin ice cream at a Thai night market?  The insects and worms didn't surprise me, but the sushi and rum raisin ice cream did.

The next morning at 9 I left on a bus heading further north to Tak, about an hour away, and then a minivan heading west over jungle covered hills on a road that rose to almost 3000 feet above sea level before arriving at Mae Sot, about five miles from the Burmese border.  But I immediately boarded a songthaw, or I think the more correct spelling is sorng-thaa-ow.  There seem to have been a lot more of these 20 years ago.  The word means something like "two benches" and they are vehicles with two benches in the covered, but open air back.  There were ten of us in the back and we headed south from Mae Sot on a road through the hills along a big curve in the border to the village of Um Phang, more than 100 miles away.  It took us over four hours on a road said to have 1219 curves.  We rose to over 4000 feet along the way, through beautiful jungle.  The ride was dusty in places, but enjoyable, with a friendly Thai woman and French woman among the passengers.  There were several police check posts, but we foreigners were not under scrutiny.  They checked only the papers of what I think were Karen refugees from Burma.  We did stop at a very large Karen refugee camp about halfway to Um Phang.  Houses with walls of some sort of fiber and thatched roofs covered the steep hillside. There must have been hundreds of them.  On that steep hillside, they looked like they would wash away in a heavy rain.

Arriving in Um Phang about 4, I found a very nice place to stay in that friendly village.  At about 1500 feet elevation, the night was cool and I slept under a sort of quilt.

Um Phang is in a little valley full of rice paddies.  Early the next morning I walked around town and then out into the countryside before breakfast.  I took another walk with three others up into hills to the northeast of the town in the late morning, to a small Karen village.  Um Phang itself is largely Karen, I think.  Walking through town on that Sunday morning, I passed a Karen church service in what seemed to be a home, with the pastor in a suit and tie.  Karens are largely Christian, I think, and live all along this part of the Thai-Burmese border.  Late in the afternoon I took another walk, this time south of Um Phang along the road and then back through the rice fields, as the harvesters were finishing up for the day.  The sky was cloudy most of the day.  Very pleasant weather.  I had hoped to go to a waterfall, Thailand's highest and widest, about 30 miles away, but it was expensive to get there, about $65.

The next morning I had a Thai breakfast, noodles and vegetables and sticky rice with pork, that Tim, the Thai woman who had arrived with me, insisted I have instead of eggs and toast at the guesthouse.  We left for Mae Sot about 10:30 in a crowded songthaw that got even more crowded as we headed north. Eventually there were more than 20 of us, including a couple of little babies on their mothers' backs, inside, several guys up on the roof, and several more standing up and holding on at the rear of the vehicle.  Quite a load, plus bundles and bags and boxes, on that often steep mountain road.  We got back to Mae Sot about 3 and Tim invited two Swiss tourists and I join her for some northeastern food, as she is from Surin in the northeast.  We had a good, but spicy hot, late lunch before finding a hotel.  Just before dark I walked through Mae Sot's extensive market along several narrow downtown streets.  Frogs, turtles, snakes, and what looked like pollywogs were on sale.  Who eats  pollywogs?  Or do you wait until they grow into frogs and then eat them?  The people were as interesting as the wares on sale. Many looked to be Burmese with the distinctive Burmese yellow face powder, often in swirls, and there were Muslims.  Mae Sot is somewhere between 500 and 1000 feet in elevation, so it was warmer than Um Phang at night, but still very pleasant.

The next day I didn't do much other than try to get some information on Burma.  The road on the Burma side of the border going west passes through a mountain range and is one way, changing direction every other day, with westbound traffic tomorrow, so I will cross the border and head west tomorrow.  I was tempted to cross the border today, but hotels are supposed to be something like three times the price across the border, and I only get to spend 28 days in Burma, so I will spend my first day getting some distance from the border.

November 18-20, 2013: Saipan to Bangkok

I'm off for another six months or so of travel.  First, after getting a visa in Bangkok, I'll head to Burma (or Myanmar, its official name, though I've read that the democratic opposition still prefers "Burma"), then to southern India (Tamil Nadu and Kerala states, the two southernmost), and later Sri Lanka, with a possible side trip to the Maldives.  That's the plan, anyway. 

Though Bangkok is almost due west from Saipan, my flights took me first northwest to Seoul (or rather Incheon, just west of Seoul), then south to Manila, and finally west to Bangkok.  A long trip, 16 1/2 hours in total, but it cost me only 15,000 reward miles and $12.  I left Saipan just after 2 in the morning on the 18th and arrived in Bangkok about 3:30 in the afternoon, local time, three hours earlier than Saipan.  On the way I had a fantastic view of the multi-channel, wide bulge in the Mekong called 4000 Islands in the far south of Laos.  I had been there in 2010.

I slept some on the first two flights, but was tired upon arrival in Bangkok.  I went to bed early and woke up the next morning about 4, though I didn't get up until about 5:30, before dawn.  Sometime after 10 that morning I arrived at the crowded Myanmar Embassy and was able to submit my application after about an hour, my passport with the visa to be picked up the next day.  I walked back to the river on a street that a motorcade escorting the visiting prime minister of New Zealand drove down and made my way to the river ferry and took it back upriver, but only as far as the pier for Wat Pho, with its huge, gold covered, reclining Buddha.  I had some pad thai (the standard Thai noodle dish) at a street side restaurant and then spent a couple of hours at the wat, flooded with tourists.  Lots of Russians in particular.

Leaving, I walked past perhaps a dozen big buses with their motors running and walked along the high white walls of the old royal palace, with the Emerald Buddha inside, through the large open parade ground to the north, and eventually to Thanon Ratchadamnown Klang, a very wide street (maybe 12 lanes wide) where there is an ongoing demonstration around the Democracy Monument at a big intersection. This has closed the street for several blocks, and in fact had made it difficult, and twice as expensive than usual, for my taxi to take me to my hotel the previous day.  I spent more than an hour at the demonstration, with a band followed by speakers.  The crowd blew whistles and clapped with hand held plastic clappers in lieu of actually clapping with their hands.  This demonstration, with all sorts of booths selling food and other stuff and with wide screens displaying the speakers, has been going on for days, calling for the government to resign.  Most of the signs were in Thai, but those in English were quite rude, obscene really, about the Prime Minister and her brother, a previous Prime Minister overthrown in a coup after similar demonstrations. It seems the opposition, based in the richer parts of the country (Bangkok and the south), keeps losing elections to a party based in the poorer north and northeast of the country, and then resorts to civil unrest to try to get the army or the courts to throw the government out.  I got back to my hotel just before dark.

The next morning I didn't do much, but after lunch I took the river ferry down the river to the Oriental Hotel pier and spent a couple of hours in the Oriental Hotel.  This hotel was Bangkok's finest in the late 1800's and now the old hotel is dwarfed by its new, high rise wings.  I looked around the old building, filled with interesting photos, mainly of the royal family around the turn of the 20th century.  The hotel claims Joseph Conrad stayed there in 1888, though I've also read that while he may have visited the hotel for meals, he stayed on his ship while in Bangkok.  Somerset Maugham did stay there in the 1930's.  I spent some time reading and people watching in the very cold new lobby, and then walked to the Myanmar Embassy to get my visa.  From there I walked back to the river and took the pleasant ferry ride back upriver to my hotel.  

June 16-20, 2013: Calcutta to Bangkok to Saipan

The morning of the 16th was sunny and hot in Calcutta.  As usual the little alley in front of my hotel was full of people, including a couple of guys soaping themselves up with water from a tap, others getting curbside haircuts, and occasionally someone urinating into a crevice into which I have not dared to look.  There are little shops along the alley, and on the road at the end of the alley wait yellow Ambassador taxis and human pulled rickshaws, with the rickshaw pullers in dhotis.  I took a taxi around 10 to the airport through relatively uncrowded streets on that Sunday morning.  I always enjoy seeing Calcutta's streets and streets of colonial era buildings, as decayed as they are.  We sped down Lenin Sarani (renamed during West Bengal's communist governments from 1977 to 2011) and then to Convent Street, passing through the former Wellington Circle, which they also must have renamed, though I saw no new name.  We passed by what must have been glorious palaces during the colonial era, at least one now converted to a school, but others looking derelict.

It took about 45 minutes to reach the airport.  It was hot when we were stopped at traffic lights.  The brand new airport, on the other hand, was wonderfully cool.  My Air Asia flight to Bangkok, which cost me only about $115, left shortly before 1 pm and was full of Indians.  I think there were two other westerners on board.  The views were excellent, though the blue sky was dotted with clouds.  We passed over Calcutta's drab buildings, which never seem to get painted, the green countryside beyond, and the the myriad waterways of the Ganges Delta before heading out over the Bay of Bengal.  Brown water from the Ganges made quite a smear far out into the bay.  Later we passed over Burma's Irrawaddy Delta, with the brown river water again visible far out into the sea.  Eventually we reached the mainland again and Thailand, passing over the beaches and the forested mountains before flying over the fertile valley of the Chao Phraya River in central Thailand.  The newly planted rice paddies were very green.  Nearing Bangkok we passed over houses with red roofs and looking orderly, painted, and clean in comparison to those of Calcutta.

We landed shortly before 5 after a two hour, 15 minute flight.  I waited for a bus, gave up, and then took a taxi to the hotel where I usually stay in Bangkok.  It felt quite warm in Bangkok.  There were lots of western tourists around, though considerably fewer than in the high season.

I had scheduled a series of medical examinations for the next day and so spent the day at Bumrungrad Hospital (where I had a cataract operation in 2010), getting a physical in the morning and having my eyes, skin and teeth checked in separate appointments during the afternoon.  To get there, I took Bangkok's Chao Phraya river express down the wide, interesting river to a stop near a metro station, and then took a crowded, but air conditioned, above ground metro train to near the hospital, the whole trip taking about an hour and a half and avoiding Bangkok's traffic.  I came back the same way in the late afternoon.  The river was filled with floating green clumps of vegetation in the morning, but by late afternoon only a few remained, stuck to the shoreline in places.

The next morning was again hot, sunny, and humid.  After breakfast I spent a couple of hours in an internet cafe and then about 1 pm, under now cloudy skies, took the Chao Phraya Express and then the metro back to Bumrungrad.  I had a periodontist appointment at 5:30 and spent the intervening time in the hospital's very comfortable waiting rooms, more like those of a fancy hotel than a hospital.  After my appointment I walked north a few blocks and boarded a klong (canal) express boat which sped down the narrow canal to its western terminus, about a ten minute walk from Khao San Road, jammed, as always, with tourists.  Walking down the wide avenue, with six lanes of traffic each way, to Khao San Road, I noticed no one in the hundreds of cars was honking his horn, unthinkable in India.  Also, there was almost no litter on the wide sidewalks.  In India, of course, there is always litter, plenty of it, and often it is very difficult to walk on the sidewalks crowded with stalls, vendors and much else.  On a hot and humid evening I walked through Khao San Road and watched all the activity on my way back to my hotel and dinner.

The next morning was cloudy and hot.  I made my way to the airport via taxi and metro in the morning and left on a flight to Hong Kong about 4, arriving just at dark, 7:30 local time.  My connecting flight to Guam left  soon after 11 that night.  I slept maybe a couple of hours on the flight and we arrived in Guam about 5:30 in the morning, local time.  My final flight to Saipan left about two hours later on a sunny morning, with cottony white clouds scattered above the ocean and the intervening islands, Rota and Tinian, which we flew over.  The sea below was glassy and reflected the morning sun's glare to the east.  Arrival in Saipan was at about 8.  Flames trees were in bloom all over the island.

June 11-15, 2013: Darjeeling to Mirik to Calcutta

June 11 was my last morning in Darjeeling and when I awoke between 4 and 4:30 I peaked out the window and could see that the sky north was relatively clear.  I managed to stay awake for about half an hour as the sky became lighter, but could not make out Kanchenjunga or any of the other snowy peaks.  I went back to sleep and when I got up about 7:30 clouds covered everything.  However, a little bit after 8 I looked out my window and could see snowy peaks to the north.  I went up to the roof of my hotel and could see Kanchenjunga as well as the double snowy peaks (called the Kabra peaks, I think) to its left.  Clouds eventually obscured them again, but about 8:30 I walked to the viewpoint north of Chowrasta and Kanchenjunga, surrounded by clouds, was again visible.  The sun was out and I spent about an hour at that viewpoint and another, with Kanchenjunga usually visible, though all the other peaks were hidden by the clouds.  The sun felt warm.  Besides watching Kanchenjunga come and go, I watched Tibetan women in traditional clothes and lots of other people out for a walk, and several macaques, including a mother and baby, walking along and sitting on a fern adorned branch of a tree.  Finally, Kanchenjunga seemed to disappear for good and I went to breakfast.

Soon after noon I left on a share jeep heading to Mirik, about 25 or 30 miles to the southwest.  From Darjeeling we traveled to Ghoom and then took a road that first headed east and then south.  We hit fog as soon as we left Ghoom and were enveloped by it for a good while while traveling at about 7500 feet elevation.  Then we started making a steep descent and got below the clouds on a curving road through a beautiful dark forest.  The tall trees were growing very close together, with almost no undergrowth except for  ferns, quite a beautiful forest.  I think the trees are Japanese cedars.  One of my guidebooks mentions them in the area.  Further down the sun came out and we started passing tea estates, with whole hillsides and several conical hills carpeted with tea.  We passed through a few little villages, too, and had great views east across the deep valley below to the ridge that leads to Darjeeling from Siliguri.  I could clearly see the town of Kurseong.

Shortly after 2 we arrived at Mirik, at about 5500 feet elevation and with about 10,000 people.  I checked into a little hotel, had lunch, and then walked up to a big red and yellow monastery on a hill 200 plus feet above town.  The monastery, built in 2000 (a monk told me), belongs to the Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism, with photos of the Dalai Lama and the 17th Kagyupa (the one recognized by the Dalai Lama) on colorful thrones in the big main hall.  About 80 monks were sitting in the hall in four rows of about 20 monks each and chanting.  In the courtyard in front of the main hall their sandals were all lined up in a long row.  I'd never seen that before.  I listened until they finished, maybe a half hour or more after I got there.  Besides horns, drums, clarinets and even conch shells, occasionally the chants were accompanied by hand clapping and even the snapping of fingers.  Very beatnik.  There were also a few periods of complete silence, with a soft bell ending the silent meditation.  I listened and walked around a bit.  After they finished I walked to the front to see the altars.  The giant Buddha statue in the center held a big offering bowl, filled with packaged cookies and other packaged snacks.

I talked with a monk from Phodong in Sikkim until they closed up the multi-story main hall.  On the wall of the porch of the main hall is a wheel of life mural, as in many other monasteries, but this one includes a car, a couple of bicycles, a jogger, and soldiers with rifles, along with the usual scenes of the pleasures of heaven and the torments of hell.  After looking around I sat in the sun on a bench in the courtyard and watched the monks for a while as they did chores.  I walked around the area a bit and then walked back the way I had come. There is a lake, or rather a reservoir, right in town and I walked along the banks for a short distance until it became too dark.  The sun had been out pretty much until sunset.

The next day, too, was sunny and warm, though there were always clouds in the sky, especially to the north. After breakfast I walked around the lake on a trail, a distance of a little over two miles.  Japanese cedars stood along parts of the shore and there were good views of the monastery on its hill above the lake.  About 2:30 I took a share jeep about three miles back the way I had come the day before and from there walked back to Mirik, passing hills covered with tea along the way.  Besides the beautiful tea covered hills and a few stands of Japanese cedars, there were great views across the valley to the ridge leading to Darjeeling.  I could again see Kurseong and easily make out the road to Darjeeling, along which the toy train also passes.  I enjoyed the slow walk back, with lots of stops to enjoy the views. Eventually, school got out and there were lots of friendly uniformed school children on the road.  At one point I saw about 4 guys spraying the tea plants, with pesticide, I suppose. I walked by the tea processing plant about the time the women pickers were getting off work and saw dozens of them walking home with their empty baskets on their backs.  I eventually got back to town and correctly guessed what side street led down to the lake, finishing my walk back to my hotel on the lakeside path and getting back about 6.

The next day was also sunny and warm.  I had stayed up late the night before finishing The Mayor of Casterbridge, which I had first read maybe 25 years ago, and didn't get out to breakfast until about 8:30.  On the way I noticed the sky was completely clear, so about 9 after breakfast I headed up the hill towards the monastery to see if I could see Kanchenjunga and its ridge.  Kanchenjunga and its ridge were almost cloudless.  The views were great.  Kanchenjunga and the two Kabra peaks to the left were visible as was the pyramidal Siniolchu peak to the right.  By far the clearest day I have had in almost a month and a half in the Himalayas and it happens on my last day in the Himalayas.

I enjoyed the views and walked to several places along the hill to see if I could get a better view.  Clouds began to cluster around the snow covered peaks, but Kanchenjunga and the two Kabra peaks remained visible.  After more than an hour I walked to the monastery.  The main hall was closed, so I walked to a chorten faced with marble and with a big prayer wheel inside.  A couple of elderly Tibetan women in traditional dress were circumambulating the chorten and occasionally entering it to revolve the big prayer wheel.  I found a spot to sit nearby in the shade with a good view of Kanchenjunga.  Soon a bunch of teenage and younger monks came down to the chorten, tucked their red robes into their shorts, and began a raucous game of soccer with a little yellow ball, maybe three inches in diameter.  They were quite good, and apparently oblivious to the danger they posed of knocking over the two Tibetan woman, who soon moved elsewhere.  They were fun to watch.  Kanchenjunga kept getting cloudier, but was still visible, but I had to leave about 11:30 to check out of my hotel at 12.

In mid afternoon I left Mirik by share jeep, heading down to Siliguri.  I was in the far back, but had good views of the green clad hills as we descended on a twisting road to the plains, passing farms and forests and extensive tea estates.   Under sunny skies there were good views down to the valley below, which separates the hills where Mirik is located and the ridge to the east leading towards Darjeeling.  I could see Kurseong and the road towards Darjeeling on the ridge across the valley.  It became much hotter as we descended, taking a little less than an hour to reach the valley floor, at maybe 1000 feet elevation.  We crossed the river coming down the valley and headed over the now gently sloping plains to Siliguri, which we reached about an hour and a half after leaving Mirik. 

Siliguri was sunny and hot.  I had a late lunch/early dinner and read a newspaper, which reported that temperatures the day before had been 9 degrees (5 degrees centigrade) higher than average the day before, with a high of about 99.  About 6 I took a cycle rickshaw to the train station in New Jalpaiguri, just south of Siliguri.  The cities are contiguous and the almost one hour ride was an interesting at twilight through busy streets and markets. 

The train station was hot and humid with a big crowd waiting for the train I was to take to Calcutta.  Just before 8 the Darjeeling Mail entered the station and I boarded for the overnight 350 mile trip to Calcutta, with only four scheduled stops on the way.  I had been able to book an air conditioned 3AC carriage rather than an non air conditioned sleeper, but it was hot inside as we waited for the train to leave, which it did shortly after 8.  Once the train got going the air conditioning functioned fine and the carriage was very comfortable.  The six of us who were to sleep in two tiers of three opposite each other sat on the lower bunks until about 10, when we pulled down the middle bunks.  We each were provided with two clean sheets, a pillow and a blanket.  You rarely get two sheets (usually just one, a bottom sheet) in Indian budget hotels.  I was very comfortable, though it took me a while to fall asleep.  Before going to bed I noticed a plain clothes guy with a conspicuous holstered pistol.  That afternoon, as I read in a newspaper the next day, a train in neighboring Bihar state had been stopped and held up by about 100 masked Maoist Naxalite guerrillas, who killed three, including a train guard, before being driven off by the trains' four remaining guards.  

The train was scheduled to arrive the next morning at 6, but in fact arrived shortly after 7.  The morning was rainy and I stayed in my bunk until just before arrival.  The rain was coming down very heavily at the station, so I waited until it was more of a drizzle and then took an auto rickshaw to the hotel where I have stayed the last few times I have been in Calcutta.  Calcutta was cloudy all day, but there was no more rain.  I had breakfast and then read newspapers in the hotel lobby.  The afternoon I spent in an internet cafe and then an air conditioned bookstore. 

The next morning was sunny until a big rainstorm hit about 10.  I again read newspapers in the hotel lobby before lunch.  In the early afternoon I walked towards the city center to look around, and in particular to see the renovation of the Great Eastern Hotel, opened in 1840, renovated in Art Deco style in the 1930's, and then fallen into decrepitude in the late 20th century (though Queen Elizabeth had stayed there in the early 1960's).  It is supposed to reopen in November, but from the looks of things the opening could be well after after.  It was too hot and humid to continued further downtown, so I returned to the air conditioned Oxford Bookstore and spent the rest of the afternoon there.  At dinner the man sitting next to me struck up a conversation. It turned out he was a lawyer, an advocate, as they are known in India.  He told me he handles all sorts of cases, except tax cases and very serious crimes like rape and murder, and that he goes to Delhi about twice a month for appeals.  He invited me to stop by his office and come to court with him, which I had to decline since I was flying to Bangkok the next day.  That would have been interesting.  He gave me his card and said to contact him the next time I was in Calcutta.

June 1-10, 2013: Namchi, Kalimpong, Lava, and back to Darjeeling

The sky was cloudy in Gangtok on the morning of the 1st, through there was no rain.  I couldn't see the valley below or the hills beyond.  Shortly before 11 I left on a share jeep headed to Namchi, about 50 miles to the southwest, in South Sikkim.  We drove down the main highway to Singtam, a drop of almost 4000 feet with good views of the river that comes down from the valley west of Gangtok.  The journey was much more pleasant than the hot, dusty trip I had taken to Gangtok about ten days earlier.  There was less traffic and it was much cooler, with some rain on the way.  From Singtam we left the main highway, crossed the Teesta and traveled northwest about half way on the road I had taken from Ravangla.  Reaching the village of Turku at about 4000 feet, we turned off on another road that headed generally southwest through beautiful green mountains.  The sky was full of clouds, but the views were fine.  At about 5500 feet we reached a massive tea estate and climbed up through it until about 6500 feet.  We reached over 7000 feet and the village of Damthang before heading south to Namchi.  On the way down to Namchi, at about 5000 feet elevation, I had good views of it on its saddle with Solophuk Hill with a giant statue of Shiva further south.

It took about three hours to get to Namchi, where I checked into a hotel on its modern pedestrian mall, maybe two or three city blocks long.  The mall contains two big trees, one with an small aquarium built around it.  To the north you can look up and see another giant statue, this one of the Guru Rimpoche, high above the town  After lunch I took a taxi up to the Shiva Complex to the south, a little over three miles from the city center and about 800 feet higher.  Then sun was out and the views were great in all directions.  I could see the town below and the giant statue of Guru Rimpoche, in Sikkim called Samdruptse, high above the town to the north.  Another hill, called Tendong, sacred to Lepchas, is just behind the hill with Samdruptse on it.  The sky was relatively clear and the views to the west, south, and east were also excellent.  You could see for miles, including up the Rangit Valley.  I could see the road I had taken up the Rangit from Jorethang towards Pelling on my first day in Sikkim three weeks earlier. 

The Shiva Complex was finished in 2011 and, besides a statue of Shiva (which I read, in different accounts, is either 87 or 110 feet high), has replicas of the Hindu temples at Badrinath, Dwarka, Puri and Rameswaram.  It was all pretty cheesy, not to mention slippery on the polished, wet granite surfaces where you aren't allowed to wear shoes.  But the views were great.  I was on the top for about an hour and a half, from about 3 to 4:30, and then walked back to town, with great views along the way.  Looking up the Rangit Valley, I could make out Geyzing on the third ridge to the west of the river,  Some snow streaked peaks appeared far to the north.  I got back to the mall and my hotel just before dark.

The next morning was cloudy and before 9 I took a taxi up to the Samdruptse statue, more than 2000 feet above town and over four miles by road.  I spent about three hours up there looking around and enjoying the views, including of Namchi and the Shiva statue far below, when the clouds allowed.  It was much cloudier than the previous afternoon.  The statue of Samdruptse, or the Guru Rimpoche, the monk who introduced Buddhism to Tibet and much of the Himalayas in the 8th century, is either 135 or 149 feet high and predates the Shiva statue.  It was dedicated by the Dalai Lama, in the late '90's I think.  In the prayer hall under the statue painters were retouching the Buddhist paintings on the ceilings.  In another area there was a series of old photographs of Sikkim from the 1800's and even the 1960's that were quite interesting.   Eventually, though, the place was full of noisy Indians.

I walked back to Namchi, first along the road through forest with, eventually, hazy views to the west.  More than halfway down I took a dirt road to Ngadak Monastery.  A huge new prayer hall is being built and it was interesting to see it under construction, with painters at work and partly finished statues lying on the prayer hall floor.  Other prayer halls are on the site.  In front of one of the halls women were boiling a big pot of hardened butter for the butter lamps.  Nearby is a dzong, a sort of fortress, made of stone and dating from 1717.  It has carved wooden doors, windows and lintels, some with faded paint.  It apparently was converted into a monastery hall in the 19th century.  Unfortunately, it is locked up, but I did peer into it through a doorway.  About 3:30 I started down the path towards town, passing chortens made of rock and many prayer flags.  The path was slippery in places and eventually became a series of stairs through town that led right down to the pedestrian mall.  It took me about 40 minutes to walk down those final 700 feet in elevation from the monastery to the mall.  I ate momos for a late lunch, bought a couple of newspapers and sat on a bench on the mall and read and people watched for the rest of the afternoon.  There didn't seem to be any other tourists in that pleasant town.

It was cloudy and had been raining the next morning as I walked up to another monastery about 300 feet above the town on a little hill on the way to the Shiva Complex.  I passed lots of uniformed school children along the way, the girls almost invariably with pigtails and uniformly colored ribbons.  As I walked up past the prayer flags on the final stretch, several dogs started barking vociferously, and three little monklets did their best to shoo them away.  One used kung fu type kicks, though he never did hit a dog.  They showed me around an empty prayer hall and posed for photos.  In the main hall about 35 monks were chanting, 30 or so of them little kids and the other five or so teenagers or young adults.  A chubby guy led the group.  The chants were accompanied by a drum the like of which I had never before heard in a Buddhist monastery.  It was shaped a little like a cowbell (I guess these monks have a fever for cowbells), but large and made of wood with a slit in it.  The sound was a little African or Afro-Caribbean.  The chanting was also frequently augmented by two monks blowing those long horns, two with clarinets, and two with shorter horns, plus big drums and cymbals.  I walked around and took photos and was greeted by lots of smiles.  In most Sikkim monasteries signs prohibit photos, perhaps because of the inundation of Indian tourists, but these guys didn't seem to mind at all, probably because their monastery is off the Indian tourist track.  I noticed a table full of offerings, including Lay's and Uncle Chipps potato chips, Kellogg's Chocos (a bagged breakfast cereal), apples, bananas, and cookies.  The paintings on the walls depicted quite a few buddhas and their protectors engaged in sexual intercourse (not with each other, but with females). 

Other monks came in and served the chanting monks bowls of some sort of tea or soup just before they took about a twenty minute break about 10.  One monk brought me a cup of tea and during the break a few others came over to talk and pose for photos.  They were quite a friendly bunch.  When they sat down again and recommenced chanting, one brought me a rug to sit on, so I did so and watched from there until they finished before 11:30.  A couple of the young boy monks were cleaning as the chanting went out.  Two of them were assiduously wiping the tile floor with wet rags.  Towards the end, one monk dispensed a spoonful of sugary water into the palms of everyone, including me, which was drunk.  A basket of the offerings was taken around, with monks selecting pieces of fruit or bags of chips or cookies.  One monk brought me three little bags of cookies plus a very small and very red apple, perhaps two inches in diameter, with a label containing a bar code and the words "Red Delicious" and "USA."  Finally, a flaky dark sugar and cashew compound was brought around.  I took some more photos of the friendly monks after the chanting ended.

I wandered around a bit as some of the little boys let out their energy after so many hours sitting and chanting.  Several were running around and three were throwing rocks at a target.  I walked back to the town center and noticed many of trunks and branches of the pine trees on the way were covered with ferns. 

After a lunch of momos I left Namchi at 2 on a jeep bound for Kalimpong, about 30 miles to the southeast in West Bengal.  We traveled south under cloudy skies with hazy views down a series of long switchbacks, dropping about 3000 feet, that led to the Rangit River, here Sikkim's southern border with West Bengal.  We followed the Rangit, though high above it, to the east and its confluence with the Teesta, Sikkim's lowest point at about 1300 feet, I think.  The mountains rose steeply on the West Bengal side of the Rangit.  We went up the Teesta a couple of miles and then crossed it into West Bengal.  We went down the Teesta on the other side past its confluence with the Rangit for maybe three miles in total and then began the steep, almost ten mile long ascent up the mountainside to the east to Kalimpong at 4100 feet.  Kalimpong was an important trading center with Tibet, a gateway to the Jelep La pass northeast of Gangtok.  It's a relatively big city.  One of my guidebooks says it has 43,000 people.  It is spread out along a ridge, with higher elevations at either end.  Arriving in that busy town about 5, I walked to a hotel where the owner advised me to take a room away from his noisy Indian guests.  At 4100 feet, Kalimpong felt relatively warm, as it is the lowest place I've stayed here in the hills.  It rained at night.

About 9 the next morning I walked up the town's streets to a monastery, the Tharpa Choling Gompa, about 300 feet higher than my hotel.  This is a Gelukpa, or Yellow Hat, monastery and had photos of the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama who died in the late 1980's, and the three abbots of the monastery, including the most recent, a little boy believed to be a reincarnation of the previous two.  He is pictured being hugged by the Dalai Lama. On the altars were also very realistic sculptures of the two previous abbots and of two teachers of the Dalai Lama.  Quite a few tantric sex scenes were pictured on the walls, with penises shown entering vaginas.  This monastery previously honored a deity proscribed by the Dalai Lama and I've read the monks have hidden his images.  I asked a monk about this but, not surprisingly, he was not very forthcoming and of course did not tell me where the images are hidden.  The brochure he gave me did mention the controversy.

In a side room off the porch of the main hall about five older monks were chanting, accompanied by cymbals, drums and bells.  Several butter sculptures were at the front of the room on a table.  I watched as a younger monk reverently removed them one by one and took them away behind the monks' quarters.  The session in that small room ended about 11:30 and I went inside.  The black painted walls contained images of fearsome protectors, skulls, and hanging, eviscerated bodies of animals and humans, similar to the Malakala room in the old monastery in Rumtek.  I walked around and watched several monks practicing making very detailed designs out of pink colored sand.  They do this by taping the sand out of a metal tube with a sort of flat knife.  It was very interesting to watch.

From the monastery I continued up the ridge another 400 feet or so in elevation to reach the Doctor Graham's Homes, started in 1900 as a school for the children of tea workers and now a prestigious school with 1300 pupils.  His statue stands in front, dedicated on the centenary of the school and paid for by the "OGBs [old Graham boys, I'm guessing] of Kalimpong" and one guy described as a GB from 1933 to 1948.  Uniformed students were studying on the grass as I walked past the old school buildings up to the 1925 slate gray stone church, quite a large one with a bell tower and stained glass windows, but all locked up.  The girls wore red sweaters and the boys blue jackets and all had on neckties.  I sat up by the church for a while, admiring the views and the flowers, and then walked by a couple of old houses used by the school for housing before walking back through the main school buildings.  The students had all returned to their classes and were very quiet.  I was told exams were being held.

From there I walked back the way I had come and then took a different route that led me to a handmade paper factory, where the guy in charge gave me a very interesting tour.  The thick paper is made completely of natural materials, a bark of a tree, and is impervious to insects.  Monasteries use the paper for their sutras.  By this time in the afternoon, most of the work had been done and they were hanging the wet sheets of paper up to dry on metal backings.  As I walked up and down that ridge I did have good views of the town and Deolo Hill, at around 5600 feet, at the northern end.  There are views of Kanchenjunga from that hill, but not with the clouds that hovered over Kalimpong all the time I was there.  I had a late lunch about 3 or 3:30 and then walked further south past the town center to a colonial era hotel made of stone, with wooden balconies and porches and a small lawn in front.  Beautiful flowers bloomed all around.  From there I headed to the flower filled grounds of another lovely hotel and then on to St. Teresa, a 1929 Swiss Jesuit church that was closed.  On the way there and back to the town center I had some views of the Teesta down in its valley.  It again rained at night.

The next morning I walked to nearby Thongsa Gompa in the rain.  It is said to have been established in 1692 by the Bhutanese, who controlled the area at the time, though it was rebuilt in the 19th century after the Nepalis had rampaged through the area.  About 35 monks were chanting inside when I arrived soon after 9.  The murals looked new and were colorful and interesting, as usual.  Upstairs there were more murals and a monk offering prayers for devotees who brought offerings.  A devotee would roll three dice onto a little plate and the monk then added them up.  (I once saw him use his fingers to count.)  The devotee threw the dice several times, perhaps waiting for a good result.  I was later told by another monk that this was to forecast the future.  After the dice rolling the monk, while chanting, poured some liquid, probably just water, from what looked like a brandy bottle into a metal chalice.  Partly filled bottles of Coca-cola and Contessa XXX rum stood right alongside.  He then dropped a few grains of rice into the chalice.

About 11, after the rain had stopped, I walked to the town's weekly Wednesday market and looked around.  It centered on a steep, narrow lane, with all sorts of stuff on sale, including big white mushrooms and curly fern tops.  The people were interesting, too.  I eventually made my way to two sheds at the bottom where meat was on sale.  I spotted a big guy hoisting a big leg of a cow or water buffalo, and he motioned me in to watch him cut it up with a big cleaver.  He wanted his photo taken and I obliged.  The other shed seemed to be for pork.  I saw a pig's head being cut up with a very sharp knife.  Big chunks of what I think must have been pig shoulders had just been cut up and the meat was still twitching.  First time I've ever seen that, I think. I heard a pig squeal in the background, but I don't think he was meeting his doom just then.

I walked back up through the market and had lunch before heading to the Lepcha Museum in a room in the headquarters of the local Lepcha society.  Lepchas are the original inhabitants of the area, but now much in a minority.  As I was waiting for a guy to open the museum, a distinguished looking man in a suit and a traditional Lepcha hat came in and talked to me.  He pointed out the picture of the last Lepcha king, dating from the 18th century, on the wall.  Two other photos were of his grandfather and father.  He said the Lepchas did not come from near the Burmese border but had always been in the Himalayas, from eastern Sikkim to western Bhutan.

The guy who operated the museum, his personal collection, was an 85 year old man who had won several national awards for his efforts on behalf of Lepcha culture.  He showed me around and played several of the old instruments he had on display, including several kinds of flutes and stringed instruments similar to guitars and violins.  It was all very interesting and I liked the music.  He certainly seemed to enjoy playing.  He also had several photos of him as a young man.

From there I walked up to the former summer home of a maharaja now converted into a small hotel.  The steep road continued up to the Durpin Monastery, a Gelukpa monastery dating from 1976 on the high hill on the south end of Kalimpong's ridge, maybe 700 feet above the center of town.  By now it was late in the afternoon, so I engaged a taxi to take me up there, passing a golf course (which must have great views when the weather is good) and a large military area on the way.  I realized that if I walked down I would arrive after dark, so I asked the taxi to wait.  That didn't give me much time to look around, but I did check out the monks chanting, with the usual horns, clarinets, cymbals and drums for emphasis, in the main hall and on the second floor the impressive three dimensional mandalas and a big statue of the 11 headed, 1000 armed boddhisattva Avalokiteshvara.  The Dalai Lama is his reincarnation.  It again rained at night.

The next morning, under cloudy skies, I walked again up to the handmade paper manufacturing factory.  I wanted to see some of the processes that I hadn't been able to see before, in particular the way the pulp floating in a big wooden basin clings to a bamboo screen when it is dipped into the water and fuses into a soggy piece of paper.  The sky seemed to opening up a bit, though the views from the ridge where the factory was located were still not great.

I again had momos for lunch and at 1:30 left Kalimpong in the rain in a share jeep heading further east to the little village of Lava, 20 miles away.  We hit fog at about 6000 feet, but soon rose above it and had good views of the extremely wet and green forest.  The trees trunks were covered with moss and ferns grew everywhere, a beautiful forest.  We rose to about 7300 feet, and then came down to Lava at about 7000 feet, arriving about 3.  I checked into a small hotel and then walked about the town with the hotel owner.  He told me there were 450 households in town, but that must have included households in outlying areas.  The town was also full of little hotels and Indian tourists, a bad sign.  We walked down the town's steep main street (in fact, just about its only street) to the very modern Kagyu Monastery, set on a little hill at the bottom of the town.  The clouds were parting and there were some good views of the forest clad mountains from the top of the monastery.  We went into a very modern prayer hall where monks were chanting, accompanied by horns, clarinets, drums and cymbals, and listened to them for a while.  We walked back to the hotel by the highway, much less steep than the town's main street.  I then did the circuit by myself until night fell.  It was foggy by the time I got back to the hotel at about 7.  The Indians in my hotel, particularly the ones in the room next to mine, were very noisy that night. The ones in the room next door, two couples in a room with one bed, talked loudly till after midnight. 

It was very foggy, with a drippy rain, the next morning.  There are supposed to be some interesting and beautiful walks in the area, but with the bad weather and the noisy Indians I decided to leave.  It was still very foggy when I left at 10:30 in a small van heading back to Kalimpong.  We got there about 12 and I had more good views of the spectacular mossy forest on the way once we got out of the fog.

I had another momo lunch in Kalimpong and then left on a 1:30 jeep bound for Darjeeling, about 35 miles away by road to the west.  We left in sunshine, though there were still plenty of clouds in the sky.  From Kalimpong we took the steep road down to the Teesta, followed it downriver for about a mile before crossing it, at about 1200 feet elevation, and then went upriver just a short way before leaving the river and heading up a ridge to the west.  The little used road is narrow and steep, with great views.  I could see the Teesta for a short while as we rose, and later I could see a bit of the Rangit to the north, with the hills of Sikkim beyond.  In fact, as the crow flies we were only a few miles from Sikkim, across the deep valley of the Rangit River.  We passed through tea estates and beautiful forests, and as we neared Darjeeling through several little villages.  Unfortunately, clouds began to obstruct the views as we reached over 5000 feet elevation and after reaching 6000 feet there was fog, obstructing all views.  A light rain began just before we reached Ghoom at 7400 feet, but it stopped on the way down to Darjeeling, 600 feet lower.  We arrived about 4.  There was quite a traffic jam in Darjeeling.  I made the steep, 300 foot climb from the jeep stand to the hotel where I had stayed before.  I got a room a floor higher, with even better views.  I watched as the ridge to the east cleared.  This was the way we had come.  I had been hoping for views of Darjeeling from there.  I watched as the clouds swirled in and out before going out to dinner.

The next morning I was happy to go back to the little restaurant where I ate almost every breakfast when I was here previously.  They serve a wonderful breakfast of scrambled eggs, fried tomatoes, crunchy hash browns, and thick buttered slices of brown bread with Tibetan cheese, one of the best breakfasts I've had anywhere.  At first I was the only customer, before two others showed up.  The place, catering to westerners and not Indians, was packed every morning when I was here before, a month earlier.  There seem to be few westerners here now, but still lots of Indians.  I spent a large part of the day in an internet cafe, with walks around town.  It was cloudy all day, with some rain.  It rained very hard at night and on the way back to my hotel after dinner my trouser legs got soaked.  The little lanes were streaming with water.

The next day was cloudy and foggy, with some rain.  I did take a walk around town, stopping at St. Andrew's Church, dating from the 1800's, where a funeral service was going on for a woman named Louise Dunne, who died at 99 years of age, about three months short of her 100th birthday.  The church had been closed every other time I walked by.  After the service I walked through the church and read the wall plaques, including one for General Lloyd, the man who founded Darjeeling and died in 1865.  About 6 the clouds opened up a bit and there were good views to the north and northeast.  I walked to a viewpoint and enjoyed the views.  I could see the hills of Sikkim in the distance.  Towards nightfall clouds returned, filled the valley below, and hid the green hills.

The next morning was again very foggy.  I had planned to leave Darjeeling for Mirik, another hill town to the southwest, but was delayed as I waited for a travel agent to get me a train ticket to Calcutta.  I was happy to get it as I dreaded again taking buses over that slow, bumpy route.  I had thought about traveling across eastern Nepal to Kathmandu from Darjeeling and flying to Bangkok from there, but with all the rain and so much to see in Nepal, I decided to put that off until another time and instead return to Calcutta for a flight to Bangkok and then Saipan.  A newspaper I buy periodically has a weather map, now showing the line of the advance of the monsoon, and the line advanced over Calcutta a day or two ago.

The fog lifted in the afternoon and I walked around some.  In mid afternoon there were again good views north and northeast and I even saw some blue sky high above.  In the late afternoon I walked again to the old Planters' Club just above the Mall and looked around.  I had hoped there might be views to the west, but thick clouds hid everything.

May 26-31, 2013: Rumtek and North Sikkim

In Gangtok on the morning of the 26th I walked down to the jeep stand in the rain before 7 to take a day trip to the Rumtek Monastery across the valley. When I got there, there was no jeep.  I was told there might be one in an hour.  I walked to the Mall as the rain stopped and a heavy fog settled in, obscuring almost everything.  I walked up and down the almost deserted Mall as the fog lifted and returned to the jeep stand about 8.  A jeep to Rumtek was there, but there were no other passengers.  I decided to give up and headed back to my hotel for breakfast.  I checked out of the hotel and headed down to the jeep stand again and found a jeep getting ready to go to Rumtek.  I got a seat in the back row and we left about 10:30 on the pretty journey across the valley.  We descended about 2000 feet into the valley to Gangtok's west and then climbed up about the same amount, reaching Rumtek, less than 15 miles from Gangtok, just before noon. The parking area in front was crowded with the vehicles of Indian tourists.

Armed guards were in place at the gate, as Rumtek belongs to the Kagyu, or Black Hat, school of Tibetan Buddhism, founded in 1110, and there is an often violent dispute over the rightful reincarnation of the Karmapa, its head.  The 16th Karmapa died in 1981 and the Dalai Lama has identified a young successor who fled Tibet in 2000 and now resides near Dharamsala.  His picture was all over the monastery, with slogans advocating that India allow him to come to Sikkim.  India won't let him, supposedly to mollify the Chinese.  The other candidate lives in Kalimpong, near Darjeeling in West Bengal.

After registering with the guards, I went through the gate and checked into a Tibetan-run hotel below the monastery before walking up to look around.  The monastery was built in the 1960's on land donated by Sikkim's Chogyal after the Karmapa fled Tibet at about the same time as the Dalai Lama.  It is said to be a copy of the main Kagyu Monastery, located in Tsurphu, northwest of Lhasa.  I stopped for a plate of momos at a little monk-run cafe before going through the metal detectors, past the armed guards, and into the courtyard of the main hall.  I looked around the courtyard and the hall.  Inside the hall were costumes used for a cham dance which had taken place only a few days before.  I wish I would have known about it, as I would have tried to see it.  A young monk started a conversation and it turned out he was from Tawang, on the Tibet border in the northeast Indian state of Arunchal Pradesh.  In fact, he gave me a book about Tawang to read overnight.

Behind the main hall, further up the slope of the hill, is the Nalanda Institute and in a room of another building the chorten holding the remains of the 16th Karmapa.  In the room with the chorten I noticed that the chubby, older monk sitting watch got hungry and helped himself to one of the bags of potato chips on the altar.  There were good views of Gangtok from the monastery.

From the monastery I walked a bit more than a mile to the old monastery, on the other side of the ridge and facing to the west, with good views to the west despite, and it some ways because of, the clouds.  It dates from the 1700's, but is restored.  Inside a monk was emptying goblets of water that had been lined up on an altar and then drying them with the shawl of his red robe.  The door to a back room was open and I went inside to see depictions on the walls of the fearsome Mahakala, protector of the Black Hats.  I took a few photographs before the monk asked me not to.

I walked back to the main monastery, where perhaps 80 monks, in groups of ten or so, were debating, with one part of the group posing questions that the other part has to answer.  The monks posing the questions clap their hands one way if the answer is correct and another way if the answer is incorrect.  I watched for a half hour or more and a couple of young English guys eventually came up.  They had just arrived and checked into the hotel and asked me what was going on and, later, asked if I was interested in a North Sikkim trip.   After spending several days in Gangtok without finding anyone interested in going to North Sikkim (which you can only do on a tour), I had given up on the idea, so I was glad at last to find others who wanted to go.

We had a Tibetan dinner at the hotel and afterward walked up to the prayer hall in the Nalanda Institute to watch the evening prayers, though we arrived only ten minutes or so before they finished.  There were well over 100 monks in the hall, and a Bhutanese monk we talked with afterward told us there were 200 monks in total at the monastery.  He also gave us each a package of cookies from the offerings on the altar.  We walked back to the hotel on a clear night with the lights of Gangtok spread all over the ridge to the northeast.

I was up soon after 5 the next morning and could see snow covered mountains above Gangtok's ridge.  Gangtok itself was hidden by a bank of clouds.  The sun was just rising over the mountains.  I was delayed by the views and reached the Nalanda Institute just as the morning prayers were ending and the monks streaming out.  I wandered around for an hour or so.  The clouds swirled in, obliterating all views, and then swirled out again.  Clouds still filled the valley before Gangtok, obscuring the city.  The monks were friendly, as were the armed guards on duty.  I couldn't find the monk who had lent me the book on Tawang, and so left it with another monk.

About 8:30 the three of us left on a share jeep back to Gangtok, arriving a little more than an hour later.  We spent an hour or so deciding which agency we wanted to use for our North Sikkim tour and then booked one to leave the next morning.  It cost us each 8500 rupees, a little less than $160, for four days and three nights.  I had been quoted $110 a day if I had wanted to do it on my own.  I spent most of the rest of the day in an internet cafe, with a few walks along the crowded Mall on a beautiful sunny day.  There was rain at night, though.

I was up before 5 the next morning and was treated to a view of the snow streaked and snow covered mountains to the west.  I opened the door to my hotel balcony and watched until about 7.  The snow covered ones came and went as the clouds moved.  I could pick out the two peaks just to the left of Kanchenjunga and see the snow covered lower slopes of Kanchenjunga, but the peak remained behind clouds.  Other snow covered peaks appeared above the forested ridge to the west, and I could see one to the north.

About 9 the next morning we left in our jeep for our trip to the north.  Besides me and the two English guys, Fred and Andy, just out of university, we had a driver named Ram and an obligatory guide named Pem.   We made a stop at an observation spot on the pass four miles or so above Gangtok, but by then the snow covered peaks were behind clouds.  We continued on the bumpy road I had taken a few days before to Phodong, stopping at a couple of impressive waterfalls along the road and at the Phodong Monastery.  The sun was out and the views were great.  We had a lunch stop a little past Phodong about 12:30 or 1, with good views to the west, the Teesta River below but unseen at that point.

After lunch we headed north along the Teesta to North Sikkim's main city, Mangan, at about 4600 feet.  The Teesta here is dammed and brown and sluggish.  From Mangan we continued north high above the Teesta through beautiful forest another 15 miles to Chungthang at about 5500 feet in a deep gorge at the confluence of two rivers, the Teesta and the Lachung.  On our way up we must have seen well over a hundred jeeps crammed full of Indian tourists coming down.  A dam is being built just below the confluence and it looks like it could flood the little town.  We crossed the Teesta at Chungthang and headed further north, or a little northwest, up the narrow canyon of the Teesta through a dense, beautiful forest, now primarily pines.  The river rushed rapidly below us.  We hit fog at about 8000 feet and reached our destination, the small town of Lachen, a little less than 9000 feet in elevation, about 5:30 or 6.  In a drippy rain we checked into a small hotel and had dinner.  There was no hot water for a bucket bath, but I slept well, going to bed soon after 9. There must have been 20 or so mufti-storied hotels in town, though most Indian tourists go only up the valley of the Lachung River, northeast of Chungthang.

I was up the next morning about 4:30 and walked up to the monastery 300 feet or so above town in a drippy rain.  The night before I had discovered that I had left my little umbrella in an internet cafe in Gangtok.  Despite the rain and clouds, there were views of the town and the surrounding mountains.  Ten or fifteen monks, wearing dark cloaks over their red robes, were sitting and chanting in the small prayer hall.  I walked around and listened for ten or fifteen minutes until they finished and filed out.  I noticed one table with several animal skulls, those of goats and sheep, plus a couple that looked like they might be monkeys.  The monks closed up the prayer hall and I waited out the now heavier rain before starting down in a light rain, which eventually stopped.  On the way down I watched a woman milking a cow.  She lit a big pot of smoky incense first and placed it near the cow.  Then she untied a calf in a shed and let it feed for a short while to get the milk flowing.  The calf fed vigorously as the cow urinated and defecated.  A man, her husband I guess, pulled the calf away and tied it up nearby while the woman sat down to milk.  The calf tried to get back to her mother all the while, and after the milking was finished was allowed to do so.

About 7:30, after breakfast, we got in the jeep and headed further north up the canyon to the little settlement of Thangu, about 20 miles away.  The scenery along the way was beautiful, but rain fell.  We passed several army camps and saw many almost vertical rivers, really crosses between rivers and waterfalls, falling into the Teesta down the steep slopes of the mountains.  Trees began to thin out at about 11,000 feet.  From Thangu at about 12,700 feet we continued a further mile or two up to the Chopta Valley at about 13,200 feet.  The rain had stopped and we got out of the jeep to enjoy the views of the winding Chopta River in its flat valley below.  A yak herder was chasing a herd of maybe 40 yaks further up the valley.  We had a brief view of the serrated peaks to the east before clouds swirled back in.  We walked back to Thangu through the Chopta Valley, passing bushes full of wet rhododendrons.   The grass along the river was spongy in places and there were some steep descents among rocks.  The fog swirled in and it became quite cold.  We halted for tea in Thangu.  The road continues up the Teesta to a beautiful lake on the border with Tibet that is its source, but foreigners aren't allowed to go.  The drive back down to Lachen, from about 11:30 to 1, was in a constant rain.

After lunch we started down to Chungthang about 2 and the rain eventually stopped on the way.  From Chungthang we headed up the valley of the Lachung River and the rain started up again as soon as we started up the valley.  It is a little over 12 miles from Chungthang to Lachung and we hit a landslide about half way.  After about an hour wait in a heavy rain, a bulldozer cleared the blockage and we were able to pass, though a rock, which sounded a lot bigger than it must have been, hit our roof on the way.  We reached Lachung about 5 and checked into a small hotel as the heavy rain continued.  We sat in our room until a late dinner at 9.  I was able to take a bucket bath with hot water and went to bed about 10:30.  The rain had stopped but we had been told at dinner that the road was blocked both below and above town.

I got up about 6 the next morning and it was again raining.  After breakfast I took a walk around town.  I was able to buy a small umbrella and it rained off and on.  Lachung, bigger than Lachen, is at about 8600 feet elevation and is strung out along the river.  I walked down to the rocky shore of the fast moving river.  Elderly women were digging up sand and piling it in heaps to be borne away by men with baskets on their backs.  The people in Lachen and Lachung are Bhutia for the most part and have their own system of self government, with supposedly little interference by the state.  Steep cliffs and mountains line the valley sides, with the clouds and fog often obscuring them that day.  Many waterfalls cascaded down.  Along the river and in fact all over town grew beautiful bell shaped flowers of pink, red, purple and white, with little spots inside.  I think they might be called primula, or at least I've read that primula grow there.  I walked over a Bailey Bridge festooned with prayer flags that crosses the river and then up to a monastery about a mile away, a climb of about 400 feet past houses often with small patches of almost ripe wheat right next to them. 

We had planned to go further north that day, but the road above town was closed by a landslide and the road clearing efforts were concentrated at the landslide below town, where we had been detained the day before.  (When we got back to Gangtok we found out that a big storm had hit the whole area, causing landslides to block roads to Pelling and Yuksom.)  The rain did stop for a bit and Pem led us on a walk up through dense, wet, but beautiful forest to a waterfall.  Leaches were out, but none got through to my feet.  From there we walked down and then to a viewpoint, arriving just as clouds covered everything.  The rain started up again and we walked back for lunch.

After lunch, as the rain continued, we walked to a little house in town where tomba is served.  In a small room with a fireplace a woman heaped fermented millet into four wooden mugs, sprinkled a few grains of rice on each as on offering, and placed them before us.  We poured hot water on the millet, waited a few minutes, and then drank the white, alcoholic chang through a wooden straw.  Chang has a very pleasing taste hot.  I don't like it much cold.  You drink the chang until it is done, then pour more hot water on the millet to create more chang.  Usually, you can do this about five times before the alcohol in the millet is all washed out.  The millet then is fed to farm animals.  It was pleasant sitting in there with the fire and the tomba and the rain outside.  The family pottered around.  Besides the woman who served us and her mother, a little girl wandered around.  An old man, said to be 85, lay on a bench covered with blankets and wearing dark sunglasses.  About 5 I left for about an hour's walk in the rain around town.  We had another late and not very good dinner about 9:30 and went to bed about 10 as the rain continued.

Pem got us up about 5 the next morning and within 15 minutes we were in the jeep on our way up to Yumthang, the landslide having been cleared the previous afternoon.  Rain fell as we ascended a zigzagging road, with good and bad stretches, including the rocky area where the landslide had been, up to the Yumthang Valley, about six miles away.  The rain was fairly light and we had good views despite the rain and clouds.  At one spot a torrent of water ran over the road.  We all got out as Ram drove through it and then we had to find our way across the water, hopping from stone to stone and trying not to get our shoes wet. 

At about 10,500 feet the valley floor flattens a bit, or at least is much less steep.  Here begins a Rhododendron Sanctuary, full of rhododendron trees, though the peak of the blossoming had passed.  We drove for about eight miles, ascending to almost 12,000 feet, through a beautiful forest.  Many of the pine trees had bright new green growth at the tips of their boughs.  They seemed almost as if they were lit up.  A little more than an hour after we had left Lachung we reached a row of stalls at the end of the forest with a big meadow beyond.  The river cuts through the meadow.  We walked into the meadow and down to the river.  Despite the clouds the views of the surrounding jagged, ice-streaked mountains were pretty good, though the lovely green meadow was littered with the garbage of Indian tourists.  We were given only 20 minutes to look around, though we took about twice that.  There is a path through the forest and it would have been nice to be able to take that.  Bushes of yellow flowers were prominent and some of the trees still had rhododendrons on them.

Masses of Indian tourists were arriving as we started down about 7.  I'm glad we got there before them.  We saw no other western tourists on our four day trip.  At the spot where we had got out of the jeep to cross the water there was now a massive traffic jam.  A jeep was stuck, with one back tire wedged between rocks.  It blocked all traffic.  Despite the light rain, it was fun to watch them try to free it, with several unsuccessful attempts before the stuck jeep finally was released.  We waited as perhaps 20 or 30 jeeps crossed, with another one again getting stuck, though only briefly.  We made it across and continued down, soon coming across a car stuck in a watercourse across the road. Our driver helped free it and we reached Lachung for breakfast before 8:30. 

We departed Lachung a little after 9 and, despite the rain, had fairly good views of the spectacular scenery as we descended.  There were long scars of many landslides down the steep slopes of the canyon walls on the opposite side of the river.  We crossed the major landslide area on the road, now clear, and I could spot a huge boulder a little way up the mountainside that will eventually come down.  We reached Chungthang about 10 and spent a half hour there as our driver refueled and we talked to some sightseeing monks on the bridge over the Teesta.  We continued down along the Teesta, mostly in the rain, until our lunch stop soon after 1. The final stretch was often foggy and usually rainy, but we did have some views.  Jeeps full of Indians were heading up.  From the pass above Gangtok we could make out the city wreathed in clouds.  We arrived in the city about 4:30 in the fog and rain.