Bad Jack and the Lovely Darjeeling Joy Ride

Wednesday April 24. 12:41pm

Yesterday after breakfast Lauren, one of the English girls I met on the train, and I decided we were going to hire a car to take us around Darjeeling, for there is little public transportation, and the sights are fairly spread out. We went to talk to the hotel manager and after looking at me and asking if I was a student he named a price that was far lower than anyone else around. We were to be ready in half an hour.

Bad Jack!

A half an hour later we meet Bad Jack Alex, our driver for the day. As he pulls up to the hotel the receptionist jumps out, we hop in and away we go. When we get in the car we realize this is no normal taxi driver. In fact, it is not a taxi driver at all; it is the receptionist’s boyfriend, and his private car. This Nepali Indian man with green eyes, is a case study in contradictions. He wears a leather jacket and calls himself Bad Jack, but at the same time has a “Jesus Loves You” sign on his rearview mirror. He told us about all of the American women he used to date, and his girlfriend from California who he dumped because she asked him not to talk to other girls, then he quoted the bible multiple times. For Bad Jack everything was “lovely”, we were both his “darlings” and everyone was his friend.

Tea Pickers on the Mountain

Our first stop was a few miles outside of town at the Ropeway, a five kilometer cable car ride that take you down and back up the mountain, where you can see the women picking tea. Then it was to the Sikkim/ India border, and the local cricket stadium from colonial times. We stopped at the Tibetan Refugee Self Help Center, where they have a nice photo exhibit and a shop where they sell the handicrafts they make. All proceeds go back to the center so I bought a wool sweater. They refugees were in a group meeting, so the workshops were closed, but it was a beautiful place and the kids playing outside seemed happy. In order to get to the Refugee Center we had to take a winding and unpaved road far up the mountain, and as a Midwest girl I was sure I was going to die.

Next came a quick look at the rock people use to train for climbing Mount Everest and then a chaii break and a walk around the tea leave fields. We finished off our day at the Japanese Peace Pagoda, one of the beautiful white Buddhist temples that have been built all over the world to promote nonviolence, especially to protest nuclear weapons. In the temple we got to witness and participate with the chanting and drumming of three monks, and even though we could not quite get the Japanese syllables right it was very soothing.

Sunset from Tiger Hill

When we got back to the hotel we begged the hotel manager to book Bad Jack again for the next morning, to see the sunrise at the Tiger Hill observatory. There was a timing confusion, so at 3:50 am  there was a knock on our door and Bad Jack was waiting there telling us to get up and hurry! We threw on as many layers as we could and ran out the door. This time the hotel receptionists, and Jack’s girlfriend, Eva, joined us, and up the mountain we went.

From Tiger Hill we saw a beautiful sunrise and the most stunning views of the snow-capped Himalayas in the morning light. It was as though the clouds knew we were there, and they perfectly enshrined the peak of Mount Everest, making it stand out. We were so far away it did not look exceptionally tall, but it did look very pointy.

Ghoom Bhuddist Monastery

On our way down to the hotel we stopped at one of the Ghoom Buddhist Monasteries, a darling place with beautiful religious art, and a great view of the mountains. The monastery we went to was not the biggest one, but the oldest one, so it was off the tourist beaten trail, making it a lovely and quiet experience. There were a few people worshipping there, but the interesting thing is that when they circled the building clockwise as part of their worship they were all at a run.

After a quick look at the Darjeeling War Memorial we went back to the hotel. Lauren and I got breakfast in our room, leaving Eva and Jack to have a little date, then promptly when back to bed.

After a quick rest at the hotel after the first day’s tour, Lauren and I went to dinner, where we ended up chatting with a bunch of other travelers, including one I had met in Varanasi previously. This is what I learned about backpacking

What I learned about backpacking culture in one night (Forgive the generalizations):

• Everyone does the same route: Southeast Asia, Australia, Asia, than South America.
• Australia is where everyone goes in the middle to make more money to travel more because they have a very high minimum wage, so you can make bank with no skills.
• When you travel you have the same conversation over and over and over and over.



Inside the Ghoom Monastery



•  Where are you from?
• How old are you?
• Where have you been?
• Where are you going?
• How long have you been traveling?
• What do you do back home?
• That is it. There is nothing more
• Travelers band together, which stops them from meeting locals.
• There is a superiority thing about not doing the main tourist sights, which I don’t understand, because why would you go to a place where you are going to spend only a few days and not see the sights that make it famous. We were told not to go to the sunrise because it was stupid. It was a sunrise. How can that be stupid?
• Travelers are convinced everyone must go travelling, because it changes a person, but they would never consider staying in one place for any amount of time.
• There seems to be a tendency to go to a million places, and never really understand one. I barley understand Varanasi in four months of interacting with the community, but people are convinced when they spend four nights in a place they get it, when all they did was talk to westerners.
• Most travelers do not know that everyone calls Varanasi “Banaras”, meaning they all think that I just get the name wrong and am an idiot. Indians on the other hand, know exactly what I am talking about.
• When we left the restaurant we all headed over to a bar where they were showing a “film”. I assumed it would be a Hindi movie, but instead it was Austin Powers, and nobody saw the sadness of going out to an old western movie in a place with the largest movie industry in the world, when they had done the same thing the night before. The idea of watching a Hindi movie never came up.

Conclusion: Travel if you would like. That is fine. But travelling less places for longer periods of time will allow you to actually understand where you are and really learn about the culture. Wear the clothes, speak a few words of the language, and enjoy the place you are in rather than looking forward to the next place.

Basically, be a student, work, or volunteer in a city. Don’t just be there.