"special arrangement for kitty party"

This blog's title was on a restaurant sign at some forgettable road junction. Engrish is really getting the edge on English. I also really enjoyed a burly weightlifter-type wearing this bright purple t-shirt: "WHERE ALL DA WHITE WOMEN AT?"

I just came back from the Himalayan Zoological Park in Darjeeling, and may have discovered my new totem animal - move over, Welsh Corgi! The red panda appears to bear no resemblance to the regular ol' panda that you already know from such antics as "refusing to breed in captivity" and "being dull". The zoo was better than most, because it only had a handful of species that are either native to the area or thrive somewhere in the Himalayan zone. Several endangered species are involved in successful breeding programs. Tigers, wolves, leopards, yaks, monkeys, and nature's clowns - the Asiatic black bear. If you ever get a chance to see one of these bears, do so. Like all of the best animals [and people], they have an extremely undignified manner. As in every other zoo, about 30 minutes into the experience I got sick of watching painfully bored critters pace around in circles. So it goes.

Me and Darjeeling started off on the wrong foot - I was unbearably cranky after two back-to-back overnight trains. Downright toddleresque. I spent the first day stomping around under a black cloud and wrote some whiny emails. It passed. It seems that the occasional tantrum isn't the worst thing in the world with no friends or acquaintances to bear proper witness.

Speaking of friends, my eyes and brain have been collaborating on the crazy trick of assuming that every Indian is someone I know from Canada. And it always turns out to just be the Indian version of that person. Indian Trevor Belley here, Indian Bruce Warnsby there... and every old man's bird-boned, hunch-shouldered bouncing hobble is an Indian Aaron Burnie, if only for a second. Y'know how Aaron looks after five beers: an elderly Fraggle.

Yesterday I hooked up with a friendly English couple and wandered around a tea estate - tea fields, processing plant, and all. Even a tea-tasting at the end, wherein the tea leaves were steeped for a mere 5 seconds! And damned if it wasn't the finest cup of tea I've ever had, no milk or sugar required. Later on, I laid down Rs8000 [~$200] for a 3' x 6' Tibetan-style wool carpet. Fat cat coming through! A pretty fine deal, actually - handmade by a local women's collective from yak's wool and shipped to my p.o. box in Dawson. This is the kind of purchase that makes me feel bizarrely grown-up. The feeling will fade when the carpet is destroyed by cat barf and careless use, but let's treasure it for the moment.

As hill stations go, and this will be my last in northern India, Darjeeling's main failing is its size - over 100,000 people today, in what started as a small British outpost. So the issue of traffic is especially apparent:
-exhaust
-honk honk honk beeeeeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeeeeep beep
-very narrow roads designed for pedestrian, horse, rickshaw - not cars and trucks!
Nevertheless, once you haul yourself up the hill and off the main roads, it's quiet and peaceful. "India Light", as Paul G. described Mussoorie. The haggle and hassle of India is diluted in these northern hills. Something that threatens the peace is the Gorkha ethnic people's bid for self-government in the Darjeeling region. Every business claims to be located in Gorkhaland, a place which is currently theoretical. (I thought we were in West Bengal? But I'm just a tourist.) On the separatism spectrum, I suppose the Gorkhaland movement would be located somewhere between the persistence inefficacy of the Quebecois and the undiminished brinkism of contested Kashmir. In the immortal words of my close friend Jay-Z, "Can I live?" He was talking about regional autonomy in South Asia, right??

Time to head south. The how-to, the method, may prove problematic. November 5 is the Indian mega-holiday Diwali, so train schedules are booked solid for the next couple of weeks. Instead of getting stuck in train stations, I've elected to fly to Kolkata (Calcutta) tomorrow morning. But how to get further south, after Kolkata, without dipping my toe into nightmare itineraries and dangerous train waitlists? Perhaps more domestic air travel is the best answer for the rich and lazy. Well, I've got the lazy part figured out.