Jharkhand had been the most intense and
exhausting part of the trip thus far, so I felt somewhat justified in
going to a couple of pretty and somewhat touristy areas directly
afterward. Darjeeling was the first stop on my way back into the
Himalayan mountains. Once the favorite vacation spot for the British
Raj overlords, it has continued the legacy of an economy dominated by
outsider-owned tea estates and tourism but politically is more
concerned with domestic squabbles over a separate state for the
indigenous Gorkha people (the Gorkhaland movement).
Darjeeling itself is a strange mix of
newish cobbled-together concrete construction, beautiful old British
buildings, dozens of souvenir shops, and a big gross new
Western-style shopping mall, all built into the side of a very steep
mountain. My agenda was basically to look at some big mountains and
check out some small scale hydropower energy projects, but the 5 days
I spent there ended up being a bit more interesting than that.
I made my first friend by asking a
random rocker-looking dude for directions to the jeep stand, and he
ended up introducing me to his friends in the local punk band DaPrimitive Future and taking me to the best spot to see the sunrise
over the world's 3rd highest mountain, Mount Kanchenjunga (the
spelling is flexible apparently). He was a Tibetan refugee, marking
the second time I'd made such a friendship in the Indian mountains.
Darjeeling surprised me in what I began to uncover as a fairly active
underground music scene. Apparently there's a few dozen punk, metal,
and experimental bands from this smallish Indian city which seemed
odd since I hadn't come across this subculture anywhere else in the
country so far. I seemed to be encountering much more youth that were
conscious of western "hipster" fashion, as well as quite a
bit of ethnic diversity that tended toward more Asian features. My
new friends informed me that the entire mountainous northeastern
region of India is like this, even in the "remote, tribal"
territories near the border with Myanmar where everyone has a Justin
Bieber haircut and speaks fluent English solely from watching
American TV and movies.
I did manage to hook up with a
representative of the West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency
for a tour of a functioning small-scale hydropower project attached
to an organic tea estate. I've had an interest in small and
micro-scale hydro for awhile as a potential part of the answer for a
sustainable energy future in Appalachia and other regions with lots
of small streams and elevation drops. Although I'd heard that the
Himalayas are home to many examples of hydroenergy projects that
don't require huge dams and therefore massive ecological destruction,
I'd been having a tough time getting in touch with anyone to actually
show me a project. I was very grateful to Mr. Chakrabooti for giving
me a private jeep tour of the Ambootia organic tea estate and the
state-run power plant at the base of it for no charge. While there
had been some earth moving and concrete structures built to make this
possible, it appeared to overall be much more environmentally benign
than large scale dams or any form of fossil fuel energy.
Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take pictures due to government
paranoia around the Gorkhaland conflict.
It seemed like I'd taken in the
majority of what Darjeeling had to offer, so I hopped in a jeep and
rode over to Gangtok, the capitol of the neighboring state of Sikkim.
This place is billed as India's "mountain paradise," with
official permission required to even enter the state for a two-week
stay. Similar to the neighboring country of Bhutan in many ways,
Sikkim was an independent country up until 1975 when it peaceably
merged with India, and it's native ethnic types bear little
resemblance to the vast majority of plains Indians. The entire state
is mountainous, and some areas are highly restricted to foreigners,
such as the controversial Nathula Pass on the Tibetan/Chinese border.
After a typical night in a typical
cheap hotel, I woke up with a strange feeling of positivity. I had
absolutely no idea what to get into, so walked down the very steep
streets to the tourism office and started leafing through a booklet
on various attractions in the state. I was immediately mystified by a
place called "Banjakhri Falls and Energy Park," with a
brief, vague description of a place based around ecotourism,
renewable energy, and shamanistic traditions that was only about 6km
away from Gangtok. I asked the lady at the counter if it was within
walking distance, and after she drew me a crude map I started on my
way down the mountain.
What followed was a mostly amazing 2
hour walk down very steep concrete staircases and paths that
meandered almost right through people's homes, and luckily everyone I
met was very friendly and eager to help the random foreigner who was
actually trying to walk somewhere. At one point a horde of grinning,
jumping, laughing school kids chased me down a hillside, right before
I found myself surrounded by beautiful terraced hillside farms and
handmade wood and mud thatch houses. Eventually I found my way to the
entrance of the park and paid my 35 rupee entrance fee (equivalent of
about $0.80) and proceeded to wander around this very strange place.
Words can't really do it justice, but
basically it was a mishmash of lifesize displays of local shamans
(the Banjakhris) casting out demons and such, a few souvenir shops
and food stalls, a fairly janky tiny "renewable energy museum,"
tons of solar panels, random things to play on (including a zip line
across some river rapids!), and finally the majestic falls
themselves. After wandering through all of this I noticed a neglected
building which contained both a wood-fired gasification system on the
top floor and a micro hydro system in the bottom. I had to jump over
the railing to check it out, but I could tell that no one there
minded too much. Intrigued by the hydro system, I decided to go up
the river to see what kind of diversion structure they were using.
After reaching this point I noticed a picturesque cable bridge just
up the way, so I climbed up the hillside to check it out. Once there
I turned around to find a terraced mountainside organic farm and
started checking it out to see what methods they were using.
Before long some people in a nearby
house had noticed me and sent a young woman to go find out what I was
up to. Deepa turned out to be the niece of the people who lived in
the adjacent house, and she invited me back to meet her family. I
arrived to the scene of a freshly killed goat that was being expertly
hacked up and pieced out for consumption and sale, and they were nice
enough to let me watch the whole thing and take about 3 million
pictures. I was invited to stay for dinner which I of course agreed
to (various goat parts stew!), but before this Deepa took me on a
tour of the surrounding hillside village, including across the cable
bridge that had initially attracted my attention. Her little cousins
Samson and Susmita came along and a good time was had by all,
especially me.
During dinner I found out a bit more
about the family and was eventually invited to stay with them for as
long as I wanted. Moni (husband) and Menuka (wife) had moved here
after marriage as this was Moni's ancestral family land, and about 10
years ago the Sikkimese state government approached them about using
part of their land for a state park. They agreed, and the state then
set up Banjakhri Falls park with the agreement that they (Moni and
Menuka) would manage and run the park, keep the proceeds from
admissions and vendor space, and submit an annual payment to the
state. They had a fairly small staff of mostly young folks from the
area, and Deepa was working at the ticket counter and renewable
energy museum as a first job out of college. The organic farm I'd
noticed earlier was theirs also and was mainly worked by the quietly
saint-like Gophli. If it's not obvious by now, I was very smitten at
this point.
I agreed to stay for an undecided
period of time, and promised to help with anything I could. I ended
up working in the funny little renewable energy museum fixing broken
interactive energy demonstrations, making labels and explanations for
the displays, giving interactive tours to Indian tourists (strangely
I never saw a single foreign tourist here, only Indians on vacation),
and hanging out with Deepa and the others as they took tickets. I got
to be pretty good friends with Moni and Menuka's son Narin who ran
the zipline, and generally settled into a little bit of a routine for
a few weeks. However, against Deepa's wishes, I ended up buying a
Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle from an American in Gangtok so that I
could visit the nearby area of Pelling in West Sikkim.
This was my first experience of
personally owning a motorcycle, and despite a few initial technical
aggravations it was actually pretty awesome. The trip to Pelling and
then to Yuksom was breathtaking as it wound through about 90 miles of
intensely curvy and steep mountain roads that sometimes abruptly
transformed from fairly decent pavement to absolute rubble. Although
I nearly got hypothermia from a sudden intense cold rainshower, I
made it intact to the touristy little town of Pelling which is
reputed to have the best Kanchenjunga views in India. Unfortunately
the weather was not on my side the following morning as the sunrise
and mountain peaks were shrouded in clouds, but it was still awful
perty. Next stop was Yuksom, the historic capitol of the old republic
where the first king (temporal and religious king as it was a
Buddhist republic) was crowned in 1642. I visited Phuntsog Namgyal's
coronation throne site as well as a natural lake completely encircled
by prayer flags before getting back on the road toward my adopted
family in Gangtok.
As I was biking up the steep windy
roads back into Gangtok, I received a very unexpected call from an
Indian photojournalist. She had gotten my number from someone who I
had emailed at some point to suss out mining areas to visit in the
Northeast, and lo and behold she was planning to do a story on the
recent upsurge of unregulated coal mining in the nearby state of
Meghalaya and was inviting me to come along. Within minutes I was in
a mad scramble to find a train ticket from Siliguri (the nearest
station to Gangtok) to Guwahati, the capital of neighboring state
Assam and the launching point for jeeps that go into the more remote
Northeast territories.
Deepa and the rest of the family were a
bit upset to hear that I'd soon be running off again just after
getting back from Yuksom and Pelling, but I promised to come back for
the last week of my time in India. I had hoped to get a visa
extension to be able to more thoroughly explore the Northeast and
spend more time with my adopted family, but after the 2008 Mumbai
bombings the government doesn't allow any extensions for tourist
visas. Truthfully I was having a very difficult time deciding where
to go after India; I had stayed too long to leave enough time for a
really worthwhile trip to China, I wasn't terribly interested in the
nearby Southeast Asian countries, and all I was really interested in
was spending more time in the Indian Northeast. Despite several
attempts at haggling with the authorities, I accepted defeat (though
I halfway thought about intentionally overstaying my visa and
haggling over the fee at the airport).
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