When leaving a hotel in most of urban India, you find yourself deeply inhaling just before stepping out of the door. This is, presumably, your body and mind getting itself prepared for the onslaught on the senses. Because, WHAM, everything hits you at once-
BEEP, squark, brrrmmm, BEEP, woofgrrrr, sizzle, ShOUt, sweep, BANG, wake me up before you go-go, ShOUt BaCK, drrrrrrrrr, bleurghh, moooo, BEEP, BEEP, doink, PHLEGM, Prrrp, DISTORTED MuSiC, dzzzzzz, dzzzzzz, BEEEEEP, whoomph, brrrmm, on the ears.
Burning oil, shit, deep frying pakora, petrol, stagnant piss, incredible spices, rancid sweat, bubbling chai, vomit, George Michael, festering drains, smoking incense, hot engines, gas burners, fermenting bins, on the nose.
And all of the above plus more on the eyes.
And despite Darjeeling being one of the more civilised cities in India, things are still the same. Like you exit from your little safety bubble of a hotel into this crazy other world in which you need to hold on tight to your sanity, otherwise it may very well be lost and you will find yourself sucked into the chaos, becoming just another noise maker in the whole theatrical production - 'INDIA!', the stage show. In which you will play 'shouty beepy taxi driver 23'. It's a small role, but just as important as 'nice beardy Jalebi fryer', and 'inconveniently placed turding cow'.
That is how day 13 began, and it continued as a day of silly silly bureaucracy, wasted time and a feeling of being ready to move on.
We were planning to head to Sikkim. Sikkim is a state of India, North of Darjeeling. It borders Nepal, China (Tibet) and Bhutan, and is a little nubbin sticking out from the top of West Bengal. It is often described as being thumb shaped -
Wow, i was a nonbeliever, but having just made that to prove it is not thumb shaped, it turns out it actually is.
…..And it is a restricted area. Meaning you need a buggering form to enter (NB, not a form that permits you to bugger). The reasons for visiting were those of tea, mountains and serenity. As it turned out, only 1 of those actually came true.
To obtain this buggering form, you have to go to the foreigners registration office, wait, fill in a form, wait, stamp form, wait, get told to go to the permit office between the hours of 12.30 and 12.33 with 2 passport photos, your form, and your passport, get 2 passport photos made, hike to permit office....
wait, wait, wait, present form, wait....
...get passport signed and stamped, wait, receive back buggering form, get told to return to foreigners registration office, with passport and form, hike back to reg. office, wait, wait, wait, wait and get form finally stamped, with a begrudging, untrusting look on the stampers face. Fin.
The funny thing is that even though they tell you to get your photos done, the registration office and the permit office don't communicate, so the reg. office doesn't know that the permit office no longer needs the photos, and the permit office thinks that it's the reg. office that uses the photos, even though they don't. Either that, or they have a nice little thing going with the passport photo people...
It is amazing that everything still runs. During the whole form escapade, we saw maybe 30-40 people in various offices. The total number of people actually doing ANYTHING? - 2. And even then, it was with not much enthusiasm, gusto nor commitment. And my god, the piles of paper. Cartoony office piles, teetering, dusty and age stained. And drawers upon little drawers containing god knows what. Bloody brilliant!
So, with Sikkim trip on the schedule for the next few days, we tidied up our Darjeeling stay. Bought some tea (we were now rocking some 30 kilos) and 3 fabulous old pre-Raj coins (1850's), dined, said our goodbyes to various people we had met, played some poker, and went to bed early with the plan of catching the first jeep to Jorethang in the morning, via the Singtom Tea Estate.
For those stumbling across this rambling nonsense for tourist information reasons, please note, that however lengthy and tortuous the form obtaining is, it is worth it. And don't bother getting photos done, unless you want them as little gifts for strangers that take a liking to you.
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