Monday, January 17, 2011

Darjeeling

We left for Darjeeling around 9:30am on the 17th and we had more than ample time to reach Darjeeling for a lunch hosted by the local representatives at around 12:30pm and the meeting with locals had been setup for 2:00pm.
I think it was premature of us to hope that this will be on Schedule. We were about to reach Jorthang, which is about 30 minutes away from Darjeeling when we were met with a huge traffic Jam.
(TNT la looking ahead as we got stuck in a traffic Jam)

(Not much snow on the road but its India)

It seems that it snowed during the night and as you can see from the pictures, not really that much of snow. But a lot of smaller cars were not able to move as it was slipping on the ice and as such, we were stuck at this point for another 2 hours and the possibility of making it for lunch was impossible. We just hoped that we would be able to make it for the meeting with the locals.

We finally got through the small patch of icy road and when we got into Darjeeling, we were faced with another Traffic Jam and we made to the hall only at 2:30pm. It was amazing to see the Tibetans who were there inspite of the fact that they only had today to do their shopping as the strike starts from the very next day for another 8 days.

(TNT la in Darjeeling)


When TNT la spoke to residents, he saw some familiar faces and he was unable to stop himself from becoming emotional as I think he has a lot of fond memories of his time in Darjeeling.

Gen Taso of Dhasa ChuShi-Gang-Truk spoke about the integrity of TNT la and shared his feelings about the baseless rumours directed against TNT la and the enormous contributions made by TNT la. You can see the video below.

After an early Dinner hosted by the locals, we had to make a move for Sailagura as the strike would start again from the 18th. At the same time, we were worried about the strike in Silliguri to protest against the strike by the Gorkhaland. Thankfully, the strike had ended at 6pm in Silliguri, so when we reached Silliguri at 8pm, we had no problems. And once again we became guests at Dorjee la’s and we had to impose on his hospitality.