Reach for the Sky - Part I

Almost a whole year has passed since we started planning a trip somewhere that can enrich our memories forever, that can be relished for a lifetime. Such tours are only possible with the closest set of friends you have or a set of completely unknown people to a completely unknown place. The second was not an option for us. But, it turned out to be like even the first one was also seemed impossible. The way one after another thing showed up was really frustrating and disappointing. Once I thought it to be impossible in all grounds. But Anyway, luck has shown some favour. It Seems like we are almost ready to rock this time. Its just six of us from the same block. We were going on a trekking trip to Sandak-phu, the highest peak in West Bengal. The exams are over, everybody is happy, we are all prepared to launch our journey.

Day - 0, Saturday, 25th Feb, 2006
Destination New Jalpaiguri

I am at Sinhas place along with Sjit. Prasoon is with Bomba and Arka is coming from Jam with brothers DigiCam. We came all together at Durgapur Rly Station around 6 o'clock in the evening. Our reservation was from Bardhaman to New JalpaiGuri [NJP] at 9:40 pm. We took an express train from DGP and reached Bardhaman at 7:30 pm. Since all of the voyagers are terribly organized personalities, we found a whole list of missing necessities before we board the train destined to reach NJP. So, three of us went out looking for a market nearby, and also looking for the goodies in there. We walked around for about one hour until we finished collecting everything we could think of at that moment. I felt like this was a reharsal for our final journey over there. :-)
We had our last homemade dinner for the trip. The train was about 20 mins late. At 10 we were settled in our berths. Two of us were unfortunate (really?) to get the berths away from other four. There were tow (supposedly hot) chicks back there near the duo :-), but anyway, all were tired enough not to bother about anything but a place to sleep. We probably had different dreams about what coming next, but dont remember now. Nice sleep...

Day - 1, Sunday, 26th Feb, 2006
New Jalpaiguri -> Manebhanjang

One of the most common things to me about overnight journey in the train is, I always wake up earlier than I ever think of. No exception here... most of the fellow passengers were sleeping. Sjit was with me, oh I forgot to mention, we were the chosen two to sleep aside. He was still asleep and seemed to be feeling cold. I came down from the upper berth to look at the outside. I had never been to north before and the landscape was completely unknown to me. When I looked out through the open door, gosh I could not see anything beyond the rail tracks!!! The fog was so dense, I had hardly seen such a dense fog back there in my place. And it was cold. I was a little disappointed cause I could not see the landscape, also I was excited about the unexpected weather over there. For once, I thaught, the raincoat seems to come handy soon :-)
The train was almost on time. We were there at the NJP station early in the morning. The weather was cloudy, a bit wet but not as cold as I thought it to be. I called home and told the two worried souls that I am fine and moving. We came down to the Taxi Stand and were looking for the conveyance to Manebhanjang, our immediate destination, when we had our first shock in the trip. "A strike is going on in Darjeeling, so nobody shall take you to Manebhanjang putting their lives in risk. Alternatively you can make plans for Gangtok or something"... this was the response from the local driver we spoke to. I was worried, and tensed a bit. Firstly, I read about the chaos that was going on regarding some tea estate issue back there, and also I heard about the recent murder etc. But we were left with no good choice. Our booking was done from before. And everything follows, If we move late all of them are going to be a waste, which we could not have afforded. So, having no option, we started looking for the desparado who can take us. And it seemed we got one, Arjun Chhetry. Young nepali guy, seemed to be cool, offered us a double deal of taking us to Maneybhanjang through a roundabout way in exchange of 2000 bucks. We had the idea of 1200 as nominal fare, but the situation stopped us from getting into much arguments. Prasoon expecially had a good faith in ArjunDa from the very beginningm so we started. About the mountaing cab, a simple TATA Spacio, spacious enought to house us along with our bundles.
This is how our journey began. Pretty soon, we were cruising along spiral mountain roads. As the car was ascending and the sight of hills was getting clearer, it filled my mind with an absolute blissful pleasure. The tea gardens on the slope of the hills, the wooly clouds floating around, the dark pine forest everything was so incredibly beautiful. I had never been to mountains before. So I was almost immersed in the beauty most of the time. We were having little chit chats in side the car. We stopped at a roadside Dhaba owned by some relative of ArjunDa. Arka was on the move. He brought out the new digicam he took from his brother. And started shooting at everything madly. He was just jumping from onw side to another every time a valley passes by. And needless to say, missed most of the clean ones :-)
We reached Mirik around 10 am. Mirik is a small place in darjeeling, fairly high in terms of altitude. The main attration of the place is a beautiful small lake surrounded by vast pine forestry. ArjunDa had some problems with on of the rear tyres. So, he told us to hang around for a little while he gets that worked upon. We walked around the lake, there were a number of other visitors as well. Some with hotties in the group as well ;-) Now as we approached the place where we were supposed to get back in the car notihng was there. Me and Sinha were walking a little ahead of others and thought lets go a bit further where we may find the garage. As we walked up, an erie thought crossed our minds. We didn't have the Car number, any info about Arjun, nothing. If he wishes can easily leave us here, and we will be left with nothing to do. We were walking and walking and there was no sign of any garage not even a locality ahead. The feeling was becoming worse when a shrill of horn drew our attention to ArjunDa in it. We had our breath back. Whoo!!! I was skeptic enough to note the car number immediately :-D
Our next point of visit was the Pashupati market. Though I heard about it for the first time, I realized that it is a very famous market for cheap foreign goodies. Ooh forgot to mention, this visit also let us a chance to get into Nepal. A foreign visit, though small ;-). ArjunDa gave us one hour to surf the market and whatever. We took another car to take us from the check post to the market place. A small place, with may be 50s of shops all filled with different sellables. I was not looking for anything in particular. But could not resist to get a Bilocular. After visiting a number of shops, I finally managed to grab one for 400 bucks. I believed the gadget should cos a thousand or so in open market, so I was happy. Arka, Sinha, Sjit and Prasoon all o them got themselves a pair of shoe each. And if they are original products they got a very alluring deal. I neither had money nor space to carry anything more :-D
We started again, till now the weather was easy but now it started feeling colder as we climbed up. Nothing much during this, after a while we were in Manebhanjang. A similar small town/village whatever you say. We thanked ArjunDa for the nice trip.

Maneybhanjang is a nice place. When we reached there it was about 2 o clock in the afternoon, and it was already foggy over there. The temperature should be around 5 - 6 deg cels. Masterjee, kind of our trek director was waiting for us up there. He told us that he is going to arrange for the lunch while we get fresh in the hut. The rooms were unexcpectedly cozy. Small rooms all wood furnish and there was more, we had electricity as well as water supply lines. Pretty much for a location like this. We had our luggages in the rooms and went for lunch downstairs. Menu was the most simple one, rice dal and cauliflower, But tasted like anything. We were busy eating while Prasoon was checking out the girl in the adjacent shop ;-) Well the gain is the name only. Bomba had decided to take a quick nap and diminished soon. Rest of us went outside to take a look around. We had heard that Nepal is very close to the place and can be reached easily by climbing a little. Lets have a look, and after a bit questioning we were near the border. It was almost dark, they first day, so we were feeling a little eerie about the place. As it didn't seem to be okay staying there for long so we decided to take a few snaps and come back.
In the evening we sat for planning our trek and there was the second shock waiting for us. Masterjee stood surprised when he looked at our trek plan. Here we had someting that is necessary; we had skipped a few destination in hte route to cut the days. So naturally we had two days walk covered in a single day in every section. But according to masterjee, the last one was incredibly difficult!!! Even the guide was not ready to take the route. It was all descent and we thought wrongly that it is going to be easier. Whereas experience says its a lot more difficult to climb down the mountain. So what next? We were left with no other option but to cutPhalut from our route and come back from Sandakphu through Gurdum. This change incurred us almost a thousand extra for the Phalut booking and the extra stay at Gurdum. Anyway, its better to take a route which is not that deadly in the first trek. We were done for the day, its time to sleep :-)