Thursday, December 16, 2004

An insight from Roxi...

the internet cafe im in at the mo is a very up market one with 6 computers 2 arent working... welcome to indian technology and in this place called GLENARYS! (very british!) they sell puddings pastries and pies and downstairs is a resto bar called "the buzz" and upstairs is a posh resturaunt and the internet area is called digital doughnuts cute a !

i am now in darjeeling, a little town set up by the british as a hill station! it is situated on the side of the foothills of kanchenzonga (kanchenjunga in english but zonga sounds cool!) the 3rd highest in the himilaya range and the world!

we arrived here on monday evening to find our tiny hotel down several dodgey side streets and alleys and that 6.30pm was a bit late for anything to be operating! we however found a tiny place called sonams kitchen which served real coffee which is a BIG thingg here lol and we had a warming bowl of noodle + vege soup! (trust me to remember food details!)

The next morning we were awakened with a knock on our door at about 8am by Mr Guring the owner to tell us that the mountains were clear, a rare thing! so we climbed several flights of stairs and the mountains were just amazing! a full panaramic veiw of them with the sun shining of the snow its uinexplainable but just beautiful! since then we havent sen them due to the mist!
this morning even you couldnt see over the bank from our hotel which was only about 20m down!

we spent tuesday shopping shopping and drinking the most delectable hot chocolates from this cute little balcony resturaunt for 20 rupees about 50c! where the main waiter guy is this short little tibetian mas with a too tight buttoned waistcoat and the most darling smile that says yes please every time he serves you ! hes really gorguz!!!

most of the people living in darjeeling are tibetian or nepalese and have to be the worlds friendlyist pple! they have wide smiles and beautiful faces and are so nice and like ull b walking down the street and they just call out hello how are you! which dosent really happen anywhere else in india unless they are trying to sell u something!
but yeh there arent many indian indians here! its really sad though cos most of the tibetians are refugees forced out of tibet when the chinese invated most of them have never returned to tibet and many of the children have never been there.

yesterday we walked for about an hour downhill to the tibetian refugee center where we saw the most darling old women making carpets to sell. we then walked around to northpoint and past tensings rock named after the guy who climbed everest wiv hillary (for all u ignorant pple!!! lol) then walked up hill for about 2hours like this is steep steep uphill and then caught a taxi back to darj which was another 3 km up hill !

what you have to understand about darj is... cos its built on a hill if you go down you have to come back up which i spose is true everywhere but nowhere here is flat and its all steep! AND most of the roads have limited or in most cases NO vechile access which is nice because where there is vechile acces you spend the whole time trying not to get hit. but it means you walk EVERYWHERE! which I ofcourse have no problem with!!!

also another funni thing is that when all vechiles (motorbikes jeeps and van taxi type things)(they dont have cars here) go downhill they all cut their engines and just coast downhill ! which is pretty hilareous!

on tuesday night for dinner we visited one of the guys mum knew from school and we had dinner there! they were hindu and so they ate all veges but his wife showed me how to cook chapatis???(like circle bread things) and tht was so much fun you roll out the dough then stick it straight into a gas flame and whatch it burn! great for4 piromaniacs!
we also had lessons on hindu weddings which were really interestings with the whole arranged marriage thing ! cos its still much more popular than what they call "a love marriage" because they belive love marraiges break up and arranged dont how tht works i dunno but it all sounded really horrible imagine meeting your partner at the altar!!!!!!

also she was teling us about the dowry systemn that they abide by and this is where the brides family have to give at the least a million rupees and on average about 7 million (im bad at maths about 30 rupees to the NZ dolla u do the conversion...) which is alot of money but yeh hows its a must in every hindu family! another intresting thing about the whole dowry thing is because its the girls parents who have to do it india is mostly male ! and there were signs all over calcutta saying female feoticide(or something like that) is a crime because girls are not wanted! also when we went to the mother theresa orphanage there were 90 girls and 30 boys another sign of how much they are unwanted and this is mainly because of the dowry thing also cos of business and family heritage etc. but yeh interesting...

well thats all for now folks and if i encounter the yeti i will let you know!
love roxanne

2 Comments:

At 18 December 2004 at 6:49 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You guys seem to be having a reall good time. Just wanted to remark about your "internet"-ing experience in Kolkata. On your way back, I suggest that you use the Reliance Web World. It's cheap, fast and effective.Please do not let the PCs on Free School Street delude you, India is not at all primitive as far as software is considered.

 
At 28 December 2004 at 9:57 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Roxanne - that was a very interesting read! I'm glad you enjoyed Darjeeling. I wish my boys would go up there and experience the beautiful mountains and the lovely people before Darjeeling becomes spoiled by 'city' people, lol!

I grew up with your mum within the Old Friendly Walls of Mount Hermon.
Tee, hee, it's Aunty Tip from Thailand!

 

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