Retire to India

I finally seen the elephant.

The first time I saw “the elephant” it was the Empire State Building. I’d heard about it all my life. I watched King Kong fall off it a few times. And suddenly I was there and there it was! The Tallest Building in the World. You could tell just by looking at it. I dropped my book of existential French poetry, a hayseed straw grew out of my mouth and I gawked. 

The elephant in India is the Taj Mahal. The Most Beautiful Building in the World. One thing the world prides itself on is being a big place. It’s hard to be the most anything here. So when my friend Daniel said he’d like to see it for himself, I didn’t balk.  

To avoid lines, etc,… we hired a guide who immediately began bemoaning the fact that, over the years, air pollution had corroded its pristine perfection but his voice faded in my ears as my eyes widened and that hayseed straw slowly began growing out of my mouth. The Taj Mahal is presented in a satisfyingly theatrical manner. You can’t see any of it until you step into an archway that frames and reveals it all at once.

There are various daylight conditions when the Taj Mahal is even more beautiful – or so the experts who sell postcards tell us. At moments of dusk and dawn, it has a rosy hue.

On soft, blue days, it can have a soft blue cast.

Ours was a classic Indian bright, sunny day so the Taj Mahal was at its Taj Mahalliest.

Part of the impetus for making the trip to Agra was hearing a rumor that soon, the Taj Mahal will no longer be open to the public. Tourists will still be able to gawk at postcard distance but they won’t be able to do this:

And the reason is this:

Bad Tourists are defacing the Taj Mahal. Not just with their oily fingers (which we Good Tourists don’t have) but by chipping off pieces of the inlaid semi-precious stones for souvenirs. A good example of a Bad Tourist is Col. Robert R. McCormick, owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune about a hundred years ago. Just looky at the chunk of the elephant he swiped!

That stolen slab now sits blatantly in the wall of the Tribune Tower in Chicago while Daniel and I did not so much as remove our jackhammers from our backpacks.

Over one jillion tourists pass through its majestic marble arches annually and….uh-oh, I see your eyelids beginning to droop so I will save the romantic backstory – which every school child knows – and all the exciting details of our visit, which not even that smartypants school child can guess, for next week.

Forget the Taj Mahal this week. It’s been there for almost 400 years. It will probably be there next Saturday. This day won’t. In fact, the next time my Saturday blog falls on February 29th won’t happen till 2048.  So today, let’s do every leapy thing we can think of. 

Don’t just get out of bed. Or inch into action. Don’t just make a creep of faith. Or squirm out of your skin. Whatever you do today, do it with both feet pedaling high in the air and waving your cowboy hat. You’ve got the next 208 weeks to plod along the usual way.

There’s a difference between Leap Year Day in America and Leap Year Day here in India. We get to celebrate half a day before you do. (So naa na-na boo-boo on you.)

Okay, so every four years we have to add a day to February. Who figured that out? I suppose Julius Caesar gets the credit by virtue of being in charge of everything in the known world 2,065 years ago. But who actually did the math? I couldn’t figure it out in 2,065 years. Neither could you I’ll bet.

They say realizing there is a problem is half the battle so I’ll give you that part. Let’s say you’re tilling your Tuscan farm and it suddenly strikes you that spring seems to be coming earlier than it did when you were a kid. Would the first thing you’d think of be, “Dang old Etruscan calendar is running slow. I want my money back.”? I’ll bet not.

I’ll even give you all our smartypants 21st Century knowledge so you have a leg up on the astrologers of the day. Of course, that might be more of a hindrance than a help. You’d probably blame global warming and try to convince friends, Romans and countrymen to burn fewer fossil fuels and get yourself torched at the stake (which would be ironic being as you’re kind of a fossil fuel yourself).

Plus, you’d probably be tempted to blurt too many historical fun facts.  “Caesar! Beware the Ides of March.” Or “Look what I invented – a printing press!” Or  “Anyone wanna ride on my Sherman tank?” Or “Oh yeah? E does too equal MC squared and I’ll prove it to you with this bomb I made.”  

Come to think of it, maybe I won’t give you 21st Century knowledge. I don’t trust you.

Everybody* has been telling me what a great time they had reading about the Darjeeling Zoo, so I thought I’d follow it up with another. Same time. Same place. All new animals. (Except the grumpy red panda. I’ve decided he’s the Unofficial Spokesman of the Darjeeling Zoo. His motto: “Leave the popcorn bag and get out.”)

* (Not everybody, exactly.)**

** (Nobody, really. I just wanted to do another zoo post.)

Here’s a better picture of the Bengal Tiger.

Looks like another life-endangering selfie doesn’t it? That blur is me running away. I am just kidding you. This is a stuffed tiger they have on display. He’s not alive anymore – which explains why I still am.

There are some very rare Himalayan animals to be seen here but they tend to move by the time I get my camera out.

Here are the rear ends of the Himalayan Yak.

And the rear end of the Himalayan Langur.

Here’s a Green Bird.

And a Red One. (Sorry, I lost my notes.) But enough animal pictures.

What? You want more?

Okay. Here’s a cool Himalayan Wolf.

And a cool Himalayan Leopard.

Here’s a cool Himalayan White Bird with a Red Head. (Boy, I wish I had those notes.) 

Another fun fact I learned is this: See that red, yellow and black banded snake coming at you? Lookout! Poison snake!

No wait. Look at the order of the colors on its body. They’re not red, yellow, black, yellow, red bands, they’re red, black, yellow, black, red bands. Silly me. He’s harmless, you can pat him.

Okay, last animal. The Himalayan Lady Bug. This one isn’t a zoo animal technically. It was in my hotel room. But I think it deserves a place in the zoo. How many of you agree? Come on! Just look at that ferocious face.

Speaking of the Himalayas. Two of the three largest mountains in the world can be seen from Darjeeling. The third tallest is Kanchenjunga which is very close by – and fun to say. An interesting discovery my friend Daniel and I made in exploring the zoo is that it’s connected to a couple other museums – one of which is dedicated to the conquest of Mount Everest.  

We westerners like to make a fuss about Sir Edmund Hillary. A well-deserved fuss considering how excruciatingly cold and difficult that first climb must have been in 1950’s technology thermal wear (wool). But my vote for Most Fuss-Worthy goes to this guy.

Tensing Norgay was Hillary’s Sherpa guide. He not only had to endure the same winds, temperatures and lack of oxygen as Sir Edmund but he’d done it many times before just wearing his everyday mountain guy clothes. Sherpas frequently had to carry the oxygen tanks for their less adapted climbers. A Sherpa’s mitochondria is different from low-landers (I just read). 

The museum itself contains photos, artifacts and the actual gear the climbers wore. Plus a huge replica of that area of the Himalayas that was fascinating to stare at. I would have taken a picture of it except for the sign that said TAKE ABSOLUTELY NO PICTURES OF IT. That plus there was a security guy watching me fingering my camera while I was watching him fingering his holster. But here’s something very like it.

I think we’re done now. Is it time for the Taj Mahal?

And Other Beasts of the Himalayas

If you can stop thinking about Darjeeling’s world famous tea for a minute, you may notice there’s a zoo up here. Not a huge one but one with many exotic Indian animals. 

Does your zoo have a red panda? Or a Bengal Tiger? Or a King Cobra? It does? Hm. Well, forget you. But for the hundreds of other Americans whose zoos don’t have critters like that, check out these photographs! Okay, first pretend you can’t just google any animal on earth and see a National Geographic quality photo of it. Pretend it’s the old days and you’re lucky to see any picture of any animal ever. Now look at my pictures. Pretty cool, eh? (That’s more like it.)

The Himalayan Zoological Park sits on the point of a promontory high above a valley so walking up to it is breath-taking. Actually, everywhere you walk in Darjeeling takes your breath away (at 6,700 feet, the air’s pretty thin). 

Fun Fact: Once you get to the zoo, stop walking or you’ll fall 6,700 feet down the hill. (Not exactly a Fun Fact, more like a Fun Warning.) 

The price of admission for foreigners is 100 rupees – three times what it is for Indian citizens. But still, that’s less than a buck and a half so don’t be cheap and try to rubberneck over the wall to see the animals for free, just pay it.

Now, sit back and I’ll guide you through the zoo from memory. But don’t expect much. My memory isn’t all that hot anymore and I’ve only been here one more time than you.

You saw the red panda? He’s endangered, that’s why he’s so grumpy. I think he looks more like a red raccoon (wearing his mask, looking like a bear, etc…) but since he’s related to real pandas, he can be called a panda, too. Sure, whatever he wants.

Dang. Can’t find my Himalayan Black Bear picture. Oh, well. Here’s one that’s just as good. (Ten times as good, actually.)

The Himalayan Black Bear has a great long-haired coat so he won’t freeze to death in the high-mountains. It isn’t that cold in Darjeeling so his great long-haired coat really itches. Never stopped scratching the whole time we saw him.

This is the Himalayan Barking Deer.

Poor little guy. Everyone barks at him to see if they can get him going. (I tried. Doesn’t work.)  

This is a photograph of the only part of a Bengal Tiger I could see – standing on my tiptoes and reaching my phone way up – but it is a genuine photo actually taken by me  (The David Uncle Difference™).

And here’s that King Cobra I mentioned. Not a bit endangered. Practically every home in India has one. Mine does (but it also has mongooses so don’t worry about me).

Here’s another Fun Fact (Warning). A general one about snakes: “If your face is too close to a snake, BEWARE!”

There are other swell animals and attractions here but my attention span alarm is blinking. Maybe we’ll come back to the zoo another day.

For Americans, Darjeeling isn’t a place. It’s a kind of tea. For some, it’s not even a kind of tea. It is tea. And it’s pronounced “dar-jee’-ling”. In America that is.

But when I learned that it’s actually a town in the high foothills of the Himalayas and found out you can get there by Toy Train and saw that I was standing in that very Toy Train station – all I had left to learn was how to pronounce Darjeeling correctly.

“One-way ticket to Dar-jee’-ling please.”

“Dodge’-ling?”

“What?”

“Dodge’-ling?”

“What?”

“One-way, Dodge‘-ling?”

“Oh, ding! I get it. You are pronouncing Darjeeling differently than I do.” (See? Easy.)

Nine hours, one rock slide and a hitchhike later, I was warming myself at Golden Tips (established 1933) with a nice cup of tea. (“Nice” seems to be the official British adjective for any cup of tea.)

Mr. Hobson tells me this fun fact: Only ladies are allowed to pick the leaves. I saw many doing this myself. And if the slopes were any steeper, the ladies would need to wear window-washer belts.

Most connoisseurs prefer the light, fresh, “first flush” tea – so called as it’s made from the first leaves of spring – but “second flush” has more flavor. (The rest of the connoisseurs probably like that one.)

Rich people who were dropped on their head when they were young have been known to spend hundreds of dollars on a pound of Silver Tips Imperial tea from Darjeeling. But you and I only came to Golden Tips to see what a truly “nice” cup of tea tastes like, right? 

In most Indian tea shops or stands, a cup of tea costs about two-bits American. It’s good too, I’m told. But let’s hang the cost and go straight for the Nicest Cup of Tea in the World. 250 rupees (about three and a half bucks – same as a small Americano at Starbucks). A tea connoiseur brews it for you and brings it to your table in a crystal-clear glass teacup. I have to admit, it really was a nice cup of tea. ery, very, very, very (when you find the perfect adverb, it’s hard to let go) smooth.  

About now, you may be wondering if there’s more to Darjeeling than tea.

There is. There’s the grumpy red panda.  But that’s a subject for another post.

PS (I couldn’t find the roll of film that had my first Darjeeling trip on it so, except for the above shot and the one with me in it, I found all the rest on the internet where, whee! Everything is free!) (I hope.)

These are Indian green beans. 

They looks the same as American green beans, they tastes the same as an American green beans but do you see any difference? Correct. They are longer. 

I asked what they call such a long bean and the lady told me, “Long Bean.”

What’s this, then?

It’s the baby version of this. 

Most Indian bananas run a little on the dinky side but they make up for it in real banana flavor. (Note the underline and italics.)

An Indian banana tastes more like a banana than any banana I’ve ever tasted. To be fair to Chiquita, they grow here. So they’re not picked green and made to ripen on a four-thousand mile truck ride. 

Indians tend to like spicy food so if your stomach doesn’t, just ask, “Is this spicy?” If they say, “Not a bit spicy.” then it’s a bit spicy. If they say, “Not very spicy.” – it’s very spicy. And if they say, “Yes, it is spicy.” Well, you get the idea.

In America, we have a cultured milk product called “yoghurt”. In India, we have “curd”. Same kind of thing but three, maybe four times better. At least in the rural areas it is. That’s probably due to the fact that the milk was still in the cow a few hours earlier. (You can find curd in Indian restaurants where it’s only twice as good.)  

If you get homesick for good ‘ol, good ‘ol meat and potatoes, (and I know I do) look for the word “aloo” on the menu. That’s potatoes. And they’re all pretty good. I’ve had mashed aloo that was every bit as tasty as the ones you had last Thanksgiving. I couldn’t tell the difference between a McDonald’s french fry in Delhi from one in Denver. Meat is another story.

If you like cheeseburgers, there are quite a few places I’d recommend but none of them are in India because most Indians don’t eat beef. (Only about three hundred million do and very few of those have been to Johnny Rocket’s.)

Okay, that’s enough about food for now.

Oh, PS (Happy Groundhog’s Day! (Hmm…ground hog. Mmmm….)

English is India’s second language but they don’t always grasp its nuances (or maybe they do and just shrug). For instance, they call their miniature mountain railway the “Toy Train”. Imagine booking a flight on the Toy Plane or a stateroom on the Toy Boat.

But when my good friend, R.C. Hobson heard that I was headed up the Himalayan foothills to Darjeeling, he insisted that the Toy Train was just what I wanted. Good enough for me. Mr. Hobson is a train connoisseur. One entire room of his home is an operational miniature train town.

In the 1970’s some friends and I ascended the Jungfraujoch in Switzerland by way of a cool mini-train. As I recall, it cost $50 for the 11-kilometer ride. (I just checked and it’s almost $250 now.) By contrast, the Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway – or Toy Train – switchbacks its way uphill for 52 miles for less than 700 rupees – about nine dollars round trip. 

So how big is the Toy Train?

Says Mr. Hobson, “Hold two fingers 24 inches apart.  That is exactly the width between the rails.” 

“This is absolutely the smallest a steam engine can be; just four wheels. They have huge headlights on both ends.  So it doesn’t matter which way the engine is pointed.  It can drive a train in either direction.”

That’s good, he says, since the grades are twice as steep as American railroads. The Toy Train has to switch directions a half dozen times to make the climb to Ghoom – at an altitude of 1½ miles, it’s the highest railway station in India. And this “toy” has been pulling loads of 50 tons up that same 50 miles for 150 years. (It thinks it can. It thinks it can.) You pass through towns along the way, following narrow main streets so close to some of the buildings that anyone sticking his head out of a shop is likely to get it knocked off. (See video – if you can.)

Mr. Hobson tells me that Mother Teresa was on her way to Darjeeling on this very train when God called her to start her ministry in the slums of Kolkata to ‘the poorest of the poor’. (The Toy Train ride takes five to ten hours, “depending on derailments” so Mother T had ample time for reflection.)

My first ride to Darjeeling was one of those derailments. I struck up an acquaintance with a very attractive young couple on holiday. After slowly climbing for three scenic toy train hours, a rock slide knocked out the track. We were faced with the option of sadly wending our way back to the station where our nine dollars would be churlishly refunded or just getting off. The three of us got off and had no problem hitchhiking the rest of the way. It’s one of the fringe benefits of being very attractive.

Here is a famous shot of Indians hanging onto the outside of a train. Here’s me on my first train ride. Nobody on the outside but me and that was just to be part of the latest trend of ways to kill yourself taking a selfie.

Americans board vehicles differently than they do in India. In the US, we have a strict but fair “No Budging” rule. In India, whether it’s a plane, train, bus or boat there’s almost always a stampede.  They know they can’t all get on at the same time but they all try.

Once you’re over that hurdle, the rest of the journey has scads of compensatory charm. You’re put in compartments with six unfailingly polite fellow travelers. All day, lush changes of scenery go whizzing by every middlesex, village and farm. Some stations are just whistlestops. At others you can get out and stretch. (But don’t dawdle. A doctor I met was showing me how to dicker with station shopkeepers and before we knew it, our train was pulling away. We had to do a Dagwood Bumstead – lost a bit of our dignity but caught our train.)

Snack vendors visit regularly and the high-pitched, nasal cry of the tea sellers, “Chai! Garam Chai! – Chai! Garam Chai!” can be heard a full car length away. (Like newsboys in old movies, all tea sellers sound like they come from a single ancestor. Some prehistoric caveman tea seller, perhaps.)

I like taking Indian trains for two reasons. #1 They’re really affordable. (About nine dollars will take you over a thousand miles.) And #2 it makes you feel like you’re in a 1940’s movie – like Cary Grant or Doris Day are going to poke their head out of the bed curtains any minute.

Once it’s dark, anyone in your compartment can announce that it’s time for the group to retire. The seats convert to tiered sleeping berths in seconds with a clever arrangement of steel chains and latches. Before you can say “Good night, John Boy.”  you’re all in bed, rocking along to your destination in air-conditioned comfort. And most of the year, that’s an extremely welcome comfort. They don’t call this part of the globe the Torrid Zone for nothing.

Howdy, Valued Fan Base!

The request I get most often is, “When will you do one about that elephant? WHEN?!” Okay, okay! Here it is now so you can put your shirt back on.

A farming friend of mine wanted to plant barley. They don’t sell barley in Siliguri, so he decided to go where they do – out west in the desert state of Rajasthan. I offered to tag along. 

It took a couple of days but we finally found a reliable source in Jaipur and had a couple big bazooms of it shipped back to his farm. 

While waiting for the order to ship, we checked out a lake palace…

…and took a ride on a couple of racing camels (at least we assumed they were racing camels – turns out their high and low speeds weren’t much different no matter how you hollered and whacked them with your hat).

Then we visited a leopard colony…

After that, we were very ready to be carried around howdahs like a couple maharajas. 

So we tracked down an outfit that would accommodate our touristy whim at Elephanjoy. I highly recommend Lakshmi. She is a very well-behaved pachyderm. (Of course, I don’t have much to compare her to. Most Siliguri elephants come trumpeting around at night, knocking fences down and stamping the villagers’ houses flat.)

Anyway, once Lakshmi gets to know you, she’ll let you ride her. She gets to know you by your feeding her hay for half and hour, painting her nose (washing it off quickly) then feeding her some more hay. By that time, she’s waving her ears, swinging her trunk left and right and making a deep purr – which sounds like a contented tiger at the bottom of a well.

Then she goes and stands under a platform. You climb up on a ladder and off you go for half an hour, swaying back and forth through the jungle like Tarzan but with clothes on.

Elephanjoy is not for profit. You donate what you will. We donated 1000 rupees (about $14) and everyone was happy. So if you’re ever in Jaipur, visit Elephanjoy and ask for Lakshmi. Tell her I sent you. Just say, “Lakshmi! Ungawa David Uncle! Ungawa!” She’ll remember me. She’s an elephant.

If you like fireworks, you’ll like India. 

Firecrackers (called just crackers) are the noisemaker of choice during any kind of celebration. And there seems to be some kind of celebration going on every week of the year. As a happy result, chest-thumpingly loud fireworks are available almost  anywhere. 

In the United States, an M-80 firecracker is legally limited to 50 milligrams of flashpowder. Enough to make a fairly loud “Pap!”  In the early 1960’s, M-80s contained 3000 milligrams (not a typo) and sounded like you’d fired a naval cannon.

While not quite on that level, Indian “chocolate bombs” make a satisfyingly deep “POOM!” Two or three of which are enough to make an elephant lose all interest in your rice field. (This I have  seen myself.)

I asked my taxi driver where I could get a nice, flashy aerial bomb for News Year’s Eve.  He pulled over almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth and took me to the nearest of the many, many little shops that stand side by side on the outskirts of town.  There, one could buy potato chips, milk, cigarettes or nice, flashy aerial bombs. I bought 6 shells for 900 rupees (about 12 bucks). Same price one shell would cost in Wisconsin. If you can make this video play, you’ll see I got my money’s worth. 

If you can’t, and you’re still interested, here’s a link that should do the trick: https://photos.app.goo.gl/1YJJGw52ju4Zjk6M8

If neither of those work, forget it – you’ve seen fireworks before,