Siliguri and Sukhna

"Silly people go to Siliguri", was Durga's favorite statement throughout much of our unexpectedly-gotten train tickets from Kolkata to Siliguri.

This train journey was fabulous- the stuff we got to eat! Rabdi in earthen pots! Authentic mishti doi, not the ultra sweet ones you get from the store! Cups and cups of other Bengali sweets! Kids and hubby slept the journey away in various upper berths, but I sat by the window and sampled all the ware that came through the train- tea, chat, sweets, food. Thank you, God, for my immunity and my stomach :)

You would not believe the amount of flooding in that area.... I mean, we experienced rain-swollen rivers in Odisha and AP, but this, in the heart of the Gangetic plains, was something else.
The whole place was wet, and a few feet underwater. There were miles and miles of land just completely submerged. It explained many things at once: why childhood diarrheal infections are so prevalent in this part of the country, why drowning is a common hazard for young kids, why people tend to be so fatalistic....
I mean, if my house and land and everything surrounding me was submerged for multiple months in a year, I would be pretty depressed and pessimistic and utterly uncaring of most things, I think.

We reached Siliguri 12 hours later. Ugly place, nothing much to recommend the city itself except for its proximity to better places.
But they have electric autos (called Tumtums), which are actually motorcycles with a large sitting space behind. Very nice vehicles- completely quiet, without spewing all the crap that autos usually spew.

About 45min from Siliguri is a place called Sukhna. The Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary begins here and goes on for many miles north, towards Darjeeling. While the MWS itself was closed because of heavy rains, we got to Sukhna by a Tumtum and spent hours in the most pleasant way.

First, we saw these very odd-looking trees: two trees had lifted up, somehow, and there was a little space between the roots, almost like a tiny hut. Was enchanting.

These trees and their environs were home to creatures like this spider (can you spot it? It's dangling from the top, in the sky):

And this leech:

And this cool-looking nest

Awesome and colorful dragonflies like this one:

Epiphytes like these:

 And much more.

There was a small stream, maybe a distributary of the Mahananda, but very clean. The kids spent hours playing here

For lunch, we walked to the nearby village and ate veg Thukpa, which tasted as amazing as it looks:

And while eating, we saw the Darjeeling toy train!

Apparently it goes from Siliguri to Darjeeling via Sukhna. We would have loved to take that trip, but we had already made bookings on the steam toy train (this was diesel) from Darjeeling to Ghoom. So we satisfied ourselves by waving at the passengers and looking forward to our trip on the little train the next day.

We spotted many birds, including:

The Alexandrine parakeet, which is quite common by cities and towns near the Himalayas (we had spotted them last year in Dharamshala, in the Western Himalayas, around the same time of the year)

https://lafeber.com/pet-birds/species/alexandrine-parrot/

The greater yellow nape woodpecker

Courtesy: Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_yellownape

The gold-fronted leafbird

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4eT6kkHG4o

Southern grey shrike

http://www.tatzpit.com/Site/en/pages/inPage.asp?catID=9&subID=333&subsubID=527

The mynas in this region are not the usual brown and orange, but a black and white version called the Pied myna

The barbets too are not the usual barbets, but like the one below, called the blue throated barbet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-throated_barbet

Changeable hawk-eagle, a ginormous bird that swooped overhead 

https://ebird.org/species/chahae1Add caption

River lapwing: we see red lapwings frequently in Chikballapur. This was the first time we were seeing its river- phile cousin

By Francesco Veronesi from Italy - River Lapwing - Corbett NP - India__1321, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39088860

Sukhna was in some ways the prototype of the landscape we would see in parts of Sikkim: gurgling streams, thick, broad-leaved forests, many glades surrounding water-bodies. 

The difference is that Sukhna has wild elephants, which are sometimes quite dangerous.

The surprising beauty of small Indian cities

Who ever thinks of going to vacation in places like Vijayawada or Bhubaneswar? Both these cities, by whatever quirk of fate, are doomed to take second place to their more famous sisters: Visakhapatnam and Puri, respectively.

We ended up in these cities only because they were the most convenient in terms of time and distance for us to break journey on the way to Kolkata (which itself was only on our radar because of its central importance in getting to Sikkim).

Much to our surprise we ended up enjoying and learning quite a lot about both the cities.

Vijayawada- in my mind, Vjw is now inextricably linked with the Krishna. Ani had recently read about the Krishna in his social sciences reader while studying about the Eastern Ghats. We had both gazed at a map to figure out where the river has its source and its mouth... However this was in a geographical map with no mention of cities. Our conversation literally went like, "ok, so it starts somewhere in the middle of this peninsula here, and goes pretty much straight to the right and then starts to dip down and meets the sea about an inch from the nose"
Until I opened up a political map and stared at it for a while, after reaching Vjw, I didn't realise that this city was on the banks of that river.
The Krishna was, quite simply, thrilling to watch. The recent rains had swelled the river to induce the powers that be to release water from the barrage and the resulting flow was thunderous and awe-inspiring.

There are also caves in Vjw. These were started in the 6th or 7th century AD, in use till the 16th century and then abandoned.

Puddles of water collected in small depressions in the rock formed excellent models for teaching the life cycle of mosquitoes.

We thought we would drop by a Durga temple on the way back because it looked nice from a distance. Little did we know that it was one of the most famous temples of that region and, it being the time of Durga Puja, was crammed with people. This temple has adopted the Tirupati model in that there are tickets, endless lines based on how much your ticket costs to view the diety from various angles, tickets for Prasad collection and even tickets for the head shaving business.

Hapless saps that we were, we got into some random line, agreed to some bossy woman who wanted us to buy Rs. 300 tickets, then many many minutes later,realised we were in the wrong line, fought our way back to the beginning of the line, told the security personnel there that we no longer wanted to see any goddess and wanted to leave. Upon which, one of the guards took pity on us, let us in through a side gate and we were among the first to enter the altar and see the goddess. We got a piece of coconut for our troubles and that thrilled Durga no end who then spent many happy minutes shredding coconut chips with her fingernails and teeth. Truly, we are indeed descended from monkeys... Cute ones, but monkeys nonetheless.

Before I move to our adventures in Bhubaneswar, I just make special mention of a place called Sarovar Mess in Vjw- positively the best food I've eaten in a long time. It's very no-frills. It looks like someone converted my Ajji's Chidambaram house in its original avatar into a hotel- it's got that early 1900s look to it, from its wall colours to the grills on the windows to the verandah outside. It also serves food like I think my Ajji might have cooked- amazing! RS. 80 for a full meal per person,

Bhubaneswar- truly mind-boggling that this is the capital city of any place. It's got open drains, a sleepy demeanor and an unmistakable sense that everything in it is because the government has forced it to take it.
However our hotel Vintage Villa had some excellent rooms and great food.

Bhub has a couple of rivers: Daya and Mahanadi. Daya is less-known now, but many centuries ago, by its peaceful and green banks, was the place where Ashoka finally put down his weapons, regretted the bloodshed he had caused and then converted to Buddhism.




Today, that spot is memorialized by a Shanti Stupa, a Buddhist structure built by the Japanese sometime in the 70s in order to re-stimulate Buddhism in India!


 Bhub has a famous temple called Lingaraj, but contrary to its name, doesn't actually have a Shiva in it. It's supposed to be a Hari-Hara temple, in that from the center of the Shivalinga, emerges some sort of a symbol related to Vishnu, but I forget which symbol.

Lingaraj temple has a dozen priests who grab ahold of one as soon as one enters the temple premises and cannot be shaken off. They give you a long tour of the temple filled with many many facts (mostly in comparison to Jagannath Puri... all their statements are like: Puri bhagwan is the younger brother, our Lingaraj is the older brother; the Puri temple was built in the 13th century; out temple was built in the 11th century.... and so on and on and on, endlessly).

Being the saps we are, we were inveigled into purchasing a quarter kg of temple prasadam which we then carted around with us for the rest of our journey. In some ways, it was a good thing: it served as a quick source of munchies when the kids were hungry or when any of us wanted a late night snack.

Most surprisingly, an unplanned visit to the IRCTC website some time during the temple visit showed that there were 3 tatkal tickets available for the next day from Kolkata to Siliguri and in a truly exemplary fashion of rapid clicking, we managed to bag those tickets.

We got in time to Kolk for that train by taking an overnight bus from Bhub to Kolkata, which had unexpectedly broad sleeping berths, and thus, despite only getting 3 berths for the four of us, we felt quite refreshed to tackle the penultimate phase of our journey.

Goodbye Bhub! Goodby Vjw! You are both surprisingly interesting and beautiful. I would have never ever visited you as a holiday destination, so I'm glad I got to visit you by accident.

On our way to Sikkim

Would anyone have thought, even 10-15 years ago, that it is possible to go to a place as far as Sikkim from Bangalore by bus?
No way, right?
Yet, starting tonight, that's what we intrepid four are doing.
We tried train tickets- the normal way, the Tatkal way and the premium Tatkal way. Unfortunately, none of that worked out. Instead of giving up, we are now splitting our journey into multiple bus rides- Blore to Vijayawada by overnight sleeper bus, spend a day in Vjw. Then Vjw to Bhubaneswar by overnight sitting bus, then spend a day in Bbn (probably recovering from the overnight sitting journey). Then in Bbn we have two options: either take a short train to Siliguri or two more buses, first to Kolkata and then to Siliguri.
We have tried the first for now (tickets are still waitlisted, no confirmations yet), figuring that worse come to worst, we can always book bus tickets after scoping the scene at Bbn.

Booking Indian train tickets, I'm realising, really teach one the meaning of fate, timing, and risk tolerance.


I'm not even going to start with Tatkal, other than to say that we were miserably beat by the system. But let's think about waitlisted tickets for a second.

For instance, if one happens to get a waitlisted ticket, used to be, when I was younger, that one went a bit early to the station and watched one's father stand in various lines trying to get tickets before the charts would be prepared. Nowadays, you can cancel your ticket... But if you leave it too late, you risk losing a significant sum of money in cancellation charges. Or you play a game of chance: if your ticket is still waitlisted by the time of charting, you get nearly your full amount back. If even one happens to be confirmed, you have to then cancel the ticket, which means you forfeit that entire amount for that ticket. If your requested berths happened to be AC 2tier, like ours was, then you are talking something like 3-5k per ticket (depending on the train)

Today, we played for high skates (almost 11k) with the Indian railway system: at the time of chart preparation, we were at WL1-4. And we ended up getting the amount back. Phew!

Good start to the holiday. We are in a bus to Vjw now, enjoying the (slightly dubious) comforts of an upper berth sleeper.


Sikkim, we are coming!

Tatkal

Booking tatkal tickets is like a game in who-can-click-the-fastest.
Yesterday, I was too slow.

Today, I'm geared up and ready. Really hoping it works out and that there are no hidden rules that I have not yet figured out.

16 minutes to go for the window to open online.....

Brain block

Apparently I can only blog when I'm slightly sick, very stressed.

Any of the other times, when I'm trying to make myself write, nothing comes out... it's utter mental constipation. Stress me out a bit, then some diarrhea happens (mental, I mean. Apologies for the various potty-metaphors)

Aaarrggh

Can there be another word in English that is abused more than "disruptive"?

In the startup world, disruptive is used to describe EVERYthing.

Give the poor over-used word a break, people. Why not try something a bit less... well... destructive-sounding?

Attempts at stillness

I've never been able to meditate. All the stuff about letting go, concentrating on your breathing, imagining a dark pool into which you dive: have tried multiple times before, but meditation is like exercise: the more you do it, the easier it becomes. And like every exercise I have ever tried, I haven't kept it up.

I recently flipped through some pages of a book called A Million Thoughts by Om Swami. What I liked was a section where he says, first learn to sit still, without moving a muscle- not even to swallow your own saliva when it pools at the back of your throat.

I thought this would be a good way to start. It sounded less like meditation and more like an exercise in willpower- which I do love to challenge. Om Swami had also described the way in which to sit- upright posture, with back rest initially, hands not on the laps, but in the center, maybe one on top of another, mouth slightly relaxed, tongue resting against the edges of the teeth, with a slight smile on the face.

So, a couple of days ago, I sat on the floor of the study room, after the house emptied of kids and husband. And I tried stillness.

It was remarkably difficult. Every possible part of my skin that could itch itched. My neck, back, legs and hands found muscles that suddenly needed stretching, the hair in my nose tickled, and just when I thought I had controlled them somewhat, my body decided that I needed to cough and sneeze at the same time.

I gave myself three conscious movements- three swallows. But I tried to still everything else. Regardless of how frustrating it was to sit absolutely still without a single movement, it was still exhilarating. I didn't time myself that time, but it felt like a really long time!

Today, I tried it again. I gave myself 3 sessions of 5 minutes each and with a firm resolve not to have any conscious movements, including swallowing. The first 5 minutes dragged on forever. I started by concentrating on my breaths- in and out, in and out. My hands twitched a bit, and I realized I had moved them only after they already moved. Just as I was about to leap up in frustration and check that the timer was still on, the timer went off and I sighed in relief.

The second set of 5 minutes: I realized that just the act of observing my breath changed it- I was becoming breathless, my lungs felt quite stressed and my hands started twitching even without my conscious action. Thinking back, there was some feeling of anxiety that arose every time I focused on my breathing. I wonder why. During this session, I had decided not to use a backrest, just to see if I could do. And by the time 5 minutes had passed, I was leaning a bit in front without having realized that I had moved at some point of time.

The third set of 5 minutes got over before I even realized it. And I think I was slightly better at a) not concentrating on my breathing b) dropping thoughts before I could dwell on them too much c) Stopping my movements before they started.

Looking forward to doing this some more...