Hi people,
I figure it's about time to update this. I have a what I hope is a pretty good entry about my hiking time in the Himalaya last week, but I wrote it out longhand when I got back from the mountains and don't have it with me right now, so I'll probably post that closer to New Year's when I'm hopefully very far from where I am right now.
Speaking of which, right now I'm in New Jaipalguri, India, which is about 5 hours south of Darjeeling. I was here for about an hour two weeks ago when I took a train from Varanasi (the Ganges place), but hopped into a jeep immediately because everyone likes to get out of here as fast as possible because there is nothing to do or see here.
Well, I had the same mentality coming back from Darjeeling. There is a major railway station here, and I hoped to move West ASAP. Unfortunately, all trains toward Rajasthan (desert in the West) had waiting lists for a week. Same with anything to Calcutta or south. So I checked into a really cheap and really shady hostel right by the railway station, hoping for better luck the next day (sometimes they set aside a certain amount of seats for foreign tourists, but you can only get them a few hours before the train).
The next morning I woke up with the dreaded traveler's runs and could barely keep my head up, so I checked into a better, costlier hotel called the Sahara Lodge a few minutes away from the station, which was a good idea because the area around the station is very grungy and noisy, what with all the trains and everything.
This was a very good move, as my digestion affliction lasted 3 days. But it turned out there were 3 decent American movie channels on my tv, and I'm Not There (the Bob Dylan movie from a few years ago, which always gets me in a rambling artist mood) happened to be the second one that came on. So that's what I did for three days. On Christmas Eve, Prince Caspian came on at 11:15 pm (a good way for me to start Christmas, as those of you who have heard my Prince Caspian-stitches story might understand. If you haven't and would like to, I can send it to you).
So my first ever Christmas away from home was spent in a hotel room in a city in India without much going on, just happy to have a bathroom attached to my room (although there was no actual toilet...more like a...hole.)
I also called my parents, the first time I've heard any familiar voices since I left on December 1, which was obviously a good thing.
I started feeling better yesterday. After getting sick of all the hassles and confusion of railway tickets, I decided to scrap the desert plan and just go somewhere relaxing, like the beach area in southwestern India that I first heard about soon after I bought my ticket called Goa. It used to be hippie Mecca. Now it's very commercial and especially expensive the week between Christmas and New Year's, so I'm thinking of heading further South to a place called Gokarna. Thus, I spent more money than I would have liked but still less by Western standards to get a flight from here to Mumbai tomorrow afternoon (saving myself about 50+ hours of train travel), and then spend a little extra cash on some foreigner exception to get from there to Goa by train the next day, and if that's too crowded, get a bus to Gokarna the day after that. So I hope to be looking at a full moon on the beach by the Arabian Sea for New Year's. Then again, a week ago I thought I would be in Jaisalmer right now, so who knows where the movie director in my head will take me. But Gokarna's the only place I actually knew I really wanted to go to when I arrived here, so I'm just going to do what I can to get there ASAP. I'm a little restless after a very American week of sitting in bed watching movies (although that was a very nice way to deal with being temporarily incapacitated).
That's all for now. I hope you're all having beautiful snowy holidays with the one's you love and looking forward to an exciting beginning to a new decade (albeit an arbitrary demarcation in the constant flow of time, it's still going to be cool to write 10 as the year. Nice and round).
Peace,
Ben
I figure it's about time to update this. I have a what I hope is a pretty good entry about my hiking time in the Himalaya last week, but I wrote it out longhand when I got back from the mountains and don't have it with me right now, so I'll probably post that closer to New Year's when I'm hopefully very far from where I am right now.
Speaking of which, right now I'm in New Jaipalguri, India, which is about 5 hours south of Darjeeling. I was here for about an hour two weeks ago when I took a train from Varanasi (the Ganges place), but hopped into a jeep immediately because everyone likes to get out of here as fast as possible because there is nothing to do or see here.
Well, I had the same mentality coming back from Darjeeling. There is a major railway station here, and I hoped to move West ASAP. Unfortunately, all trains toward Rajasthan (desert in the West) had waiting lists for a week. Same with anything to Calcutta or south. So I checked into a really cheap and really shady hostel right by the railway station, hoping for better luck the next day (sometimes they set aside a certain amount of seats for foreign tourists, but you can only get them a few hours before the train).
The next morning I woke up with the dreaded traveler's runs and could barely keep my head up, so I checked into a better, costlier hotel called the Sahara Lodge a few minutes away from the station, which was a good idea because the area around the station is very grungy and noisy, what with all the trains and everything.
This was a very good move, as my digestion affliction lasted 3 days. But it turned out there were 3 decent American movie channels on my tv, and I'm Not There (the Bob Dylan movie from a few years ago, which always gets me in a rambling artist mood) happened to be the second one that came on. So that's what I did for three days. On Christmas Eve, Prince Caspian came on at 11:15 pm (a good way for me to start Christmas, as those of you who have heard my Prince Caspian-stitches story might understand. If you haven't and would like to, I can send it to you).
So my first ever Christmas away from home was spent in a hotel room in a city in India without much going on, just happy to have a bathroom attached to my room (although there was no actual toilet...more like a...hole.)
I also called my parents, the first time I've heard any familiar voices since I left on December 1, which was obviously a good thing.
I started feeling better yesterday. After getting sick of all the hassles and confusion of railway tickets, I decided to scrap the desert plan and just go somewhere relaxing, like the beach area in southwestern India that I first heard about soon after I bought my ticket called Goa. It used to be hippie Mecca. Now it's very commercial and especially expensive the week between Christmas and New Year's, so I'm thinking of heading further South to a place called Gokarna. Thus, I spent more money than I would have liked but still less by Western standards to get a flight from here to Mumbai tomorrow afternoon (saving myself about 50+ hours of train travel), and then spend a little extra cash on some foreigner exception to get from there to Goa by train the next day, and if that's too crowded, get a bus to Gokarna the day after that. So I hope to be looking at a full moon on the beach by the Arabian Sea for New Year's. Then again, a week ago I thought I would be in Jaisalmer right now, so who knows where the movie director in my head will take me. But Gokarna's the only place I actually knew I really wanted to go to when I arrived here, so I'm just going to do what I can to get there ASAP. I'm a little restless after a very American week of sitting in bed watching movies (although that was a very nice way to deal with being temporarily incapacitated).
That's all for now. I hope you're all having beautiful snowy holidays with the one's you love and looking forward to an exciting beginning to a new decade (albeit an arbitrary demarcation in the constant flow of time, it's still going to be cool to write 10 as the year. Nice and round).
Peace,
Ben
I'm confused. Could you repeat that? Good luck stormin Goakarna!
ReplyDelete