Travel News August 2007

Top Travel Destinations

Tales from a Himalyan hill station

A rain-soaked Taj!

Tales from a Himalyan hill station
August 11, 2007

High on a hotel terrace in Darjeeling, an alarming noise pierced the Himalayan mists. One moment it sounded like a braying donkey, the next like a crow being strangled. Was it an animal? A bird? “No, no, sir,” said the hotel receptionist. “It is Doctor Sprigg of Kalimpong, tuning up his bagpipes.”

That afternoon, my wife, Clare, and I took a two-hour taxi ride down corkscrew roads to find this unexpected musician. “Reach in peace, not in pieces,” urged safe-driving signs. “Road is hilly. Don’t be silly.”

We knocked on the door of an isolated guesthouse and a man in his mid-seventies opened it: Dr Keith Sprigg, from Melton Mowbray, a Tibetologist retired from London University and a Kalimpong resident for 20 years. He had a bristling Elgarian moustache and was wearing his old Cambridge University blazer and Oakham School tie.

He had, it transpired, led expeditions into Nepal and was the last Westerner out of Tibet before the Chinese invasion. He poured brandies for us and a Cinzano for himself, reminisced about Darjeeling’s last British tea planter and the coronation of the King of Sikkim, and finally waved us off in the taxi.

That meeting – the first of many –was ten years ago, but its eccentricity is still par for the course in Kalimpong, an easygoing, endearingly ramshackle former British hill station about 1,200m (4,000ft) up in the mountains in the top right-hand corner of India.

On our most recent visit this year, as a break from the urgent bustle of Darjeeling, we found goats still wandering its main street. Boys played cricket with upturned chicken baskets for wickets. The shops were full of Buddhist prayer flags and Tibetan jewellery, reflecting the town’s fascinating position at the cultural and commercial crossroads of Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim.

For all its Cotswoldy Victorian church, it feels exotic, in a homely sort of way. There are three main reasons for visiting: the Buddhist monasteries, the walks, and the Himalayan Hotel, an oasis from the clatter and clutter of the town.

The Himalayan looks like a manse in the Scottish Highlands. It has a quiet, old-fashioned charm and is surrounded by pots of pink and white petunias, bamboo groves and banks of scarlet poinsettias. The hotel’s two modern blocks are cosy and comfortable, but its foursquare old block, with its oak ceilings and teak pillars, is the place for character. The bedrooms have log fires and pictures of doughty Tibetan yaks and even doughtier Tibetan women. At night, the watchman brings scalding hot-water bottles full enough to use as footballs. There’s porridge, poached eggs and toast and marmalade for breakfast (mulligatawny soup, roast chicken and rice pudding, as well as Indian food, for dinner).

And there’s “bed tea”, brought to the bedroom before breakfast. On our first morning, we wrap ourselves in shawls and take our tray out on to the broad veranda, where we watch the sun’s first rays pick out the pale blue peaks of Kanchenjunga, the world’s third-highest mountain. Suddenly the clouds part and it rears like a dazzling iceberg: 50 miles away, but unimaginably vast.

Some of the old frontier-town atmosphere still lingers at the Wednesday market, where farmers from surrounding hill tribes sell pyramids of cauliflowers, lemons and root ginger, posters of Hindu gods, live chickens, incense sticks, sacks of grain and bright red chillis. But the town has moved on during the past ten years. The market also sells travel clocks and fake designer trainers. The bazaars boast a mobile phone repair shop, Bob’s CD Parlour and Playnet World, one of a dozen cyber-cafés where saffron-robed monks surf the net and plug into chat-lines, their mobiles slung from their prayer beads.

Better, perhaps, to take a taxi to see the golden Buddhas at the Tharpa Choling Monastery, where, in a dungeon-dark, smoke-filled kitchen, we find an old man chopping spinach to make soup for the monks (“47 monks,” he volunteers, helpfully).

Across town, up the Upper Cart Road, clouds swirl around us at the hilltop Zong Dog Monastery. Hundreds of butter lamps flicker, venerable men with ponytails turn creaking prayer wheels, wind chimes play, a gong tolls in the mist. A few chanting monks and it could be Lost Horizon.

We walk back into town along a lane straddling a high, narrow ridge. With its half-timbered bungalows and its kitchen gardens of dahlias and geraniums, it suggests suburban England. Or, at any rate, suburban England with pumpkins drying on corrugated tin roofs and prayer flags fluttering from high bamboo poles.

Source: The Times

A rain-soaked Taj!
August 3, 2007

The monsoon has finally come calling on the Taj Mahal. Heavy rain has been bringing down the temperature steadily, much to the delight of tourists. The area around the Taj Mahal and Shah Jahan garden is lush green. Groups of foreign tourists were seen enjoying the cool breeze.

"The tourists had felt tortured and harassed by the long sultry and hot weather. But the sudden change in the weather promises a big turnout at the Taj Mahal," said a hopeful tourist guide, Aftab.

Next week Shah Jahan's annual Urs will be the major event, for which preparations are in full swing. "Learning from last year's experiences, the CISF (Central Industrial Security Force) has imposed some restrictions on movement of namazis for the Urs and on carrying of food items inside the premises," said an official.

The Urs of Ahmad Shah Bukhari and Mughal emperor Shah Jahan are to be held from Aug 7 to 11.

In Mathura and Vrindavan, pilgrims have started pouring in for the Hindola darshan and Sawan parikrama of Shiva temples. For a change the Yamuna is full of life again, with boats ferrying pilgrims across Mathura's Vishram Ghat.

Source: MSN India