Darjeeling, in the Himalayas
April, 2014
Darjeeling is alive with the constant noise of blaring car horns which is softened only by the melodic sounds of the Muslim call to prayer five times a day. Locals and a few tourists weave together, in and out of cars and motorbikes, with only a sliver of street to walk on and no sidewalks. The juxtaposition of poverty and luxury is everywhere: women and children filling dirty plastic buckets with water from public wells and sewage running between shacks, and then up high near Observatory Hill, lie the elegant heritage hotels with white table linens, stuffed wing back chairs, pianos, game tables with marble chess sets and attentive waiters serving high tea. For me, the grungy charm of Darjeeling is somehow infused with a strong spiritual energy emanating perhaps, from the many Buddhist monasteries and the Tibetan refugees who make their home in these mountains. Or maybe the mountain air just makes me high. But there is something very special here.
People look very different from Southern Indians, many are Nepalese and some look Chinese or Mongolian. They are friendly and more relaxed than the city-dwellers of Bangalore. Living up here in the mountains above 7000 feet takes a certain stamina and a hearty personality. The winters are long and cold, the rains come down hard and wash away the roads damaging the fragile huts and houses that are built up like Tinker Toys along the side of the mountain. I have never seen anything like this. It's simply magnificent. This is the view from our hotel.
Monday, 14,
Our first stop in Darjeeling was the Tibetan Self Help Center and Orphanage. Established in 1959 to house Tibetan refugees fleeing the Chinese, it now provides shelter for older Tibetans, an orphanage, school, hospital and a monastery. There is a work room where women roll up balls of wool of all colors that they have dyed using natural colors from plants - purple, gray, blue, green, yellow, read...all lined up in musty boxes for sale. We visited the weaving room where women sit on the floor weaving traditional Tibetan rugs with old wooden hand looms. The colorful carpets tell stories with flowers and symbols honoring the Tibetan culture. Our guide said that the women are grateful to be there because they can practice their faith freely, but their faces look worn and tired. The walls are covered with pictures of the Dali Lama and "Free Tibet" bumper stickers and posters. Their story is heartbreaking, tragic, cruel.
Claudia played "patty cake" with one of the orphan girls.
Tuesday, 15,
We visited the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, founded by Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, in 1954. The legendary Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay was the first Director of Field Training for the Institute's classes in mountaineering. Norgay's grave and the larger-than-life statue of him stands at the entrance to the Institute. The museum is filled with climbing gear from the earliest days, including the primitive-looking wool clothing and old leather gear used by Norgay and Edmund Hillary, the first men to summit Everest. On our way down we visited the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park, home to India's only Siberian tigers, and other endangered species such as the Red Panda and the Tibetan Wolf. We watched a lonely looking Snow Leopard pacing back and forth in his cage.
After our lunch at Little Tibet Boutique Hotel we went to a trekking store to rent sleeping bags and down coats, and we bought gloves and long underwear to prepare for our trek. We all knew it would be very cold in the late afternoon and evening in the mountains. Back at our hotel, Adam played guitar with one of the waiters and taught him some Jason Mraz songs. Then we prepared for Passover dinner. Adam worked alongside the kitchen staff and taught them how to make charosset - chopping apples and adding cinnamon, red wine, cashews and honey. They were excited to learn a recipe from an enthusiastic American teenager.
We carried a huge box of Matzoh imported from Israel that we got from the Chabad Rabbi in Bangalore, and our guide found some fine Califorian and Chilean wine. Claudia made the sedar plate with a shank bone (we got that from the Chabad Rabbi, and we roasted and froze it and packed it in our luggage), an egg, parsley, ginger for horseradish, and charosset. Adam and Claudia set the table with the matzoh plate and candles and our guests arrived - three Americans - a Fulbright professor from CA and a husband and wife from Maine named David and Shira. We invited our guide, Sanjeev, and the hotel manager to join our sedar.
Wednesday, 16,
Claudia decided that she didn't want to go on the trek - the guide told us it was going to be very very cold and it's a long uphill hike and her gut instinct was to stay behind. Turns out it was a wise choice. Noah and Adam took off early in the morning and when they called that night they said it was FREEZING and the trek was very difficult. Claudia and I spent the day at the elegant Elgin Hotel where she played the piano, we had a gourmet lunch, walked around the grounds and Claudia got a manicure and I got a massage. In the late afternoon we headed back to our hotel and ordered room service and watched TV...while the boys were freezing up in the mountains.
At the Elgin, under the gazebo, sunlight streams in and the air is clear. Claudia played with two huge Alaskan Samoyed dogs in the front yard. She found her friends. The gazebo is surrounded by small manicured gardens with palm trees, daisies, marigolds and azaleas - purple, yellow, bright orange, blue...and I can hear birdsong everywhere. It is an oasis separating us from the noise and chaos of Darjeeling - yet we are just outside the main Mall Road and Ghandi Road. Claudia and I are staying one block down the street at the Summit Yashshree suites and spas, but we are making the Elgin our home during the day.
Thursday, 17,
April, 2014
We have flown across the Indian continent - from Bangalore in Southern India through Calcutta, to Bagadora in the far northern Himalayan Mountains. We made the treacherous drive from the airport on windy one-lane dirt roads with no guard rails on the cliffs' edge, to Darjeeling, a former British Hill Station founded in 1839 known as the "Queen of the Hills." At 7000 feet above sea level, the city is built up on hillsides with terraces and steep cliffs that hold precariously placed small tin shacks, crumbling buildings and a crowded bazaar. Electrical wires hang like tree limbs, across streets, alleys and the front of buildings.
On a rare clear morning if you are very lucky you can see a magnificent snow-covered mountain range named Kanchenjunga, whose five peaks are called the "Five Treasures of the Snow," in Tibetan. The third highest peak in the world (28,166 feet and Everest is 29,028 feet), Kanchenjunga is just behind the clouds in this photo but impossible to capture with my camera. We were lucky to see her on our second morning in Darjeeling - many people spend weeks here and don't have the chance to see it because of the heavy fog that hangs over the valley. We were blessed. It is simply magestic, powerful, breathtaking, unforgettable.
Darjeeling is alive with the constant noise of blaring car horns which is softened only by the melodic sounds of the Muslim call to prayer five times a day. Locals and a few tourists weave together, in and out of cars and motorbikes, with only a sliver of street to walk on and no sidewalks. The juxtaposition of poverty and luxury is everywhere: women and children filling dirty plastic buckets with water from public wells and sewage running between shacks, and then up high near Observatory Hill, lie the elegant heritage hotels with white table linens, stuffed wing back chairs, pianos, game tables with marble chess sets and attentive waiters serving high tea. For me, the grungy charm of Darjeeling is somehow infused with a strong spiritual energy emanating perhaps, from the many Buddhist monasteries and the Tibetan refugees who make their home in these mountains. Or maybe the mountain air just makes me high. But there is something very special here.
People look very different from Southern Indians, many are Nepalese and some look Chinese or Mongolian. They are friendly and more relaxed than the city-dwellers of Bangalore. Living up here in the mountains above 7000 feet takes a certain stamina and a hearty personality. The winters are long and cold, the rains come down hard and wash away the roads damaging the fragile huts and houses that are built up like Tinker Toys along the side of the mountain. I have never seen anything like this. It's simply magnificent. This is the view from our hotel.
Here's the story of our journey....
Sunday, April 13,
Our trekking guide, Sanjeev, comes from a Tibetan family and grew up in Darjeeling to become an experienced guide with a sparkle in his eye. He is in his early 30's and has a three month old daughter and a wife at home in the countryside outside of Darjeeling. Sanjeev met us at the airport and we began our three hour drive up the mountain to the village of Kuresong, high in the Himalayas where houses, hotels and huts are built up around the surrounding hillsides and small brush fires burn everywhere, sending plumes of black smoke up into the sky.
We stayed at Cochrane Palace on Pankhabari Road Fatakdara, a Heritage Hotel filled with old books, hiking gear, paintings from the British era, with rooms that are named after famous mountaineers. We drank hot Darjeeling milk tea with our delicious North Indian meal and made plans for our upcoming trek with Sanjeev. He warned us that it would likely be very cold. We would need down coats, hats and gloves...That's not what I read on weather.com... I opened our window at bedtime to breathe in the clean, crisp mountain air and a gust of wind blew the window back into my face. The mountains were speaking.
The next morning Adam made friends with the policeman in charge of the famous Darjeeling Himalayan Railway known as the Toy Train. Built by the British and opened in 1881, it was a bold engineering feat to establish a rail link across this tightly twisting terrain. The train brought the priviledged Brits seeking relief from the Delhi heat up to the magnificent Himalayan Hill Stations. It still runs on its original tracks that were built at a two foot gauge to enable the line to traverse the terrain. We boarded the train for our four mile descent down to Darjeeling and stopped at the Ghoom station, the highest point reached by the railway at 7,407 feet.
Monday, 14,
Our first stop in Darjeeling was the Tibetan Self Help Center and Orphanage. Established in 1959 to house Tibetan refugees fleeing the Chinese, it now provides shelter for older Tibetans, an orphanage, school, hospital and a monastery. There is a work room where women roll up balls of wool of all colors that they have dyed using natural colors from plants - purple, gray, blue, green, yellow, read...all lined up in musty boxes for sale. We visited the weaving room where women sit on the floor weaving traditional Tibetan rugs with old wooden hand looms. The colorful carpets tell stories with flowers and symbols honoring the Tibetan culture. Our guide said that the women are grateful to be there because they can practice their faith freely, but their faces look worn and tired. The walls are covered with pictures of the Dali Lama and "Free Tibet" bumper stickers and posters. Their story is heartbreaking, tragic, cruel.
Claudia asked this man about his story of fleeing Tibet. He said he was forced to leave as a seven year old child with his parents and since then, they have never been able to contact their family members back home. He has not seen his grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, they are lost forever. He said that if he tried to contact them the Chinese government would punish and maybe murder them, for talking to family members outside of China, who are practicing a forbidden religion. The man told Claudia he was grateful to be in the refugee center but his life in Darjeeling, at this state run workshop, showroom and orphanage is not home.
His eyes lit up, his voice got louder, and he was talking faster, and soon tourists gathered around while Claudia asked more questions. He was passionate about his dream of a free and independent Tibet and said the Tibetan people are strong and while the Chinese tried to kill them all, they have survived, and their leader, the Dalai Lama, is powerful and friendly with all the world leaders. "He writes books and speaks all over the world - sharing his wisdom and the story of the Tibetan people. We will survive," he said, with a sadness in his eyes. "Tell the world our story, please." Then he went back to adding up the prices of the balls of yarn that tourists had lined up to purchase. I bought many gifts in the shop - Tibetan flags, a singing prayer bowl, Buddha statues, and gifts for my sisters and friends and family. I wanted to buy everything to support them. As a Jewish person, I feel especially connected to their story and to all the Tibetan refugees scattered in their own diaspora around the world.
Claudia played "patty cake" with one of the orphan girls.
Tuesday, 15,
We visited the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, founded by Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, in 1954. The legendary Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay was the first Director of Field Training for the Institute's classes in mountaineering. Norgay's grave and the larger-than-life statue of him stands at the entrance to the Institute. The museum is filled with climbing gear from the earliest days, including the primitive-looking wool clothing and old leather gear used by Norgay and Edmund Hillary, the first men to summit Everest. On our way down we visited the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park, home to India's only Siberian tigers, and other endangered species such as the Red Panda and the Tibetan Wolf. We watched a lonely looking Snow Leopard pacing back and forth in his cage.
After our lunch at Little Tibet Boutique Hotel we went to a trekking store to rent sleeping bags and down coats, and we bought gloves and long underwear to prepare for our trek. We all knew it would be very cold in the late afternoon and evening in the mountains. Back at our hotel, Adam played guitar with one of the waiters and taught him some Jason Mraz songs. Then we prepared for Passover dinner. Adam worked alongside the kitchen staff and taught them how to make charosset - chopping apples and adding cinnamon, red wine, cashews and honey. They were excited to learn a recipe from an enthusiastic American teenager.
We carried a huge box of Matzoh imported from Israel that we got from the Chabad Rabbi in Bangalore, and our guide found some fine Califorian and Chilean wine. Claudia made the sedar plate with a shank bone (we got that from the Chabad Rabbi, and we roasted and froze it and packed it in our luggage), an egg, parsley, ginger for horseradish, and charosset. Adam and Claudia set the table with the matzoh plate and candles and our guests arrived - three Americans - a Fulbright professor from CA and a husband and wife from Maine named David and Shira. We invited our guide, Sanjeev, and the hotel manager to join our sedar.
Adam designed and printed his own Hagaddah in Bangalore and brought copies for everyone, along with his Bar Mitzvah Talis. He led the service - without any help - and when we went around the table and shared what we were thankful for Sanjeev and the hotel manager both said they were grateful to learn about Judaism and share our traditions. Noah played the guitar and we danced around the table to Hava Nageela and other songs. It was a joyous dinner - and while we missed our family back home - it was such a gift to celebrate our traditions up in the Himalayan Mountains and to share them with other Jews and non-Jews. For me, it was a blessing to see my son, wearing his Talis and running the service. Claudia did a great job assisting her brother. Gave me chills...
Wednesday, 16,
Claudia decided that she didn't want to go on the trek - the guide told us it was going to be very very cold and it's a long uphill hike and her gut instinct was to stay behind. Turns out it was a wise choice. Noah and Adam took off early in the morning and when they called that night they said it was FREEZING and the trek was very difficult. Claudia and I spent the day at the elegant Elgin Hotel where she played the piano, we had a gourmet lunch, walked around the grounds and Claudia got a manicure and I got a massage. In the late afternoon we headed back to our hotel and ordered room service and watched TV...while the boys were freezing up in the mountains.
At the Elgin, under the gazebo, sunlight streams in and the air is clear. Claudia played with two huge Alaskan Samoyed dogs in the front yard. She found her friends. The gazebo is surrounded by small manicured gardens with palm trees, daisies, marigolds and azaleas - purple, yellow, bright orange, blue...and I can hear birdsong everywhere. It is an oasis separating us from the noise and chaos of Darjeeling - yet we are just outside the main Mall Road and Ghandi Road. Claudia and I are staying one block down the street at the Summit Yashshree suites and spas, but we are making the Elgin our home during the day.
Claudia and I set out on an early morning visit to the Ghoom Monastery. Built in the 1850's it is a small, colorful building with a huge Buddha sculpture, many prayerbooks, and framed photos of the Dalai Lama at different ages. A young monk unlocked the door for us and lit some of the oil lamps as Claudia and I quietly walked around the sacred space. We paid 100 rupees for the right to take a few photos and we gave a donation to the temple. It was powerful to be in that space. I could feel the energy.... We said a prayer for all our loved ones, especially Susan Kaplan and Maya and Aiden and for Evey. Then we sang the Shema prayer. Somehow I find myself singing the Shema in holy places - all over the world. It's my comfort prayer. My all around life prayer.
We drove back down the windy roads to our favorite place - the Elgin Hotel where Claudia played with the dogs and I did some writing. We met a nice couple, Roland (from Germany) and Kavita (from India) and they joined us for tea and cookies. We walked up together to the town square and Claudia bought a big yellow balloon which was quickly carried away by the strong wind - flying out over the Himalayas. She played with a jar of bubbles and chased flocks of pigeons.
Most of the stores were closed for Election Day and we were excited to see the world's largest democracy in action. Soldiers filled the streets and stood guard outside polling places. Voters emerged from the polls with their right pointer finger dipped in permanent ink as proof that they had voted. We got inside one of the voting centers and saw that the voter rolls had photos of every citizen. No hanging chads here!!!
We drove back down the windy roads to our favorite place - the Elgin Hotel where Claudia played with the dogs and I did some writing. We met a nice couple, Roland (from Germany) and Kavita (from India) and they joined us for tea and cookies. We walked up together to the town square and Claudia bought a big yellow balloon which was quickly carried away by the strong wind - flying out over the Himalayas. She played with a jar of bubbles and chased flocks of pigeons.
Most of the stores were closed for Election Day and we were excited to see the world's largest democracy in action. Soldiers filled the streets and stood guard outside polling places. Voters emerged from the polls with their right pointer finger dipped in permanent ink as proof that they had voted. We got inside one of the voting centers and saw that the voter rolls had photos of every citizen. No hanging chads here!!!
In the evening Claudia wrote in her poetry book and called Nana and read her every poem. It was so beautiful for me to lisen to my daughter proudly read her writing to my mother. And Nana was in heaven. The poems are very good - and the message sounds like it's coming from a wise, old soul, not a ten year old. Nana said she would share the poems with the members of the writing class that she teaches in Delray Beach. When we ended our Skype call with Nana Claudia told me she feld honored that her grandmother was going to use her poems in an adult writing class. She has been talking about this ever since...
Friday, April 18,
Friday, April 18,
Today we had a special visit from two Tibetan monks who are friends with one of my yoga teachers named Lama from Bangalore. They joined us for lunch at our hotel and told us how they both decided to become monks at the age of 13, and they described their daily lives - prayer at 5AM, studying, praying and teaching all day. They are both called Lopen - they are official monks and they are now teachers. Their big project is building a new monastery for their ten students in Darjeeling. They were very interested in learning about Judaism and they understood how we felt connected to the plight of the Tibetan people. Tonight is Shabbat and Claudia and I are headed back to the Elgin to light the candles and count our blessings...Shabat Shalom.
