Ellin Pollachek

Author & Photographer

www.ellinpollachek.com

(Published in Soma)

Time was when travelling to Darjeeling was magical. When the spell of the British Raj was intricately woven into Darjeeling's rarified atmosphere. I came to Darjeeling for this time warp. I wanted to go back in time. I wanted Kiplingesque landscapes. I wanted an exquisite hill station - touched only by God - and perhaps by the British.

From the beginning, Darjeeling was never a typical inaccessible mountain terrain. It was created for lovers, by lovers. The monks who named it Dorje Ling were not ascetics but tantrics: disciplined sensualists. Centuries later, the British Raj favoured it as a hill station, and the men deposited their wives there for the summer while they stayed in Calcutta to play. Darjeeling had already attracted a certain breed of young men known as poodle-fakers. These men knew all about sensuality and pleasure, and knew how to package it to lonely, lovely summer widows.

Darjeeling, green and textured with terraces of tea, has always attracted the sensuous, the mysterious and the ancient. I expected Darjeeling to be a storybook town with doll-faced people. I expected unparallelled beauty. I expected Nirvana.

The fog embraced the landscape, teasing one moment, revealing all the next: nothing, then a perfectly formed line of school children; only grey, then a panorama of white orchids against the green landscape. The fog is Darjeeling's purdah. .. alluding to its exotic beauty but protecting the reality. But when the purdah was removed, when all mystery was gone, Darjeeling did not charm me. It assaulted my senses and seemed, terribly, ordinary.
Like most Indian'cities, Darjeeling's shops sit on top of each other. People mull about hawking sweaters and jewellery and bronze statues. Cars honk constantly while exhaust systems fume angrily. It is all too harsh. Too direct. Too real. Bring back the fog.

Mercifully, the light takes over. It is muted and soft - casting a blue glow on everything. I wear it like glasses and seek out the people. They are beautiful. Atavistic. Faces that give new meaning to the word timeless. Pure-bred Nepalese, Tibetans, Bhotians (from Bhutan), Lepchas (who originated in the Assam hills and many believ-er to be the first occupants of Darjeeling) and Moslems.

So this is Darjeeling. No, this is the third tier of Darjeeling. Where the tourists are taken; where the hotels and souvenirs are. Originally this top tier was the, most ethereal; occupied mostly by monks and a handful of travellers. Observatory Hill is on this level. Centuries ago monks, believing Observatory Hill to be holy, carved out a cave with a footpath beneath the hill. Some say the path leads to Tibet but the cave is closed now and no one knows for sure. The second level houses the marketplace, the lower level is inhabited by the locals.

The truth is you must leave Darjeeling to really experience it. You must leave the loop where the taxis stand, where the stalls sell wonderfully coloured woollens, where miniscule Chinese restaurants serve a Tibetan version of an otherwise familiar fare. You must leave the swirl of roads called Roberston, H.D. Lama, N.B. Singh and Cart. It is nothing but a bottle-neck.

I left for a tea plantation. The fog relinquished its final hold on the landscape and a painterly blue sky appeared. The only cloud which remained was solitary, purposefully placed on the towering peak of Kanchenjunga, the world's third highest mountain. The road, expectedly hilly and hole-ridden was framed by people; their drab dress accented by the miles of terraced tea all around us.

Snapshots. Five moslem men in white robes and fez watching two brethren play chess. Three Nepalese women wrapped in rags wearing gigantic nose rings and carrying loads of tea. Behind them, dressed in black kimonotype robes, their Tibetan sisters carried equally large loads. Children, some in rags, others freshly bathed, wearing carefully pressed school uniforms waved and smiled.

Tea. Terraces and terraces of it, for which the British are responsible. In search of an edible mushroom and a new species of orchid, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker travelled here with Dr Archibald Campbell in 1849. It was an age when anything could happen. And anything did. They were both kidnapped by a group of Sikkimese and thrown in jail. The British, after a comedy of errors, eventually arrived and set them free. Hooker went on collecting while Campbell proceeded to govern Darjeeling for the next 22 years. In the process he cross-bred Chinese tea bushes with the tea of Assam, giving birth to the world's most expensive tea.

Tea is a religion in Darjeeling. It is more than a 4 pm cup of something milky and sweet served with cheese crisps and sugared rolls. It is a source of wealth. It is an employer. It is the topic of conversation. When I visited Runglee Rungliot Tea Plantation, an Indian film crew was making a documentary on the subject.

Tea is also an art. My host had his servant remake the pot of tea on more than one occasion because, as he explained, if the water is allowed to boil after the initial boiling, oxygen leaves the water and alters the taste of the tea. The leaves must then steep for a precise amount of time. The way to tell if it is ready is through colour, then taste. If any single element is not perfect, then neither is the tea.

Being a die-hard espresso drinker, the tea would have had to have been made of dew drops and manna to convince me to switch. But the truth is that Darjeeling tea was different than the bagged stuff I drink at home when I feel sick. Like the landscape it was green and fresh and hearty.

Further than Runglee Rungliot is a town called Mirik. It's a serious car ride from Darjeeling. An hour and a half over unpaved roads, through luscious tea plantations and tiny towns. Because, in part, the drive to Mirik borders on Nepal, the town is considered 'restricted', which means that you have to apply for special papers in Darjeeling to get there.

But Mirik is worth the effort. It's one of those exquisite little towns known only to locals. In its centre is a beautiful man-made lake with huge lotus fountains, bridges and rowing boats. All around the lake are flowers, everything from tulips to honeysuckle. It's the place where middle-class Indians (not a common commodity) come to picnic and boat.

Not having brought a picnic, I went to the local restaurant, really local, more like a residence. A small hut where the bedrooms doubled as dining rooms. Was I looking for time in a bottle? Well, here it was. Food. .. authentic Tibetan. Ambience... authentic Indian. The British Raj would definitely have closed it down.

After lunch, a fish fight. A fish fight! Twenty-or-so tourists hang over the railing of a small bridge and throw food into a narrow lake. As if propelled by a geyser, hundreds of fish fight for the food and in the process practically kill each other.

But Darjeeling's great attraction is its topography: to be in the presence of the mountains, to come upon the homes hugging the mountain-side, to ride through the terraces of tea, to watch the cloud formations.

While the day reveals Darjeeling's circuslike atmosphere, it is the night which wears its soul. For it is at night that Mr Kanchenjunga and her 10 sister peaks haunt the landscape, ghosts of their daytime selves. Their snowy presence accounts for the hush that covers the sleeping village. Four of the peaks are more than four miles (6.4 kilometres) high and in that height they incubate silence. They are the reason that mountaineers have long been coming to Darjeeling as an assembly point for their climbs.

One of the mountaineers is Tenzing Norgay. Born in the mountains of Nepal, Tenzing (no one calls him Mr Norgay) found Darjeeling to be of such spectacular beauty that he moved here decades ago. He has never considered living anywhere else. Back in Darjeeling, I sought him out as you would a hero. He has climbed Everest seven times and every other major mountain in the world at least once.
"I was born near Everest," he said slowly on the veranda of the Planter's Club. He was translating every word from Nepali into English. "As a young boy I would see climbers' come to and from Darjeeling and I wanted to be one of them. I met Eric Shipton in 1935 and he selected me to join him on his Everest expedition. I couldn't believe it. I was just a boy and had never done anything like that. So I ran away from home and went. We never made it to the top but I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I wanted to climb mountains."

The only reason he's not mountain climbing now is because he had pneumonia this past spring and had to be hospitalised. But at 73, he's still up at four each morning to catch the sunrise over the great Mt Kanchenjunga.

"A lot of people, religious people, Indians, Hindus, believe that the mountains are a holy 'place. I myself looked (for God) but didn't see anything." The waiter brought our tea and Tenzing served me.

"If you go in the mountains," he continued, "you feel something different. Lots of changes go on in your mind. More relaxation. More quiet. Lots of songs. Nice songs. The stream. Have you heard a stream sing?

"It is something different. There are many, many centuries of Shiv a and Brahma worship in the mountains. The ghosts remain. Maybe that makes it more peaceful for meditation.

"When you climb you become part of something in the mountains. You feel yourself in the quiet. Yes, the outside can quiet something on the inside."

Tenzing is quiet, peaceful. The secret, he says, is to satisfy.

"Satisfy means you have to forget everything. People are barking, people are stealing, people are back biting. Why listen? If you do something good you have to be kind to the gods. Know that human beings are never satisfied with the eyes. If you do something you want to, do more tomorrow. Then more.

Is that why Tenzing climbs mountains?
"Why do I climb mountains;' he repeated my question thoughtfully. "It's something to do, he said finally. "All my friends are climbers. It's how we spend our time."

The open veranda is washed over, pummelled by the hub of busy, bustling Darjeeling. It's an attack on the senses, acrid fumes fighting for attention over cooking smells and the pungent odour of animals. The grating of gear boxes, the screeching of street hawkers, the pulsating noises of a city compete. This may be the hub of Darjeeling, but it is not the heart. The heart of Darjeeling is the mountains. Kanchenjunga, translucent against the sky.