Grumpy Red Panda, Your Host
About six hours after zipping across the most oven-fresh bit of road in India (see previous post), we reached our destination – Mangan. There we found a restaurant with a stunning view, something so common to the Sikkimese that no one even bothers to look or even sit by the window. We did though, and enjoyed both the scenery and the North Bengal equivalent of cocoa and toast – chai and momos.
There’s a short stretch of road in San Francisco that’s famous for being the steepest in the United States. In Mangan, all the roads are that steep. Steeper even – and I am not exaggerating one bit. (Well, maybe one bit. But certainly not more than three bits.)
Here, for instance is a stairway that takes you from one street up to the next.
Going down is kind of hairy since the passage is unlit, there are no handrails and the tiles are usually wet from Mangan’s being up in the clouds. Going up is easy. You can climb those stairs on all fours using your hands and feet like a monkey (making ook-ook sounds warning descending traffic to look out, here comes the monkey).
My friend had to walk high into the hills in bone-chilling rain to a small village to get his business done so I volunteered to take on the thankless job of shopping and guarding the coffee shops.
There are plenty of saloons in Mangan. For some reason “saloons” are what Indians call barbershops (so if you’re a-hankerin’ to wet your whistle, pilgrim, you’ll just haveta keep on a-hankerin’).
Speaking of John Wayne, Mangan people see very few western people but they see quite a few western movies. When I’d mosey into their establishment and say, “Howdy!” they’d nod and jabber enthusiasticlly. Very quickly, though, they’d lose interest when it became clear I couldn’t speak a word of their language – and couldn’t even keep talking like John Wayne.
The minor official my friend had to see told him he’d have to come back with his paperwork in better order – something minor officials the world over love to say to someone who’s come hundreds miles to get a rubber stamp on something. So we headed back down. This time by way of Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim.
Our driver must have felt guilty about charging 200 rupees ($2.50) for a 120 kilometer trip. So to provide a more value-added experience, he entertained us by passing every vehicle we met, regardless of its size or speed, honking his horn all the way.
As you can see, the roads, though narrow, were better than those coming up and the scenery even more spectacular. The locals traveling with us were oblivious. At every rushing waterfall and barely missed cliff edge, my friend and I would elbow each other, “Looky here!” or alternately, “Looky there!”
But the more our jaws dropped, the more the other passengers’ jaws did likewise – snoring.