Chapter 9_Nye-mae-el

Chapter 9

Nye-mae-el

It was a nice little hotel, managed by a girl of our age and her little brother studying in class 5. They too stayed in the same building; basically it was a house extended into a hotel – the ground floor rented, the first floor occupied by the family and the top one OYOed. They provided us home-made food as well, for dinner – roti, dal and omlettee.

After settling down in our rooms, we took bath and embraced the beds. We ordered burgers for our late lunch; Khan and Mahesh had been half way into their sleep when the food arrived. We woke up for dinner at around 8, ate and went back to sleep. We had to make up for a night’s sleep that we had sacrificed on the road.

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Out of Curiosity…

 On 22^nd May, 1975, Sikkim became India’s 22^nd state; before that it was an independent mountain kingdom. Sikkim is a landlocked state bordered by Nepal on the west, Tibet in the north and north-east, Bhutan in the east and West Bengal in the south. The Lepcha people, the original inhabitants of Sikkim, call it Nye-mae-el, meaning ‘paradise’. It is India’s first organic state (practicing organic farming).

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We woke up late the next day. The bikes had to be lubed and we spent around half an hour on that. We had poori, sabji and chai for breakfast – home-made. We left the place at around 10:30 AM. As we were loading our bags onto the bikes, Thorappan told me that deedi had wanted to take a photo with my bike. She had particularly liked my bike, it seems. Now that was an honour, especially after the embarrassment in Kolkata (Chapter 5: The Comedy of Errors). During the rest of the loading, half my vision and the whole of my heart looked out for deedi, who unfortunately didn’t turn up.

We were all excited about our soon-to-begin meeting with the mountains. The initial few kilometers of road from Siliguri, passed through a stretch of lush green forest. And then suddenly I saw a mountain range at a distance in front of me. I was very excited and caught up with Mahesh to tell him that it was probably our first sight of the mighty Himalayas. We weren’t very sure about it though.

The lush green forest route in Siliguri…

We filled our tanks to the brim, in the next village, which was around 40 kilometers from Siliguri. We were on National Highway 10, the one that connected Siliguri to Gangtok. Segments of the road were under construction and this lead to traffic blocks once in a while. The Teesta river meandered alongside the road and it was a treat to our eyes. There were many bridges on the way and we crossed the river many-a-times on those bridges.

Teesta river meandering along NH10…

The roads were narrow in some places; at times it was covered by gravel and rocks due to landslides. The monsoons were performing their annual rituals. Besides the mini buses run by both the West Bengal and Sikkim governments, that plied between Siliguri and Gangtok, there were plenty of jeeps that connected different cities. Some of them had the board ‘Darjeeling’ and our hearts longed that we had enough days and a bigger plan for covering the ‘Queen of Hills’ as well. But no, Darjeeling will have to wait for a blog of its own. The 'SK' registered taxis, mostly Altos and Wagon Rs, interested us for the initial few kilometers from Siliguri. I hadn’t seen vehicles registered in Sikkim before that in my lifetime. After around 70 kilometers from Siliguri, we reached the gateway to Sikkim – Rangpo. The ‘Welcome to Sikkim’ board did give us the very same excitement and sense of satisfaction as that of the ‘Welcome to the City of Joy’ one; we didn’t wish for a similar roller-coaster ride though (Chapter 7: A Roller-Coaster Ride).

NH 10…

A tunnel enroute Gangtok...

After a while, we stopped for tea and late lunch. It had drizzled along the way and we were already starting to feel the chillness of the height. We had soupy maggi and momos at the road side shop. Curious school kids gathered around our bikes. From where we sat and slurped maggi, we could see a two-storeyed house made out of wood and bamboo. A man sat on the balcony and took drags from his pipe. Mahesh envied the man’s state of peace and wished he too could live like that. I mulled over the possible hardships that this particular man could be facing in his life and how we in a matter of a few minutes had presumed that he was leading a peaceful life.

Bridges, bridges and more bridges…

Tough roads…

We booked rooms in Gangtok via Gobibo. Thorappan and Mahesh were particular about getting a room with a view. We continued our ride and soon entered the city of Gangtok. There was heavy traffic in the city and the ascending road made it even more difficult for us. My hands started aching due to prolonged engagement with the clutch and front brake levers. But what fascinated us was the discipline of the vehicles on the road – no overtaking and no honking, they just waited patiently in the traffic, one behind the other. Now that was indeed some ‘peace’ in life for the people of this city, if only they knew how horrible it was down in the plains.

"Welcome to Sikkim"

“Will be there soon…”

We reached the hotel at around 6:30 PM. It was a premium hotel with good facilities; luckily we had got it at a cheap price on Gobibo. The rooms didn’t have ACs or fans – of course, all one would wish for in this place were room heaters. We unloaded our luggage and went out again to get some quick service for our vehicles. Khan had noted a few service centers on the way, which he was quite sure were just a few kilometers from the hotel. After descending for about 15 kilometers, we inferred that Khan had hallucinated. Meanwhile, Thorappan had gone to meet Mr. John, our agent in Gangtok, who would get us the required permits and passes. After failing to find the service centers, we returned back to meet Thorappan and John. We lost each other on the way, but did re-join at the location shared by John. After collecting the permits, we headed back to the hotel. We had dinner on the way – chowmein and pork dry fry. The ride after dinner was fiery – the cold air pierced our skin. It must have been 9:30 PM or so, but the roads were empty. We inferred that Sikkim slept early. We hurried back to the hotel to earn a few extra hours of sleep, for we had the Nathu La and the Old Silk Route awaiting us the next day. Unfortunately, one of us wasn’t ready for the adventure.

(to be continued…)

Entering Gangtok …

Chapter 8_The Creature In My Head

Chapter 8

The Creature In My Head

They were a special security force and had a different sort of uniform. This is why we couldn’t recognize them from a distance, as police or security forces. They became very curious about us and enquired about our trip. One of them couldn’t believe that we rode all the way from Kerala. They went around our bikes, curious to know about the additional fittings. They then told us that it wasn’t safe to ride this late and asked us to stay for the night at Dumka. However, they cautioned us that the chances of getting a room in Dumka was less, as it was a festival season and most of the hotels would be filled with visitors.

We soon reached Dumka. The town was brightly lit with decoration lights. It was asleep though. It looked like a house where a wedding had taken place; after a hurry-burry day, when the festivities were over, but all those decorations remained. It was around 1:30 AM. We went into a petrol bunk. A guy came out of the small office room, rubbing his eyes. He had a smile on his face. While I filled my tank, Khan and Mahesh went room-hunting. I noticed a small cot lying in front of the office. “Ah, plan B is ready,” the miniature of me sitting inside my head whispered into my ears. (You all have those little creatures in your heads, don’t you? Conversations with them are more often the best.) Khan and Mahesh returned after a failed mission. We then together explored the streets of Dumka, desperately, for a room. The patrol police sympathized with us. They tried to help us by directing us to a few more hotels. Nah, Lady Fortune wasn’t in a good mood.

A car came by and the guy in it asked us to stop our vehicles. He enquired about us. When we told him that we were on a trip, he seemed excited. But then his speech was flowing like a stream. It was when he got out of the car and took a couple of steps that we confirmed that he was drunk. Sensing that it may not be wise to engage him further, we scooted. He followed us. We went back to the petrol bunk. The guy there came out, once again, with a sweet smile on his face. The other three filled their tanks. My plan B had been rejected and plan C was on – ride to the next town. The guy at the bunk told us that the next town was about 60-70 km away, in the next state. The drunken guy reached there. He started blabbering in Hindi. He switched to English once in a while. He was trying to tell me that he was a rider as well, an adventurous one. Apparently, he had been on many road trips and was planning an all-India tour on a Jawa motorcycle. He kept asking whether I approved him as an adventurous guy. I could see the petrol bunk guy sympathizing with me. Thorappan was giggling from a distance. I engaged our adventurous, drunk hero till all of them had filled their tanks to the brim.

Uncertainty is adventurous; but the little creature in your head will not give you a second of peace. “Where is the next town? Are there any hotels there? Would rooms be available there? How are the roads ahead?” It keeps shooting questions at you.

After about an hour, we entered Bihar and suddenly the roads became bad – terrible I should say. As we have seen over the past few days (and blogs), bad roads, dust and lorries are a deadly combination. We stopped at a roadside dhaba for tea. There were a couple of charpais there for us to relax ourselves. I do not know how to put it in words – that comfort you get when you get to lie down like that; even the creature in your head has its mouth shut and is at peace. There was a short man in this shop. He served us tea. We had two rounds of tea. Once in a while a lorry would stop in front of the shop; the driver would get down for a cup of tea.

The dhaba where we stopped for tea…

We tipped the short man as we left the place. He was a bit shabby, wearing a towel and a dirty banyan. He was short, very short and had grey hair; must be in his forties. As he took the tip from us, he had a smile on his face – a very innocent one. It filled our hearts, to the brim. We wouldn’t forget that smiling face for a while in our lives.

The ride ahead was very tough. We counted every kilometer. The creature inside my head started nibbling at my brain. We had no choice, but to ride on. There weren’t any hotels on the way. There were roadside dhabas though. Some of them had a few charpais in front of them. A plan D was evolving. We tried to push ourselves further. Finally, we decided that we should stop at a dhaba (locally known as line hotels) and rest for the night. But when we did stop, there was hardly any more of the night left. It was 4:30 AM. We had tea as we got out of our gears. After tea, we lay down on the charpais; we didn’t bother to ask the guy in the dhaba whether it was okay to sleep there. We assumed that it was fine; there wasn’t any other option either.

 Power nap at a line hotel…

I woke up suddenly. There was the road in front of me, across the road a vast field and the sun was rising above the horizon. Perhaps, one of the best scenes I woke up to in my life so far. It was around 6 AM. I woke up the others as well. We had to get going. This was supposed to be a power nap.

There was an old man in the dhaba. He was half blind. He too had been sleeping on one of the charpais. Two kids, perhaps the grandchildren of this man, were playing there. In fact, it was their chattering that woke me up. The boy was a naughty little one. He kept pestering the old man. A man came there on his bike. He had a chat with the old man. As he was leaving, the little boy wanted to go along with him. The old man grabbed him off the bike and put him on a charpai. The other guy escaped with his bike. The boy started throwing a tantrum. He snatched the old man’s towel and dragged it on the ground. Revenge it was. The poor old man had a tough time chasing the little one. This another man, apparently the father of the naughty boy and the son of the old man, came and scolded the kid. It felt odd, to just sit and watch those tender moments of a family, in an unknown town in a faraway place.

 The wake up frame…

We asked for tea, which never came. After about 20 minutes of waiting, we got a feeling that it was a signal for us to leave the place. (We do not know exactly why the tea didn’t come.) They didn’t charge us for the charpais, which was very strange as well. Nevertheless, we are indebted to that family for those two hours of much needed rest.

We left the place at 6:30 AM. The bad roads continued. The villages were waking up to the day. It got busier with every passing kilometer. Soon we reached another highway and thankfully the roads were good from then on. We stopped at a highway restaurant for breakfast. My palms were clammy and there was a layer of ‘dust and sweat mixture’ on my face. We had another 250 kilometers to Siliguri.

Most of the ride from breakfast to Siliguri was on auto-pilot mode. It is that mode in which a 100 different things keep going on in your head, but at the same time your sub-conscious mind is alert on the road. And then there are those moments when you are shaken awake from your day dream – like when I was over taking a lorry and there was a portion of a banana tree lying on the road and my mind couldn’t decide whether to ride over it or to evade it and we eventually rode over it and my back tire made some zig zag movements right in front of the lorry and I almost thought I had made it to the newspaper.

When the palm skin started peeling off after four days of ride…

It was a very hot day and we were very exhausted. Mahesh and I were feeling sleepy as well. We booked an OYO room in Siliguri, as we stopped for a drinks break.

At around 2:30 PM, we reached the hotel. This time OYO didn’t disappoint us. We got our rooms there. Almost 20 hours had gone by since we started our ride from Kolkata, of which around 17 were spent on the road. It was not an achievement. It was out of helplessness.

Nevertheless, we and the little creatures in our heads were very excited. We would soon be saying goodbye to the plains and embracing the mountains. Our two-year old dream was just another 120 kilometers away, high up in the mountains!  

(to be continued…)

Chapter 7_A Roller-Coaster Ride

Chapter 7

A Roller-Coaster Ride

Our hero from the last chapter, Khan, had been an amazingly cool guy so far. I had even wondered how one could be so calm and composed in the midst of all these confusions – forgetting to bring the documents, couriering it to a random hotel, trying to convince the others to go ahead with the original plan and so on. However, this time, along with the money he lost his cool as well. He was almost in tears. We tried to pacify him. We made him to contact his bank and block his account. He then rang up his uncle, who is a police officer in Kerala, and sought his help. His uncle suggested that we lodge a complaint with the local police. However, he said that the chances of getting the money back was very bleak. I rang up Sandeep ettan, my senior in college and currently an assistant manager in Federal Bank, and narrated the events to him. It surprised him as well that this guy had managed to loot our money even without the UPI PIN. Apparently, this was a new development in the ‘bank fraud’ sector! Sandeep ettan gave us a little hope when he said that it is possible that the bank would give us the money back (even though they may not be able to recover it from the other guy), as we hadn’t shared the password with him.

In a later conversation with Sandeep ettan, I had shared my concern of how we, despite our schooling and exposure to the digital world, had easily fallen into such a trap and how people who may not have had such an exposure were even more vulnerable. However, his response was thought provoking – “the irony is that, they are the least affected; they are extra careful, because they know that they could be pulled into trouble.” He had a point there.

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Out of Curiosity…

Fake Customer Care Executives: It is quite natural that we all search on Google for ‘customer care numbers’ of various services (be it Blue Dart, Tez, Zomato, Airtel or EPFO). Beware! There are scamsters waiting for you out there. Of late, there have been several cases where fake customer care executives elicited information such as bank account details, debit/credit card numbers, UPI IDs and passwords etc. on the pretext of support and initiating refunds. Read more…

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Sensing that something had gone wrong, the taxi drivers came towards us. We narrated the whole story to them. All they could do was sympathize with us. They gave us the directions to the nearest police station. We gave them a small gift as a token of gratitude for accommodating us and giving us company. We then headed towards the police station. Of all places in the world, we had a tough time finding the police station. After umpty number of re-routings, we finally reached ‘Hare Street’ police station. It was located a little away from the main road, on a small street. We parked our bikes on the main road itself; Khan and I went to the station. It was a red coloured building and was air-conditioned. Four police officers were seated behind a table in the first room. Each of them, heard out the petitioners, one at a time. We waited for our turn, which came after about 20 minutes. The officer who heard our story wasn’t surprised at all about it. Apparently, many such ‘bank fraud’ cases were reported every other day. He asked us to submit a written complaint. We came out of the station. There were a couple of road side shops there. We got a few A4 sheets, but the shops didn’t have pens. Of course, it was bound to be so. Inside my head, a video from a couple of days back was retrieved and played again. In that flashback video, I could see the past me packing my bag on the day before the trip. I could also see me giving a lecture to Mahesh on why it is essential to carry a pen and notebook on a trip. And now, we had a practical example here. I hadn’t brought the pen with me though! We borrowed a pen from a stranger and wrote the complaint.

 When we took shelter in the street shops… (Chapter 6)

Thanks to all those letter writing exercises from school, we didn’t have much of a difficulty in writing the complaint. Khan, quite a tall guy, was half bent as he kept the sheet on the seat of a scooter and wrote the complaint. “Kolkata, I’ll never forget our first meeting”, my mind said within. But the very same mind then quoted Mahesham – “road trips are like this”; what’s in it without such roller-coaster rides!

Again we had to wait for our turn to submit the complaint. Meanwhile, I observed the other people in the station. All of them had a long face, like Khan. The atmosphere was filled with grievances. I walked out of the room. A police jeep arrived. The officer parked the vehicle in front of the station, on the small lane itself. Now there was hardly any space for another four-wheeler to pass by. Soon a car came that way; the lady in it started yelling at the officer. Unlike the south police, he didn’t swear back. He moved the vehicle to the adjacent street and allowed the lady to pass by. However, after that he brought the vehicle back to its old position itself and blocked the entrance to the lane from both the ends with barricades. Moral of the story: you don’t mess with the police, be it the south or the north.

Another interesting thing about Kolkata is the way people park their vehicles.  Not even a centimeter is wasted, to the extent that all vehicles kiss each other – a light touch, soft enough to not leave a mark. “Skill, pure skill,” an astonished Mahesh had remarked.

Kolkata traffic…

If you are able to recall your school days, you might remember that your compositions (including letters) wouldn’t be approved by the teacher in your first attempt. Some changes had to be made – always. Even that is done intentionally, I assume – to prepare you for life. Yes, the police officer asked us to rewrite the letter with a few changes. Another stranger, another pen, another letter.

It was 5:30 PM by the time the letter was submitted. Our prayers were answered when the officer didn’t ask us to rewrite the letter a third time.

We were unanimous in our decision to leave Kolkata as soon as possible. We decided that we should keep ‘Dumka’ as our target and ride for as long as possible, at least till 10 PM. After tea, we took the alternate highway as suggested by the traffic police whom we met near Howrah Bridge. In about 70 kilometers, we had to take another highway. The roads were good, but as we progressed on the second highway, it became deserted. It was a narrow, single lane road and there were not many people or buildings out there. Once in a while, there would be a signboard which read ‘this is a highway’. My mind would reply, “thanks for the reaffirmation!” Our stomachs started murmuring; however, we couldn’t find any restaurants on the way. I started to panic after a while. It was 11 by the time we found a small restaurant in a little town on the way. The tawa roti and channa masala were too good; just that we had to gobble it up as the guys there were in a hurry to close the shop.

Adios Kolkata!

Outside the shop, we met a guy who enquired about our trip. Like the traffic policeman in Kolkata, he too was planning a trip to Kerala. He then told us that it would take us just another hour to reach Dumka. We had to cross a dam and a forest stretch before we reached Dumka. He warned us not to stop our vehicles in the forest area. I could already feel the rhythm of my heartbeat.

We crossed the dam. We were the only creatures on the road, besides the frogs that crossed it every now and then. We were almost done with the forest stretch as well, when suddenly, at a distance, we saw a jeep parked in the middle of the road. There were three men waiting for us, with guns in their hands.

(to be continued…)