Siliguri/ NJP

So we arrived very late in Siliguri. Well it was actually New Jainapuri, which the Indians refer to as "NJP." Of course, the way Indians pronounce "NJP" (injipay) is such that it took me three days to figure out what they were saying. We arrived well after any internet place was open, so I didn't post then. We got a hotel that was recommended by some Tibetans that Tamding met on the train. It was okay. I woke up early and wandered around looking for an open internet cafe, to no avail. But I did get shampoo, batteries for the camera (it takes AA), and a handful of uncooked rice. You might be wondering about the rice, but it's an old photographer's trick learned in Vietnam. First, you set the rice out in the sun so it gets very dry (air conditioners also work). Then you put it your camera bag and it will absorb any extra moisture. It's the low tech version of the silica gel pack. The rice that's in my bag is pretty much shot, so I needed to replenish it. Although I haven't had the chance to dry it yet.

Siliguri/NJP is pretty much a genuine Third World city, with cows, goats, dogs and chickens roaming the streets. For those of you who want to warn me about Bird Flu, I will say this: give me break. Bird Flu so far has proven to be a very wimpy disease, with only questionable accounts of human to human transfer. And let's face it, it's pretty damn hard to get it from a chicken as well. In Southeast Asia, a region of 300 million people where most people come into physical contact with roaming chickens on daily basis, only 200 deaths have occurred in 12 years. I myself have unwittingly touched dozens of chickens there with no problem. But if you want to worry about diseases, how about malaria or denghe fever? They are common here, along with countless other diseases, and they are for real. Malaria has killed, continues to kill, and will kill more people than any other disease in history. So it's the mosquitoes you need to watch out for. I've stopped two already before they could bite. You tend to get very sensitive about bugs around here.

When Tanding awoke, we immediately went to the train station to try to get train tickets from NJP to Varanasi and from Delhi to Goa. Getting tickets at Indian train stations is a nightmare of long queues and bad information. The Indian Railway Authority suffers from a potent mixture of the hopeless dysfunctionality of the Indian people combined with the ruthless bureaucracy of the British. Standing in the queue, I couldn't help but think that the Vogons of Douglas Adams' books really do exist, and that they run the Indian Railway Authority. After three hours, we got no tickets. But we did get some useful information from another customer. It turns out that there is a bus from Siliguri to Veranasi. So we took an autorickshaw to downtown Siliguri and got those tickets. We are still hoping to get airplane tickets to Goa. Tamding has a friend in Delhi who can help us with that. After retuning to NJP, we had a quick lunch. Unfortunately, we did not have time to go to an internet cafe, because we had to get our taxi to Darjeeling so we could get there before dark. But that shouldn't be problem, because we should have plenty of time once we reach Darjeeling. Well, so I thought.