I bet those mountains look fantastic behind all that fog . . .

About two weeks ago, I arrived in K

olkata. For many travelers, Kolkata is the first port of call on arrival in India, just like Bombay was for me nearly three months ago. Kolkata earns its reputation for rampant overt poverty, but that doesn't distinguish it from other Indian cities. Newly arrived foreigners can't hide the fish-out-of-water expression on their faces. While I find the presence of children on the streets shocking, I've built a wall around my natural reaction to seeing deformed, grotesquely handicapped people on the sidewalks, or kids lathering and washing themselves at the street water-pump, and most disappointingly, mothers carrying babies tugging at my shirt growling out "baba" (friend) for rupees. For the latter, long ago I decided it was wrong to give money in those situations, as I'm as likely to incentivize them to have another baby to increase the shock factor, which they're well aware of. Stories abound in many cities of "begging syndicates" which transport the destitute to a tourist location for the day, then return them to their street after taking the bulk of the day's reap.
For all this, elusive New India is still out there, just primarily in the suburbs, (residences, offices and all) save for cultural islands in the dense urban areas.

Kolkata's been hot, so after some requisite sightseeing, I boarded a train for Darjeeling.
Darjeeling is a foggy mountain town in the same state, West Bengal, as Kolkata. It's a hill station - one of 50-100 high altitude townships throughout India chartered under the British Raj as a cooler refuge for British servicemen from the energy-draining heat of the lowlands. Walking into this town, it's like stepping out of India completely. For starters, the bulk of locals are of Nepali descent (actually Ghurka), with smatterings of Tibetan. Prices are much lower for all manner of food, lodging, and clothing, and yet the residents enjoy a standard of living far above the Indian average I perceive in the cities. Deservedly there are a lot of foreigners soaking in Darjeeling and environs, and more Americans than I've encountered elsewhere in India altogether (this means I met at least three there).

One thoughtful British traveling companion convinced me to visit the nearby mountainous but tiny state of Sikkim with him. Like the Darjeeling area, Sikkim is also completely distinct from the rest of India. It's composed mostly of, well, Sikkimese who have more east asiatic look, but also Nepali, and Bhutanese. Seeing so much greenery around me, I joined a trek here in the foothills of the Himalayas. In two days of hiking, I had justified every piece of warm weather clothing and outdoor equipment I had been lugging around with me all this time, including a sleeping bag, an inflatable mat, two sweaters, a (fantastic) North Face jacket from a good friend back home, a water filter, and . . . socks. (Elsewhere, you just don't need socks when you're gallivanting around such a warm country in sandals). All in all, I spent most of two weeks in the mountains trekking, sightseeing, or just plain hanging out. I didn't leave loaded with tea leaves - I actually don't like pure Darjeeling tea for being either too bitter or too bland. It's better mixed with other flavors and spices which I leave to the good folks at Unilever (Lipton) in Sri Lanka and Twinings and Bigelow in London to accomplish.

One thing I learned about the residents of the mountain areas, they like to go on strike a lot. Often this is couched in a protest for autonomy from India or to create a new Indian state. But my read was that they just like to collectively bring the entire local economy to a halt, going so far as to stage a hundred-plus person sit-in in the middle of the only street traversing town, deranging everyone's travel plans and overall costing a lot of people a lot of money. Depending on how you do the accounting, the strikes have cost me anywhere from $100-200 US for the alternative plans I had to come up with. (In retrospect, I think I understand now why the residents enjoy such a high standard of living amid otherwise low prices . . . ) I encountered strikes in Sikkim, Darjeeling, and Silguri, an important waystation to reach Darjeeling.

My time in India is coming to a close. I'm back in Kolkata, and tonight I'm flying for Shanghai, followed by Beijing a week and a half later. Time is getting on, and I have to go to the airport soon, so I will sign off. To my resident and foreigner friends who I met while traveling in the country who follow the blog, our discussions and shared experiences have made my time here thoroughly meaningful, and I know I will be keeping in touch with you going forward. I will hope always that we can make our paths cross again. Cover photo: These are advanced level engineering book. In the US you'd find them at a technical bookstore in a university town like Palo Alto or Cambridge, MA. You would be hard pressed to find them to this technical depth in your local Borders / Barnes & Noble. Yet I took this photo in a small bookstore in Siliguri, a small stopover town on the way from Calcutta to Darjeeling. I could have taken this photo throughout many parts of India, so I'm only doing homage to West Bengal's (the Bengali's)literary culture by highlighting the books here. The books may or may not be counterfeit, but only as facsimiles, not errors of ommission or commission.