Green Day — Darjeeling Day 2
“There is good cross ventilation through the living room.” That’s usually a clincher when you’re looking for an apartment in sultry yet surprisingly breezy Chennai. You don’t always get that, but if you do, it is very hard to pass that offer. Apparently, big/multiple balconies are a temptation in multi-season Bangalore (not sure, so could be inaccurate). Usually, such temptations are related to climatic patterns, the topography and the general lifestyle of the place. I think Darjeeling’s deal was space heaters. When a civilization clearly knows that the winters are biting cold, you would think that they would have better mechanisms to handle the cold indoors. To have one small space heater for a decent sized room, makes little to no sense. And getting out of bed was a cold reminder of that.
Mornings are always stressful when you’re on vacation because you would love to have the choice to sleep just a little longer in the cozy hotel bed but doing so even for five more minutes could mean that you would be visiting a place less for the day or that you’d even be missing breakfast (some hotels have ridiculous breakfast timings). And yes, I can see the hypocrisy when I use stressful and vacation in the same sentence.
We had about forty minutes to get our breakfast done and the buffet spread was quite large. I quite enjoyed the two meals I had the previous day and hence was looking forward to this. It seemed like the restaurant received very positive feedback from other guests the previous day as well. At least I think so because that is the only possible explanation for the chefs deciding to serve the same dishes (possibly leftovers) from the previous day for breakfast. Vegetable croquettes from last lunch were served as veggie cutlets now and vegetable hakka noodles from last night was served as chowmein. There was a live cooking station and obviously I safely went for it. They served a ghee roast dosai, which was as light as a feather, and a cheese omelette that was as loaded with cheese as a Domino’s cheese burst crust.
We had to drive down for an hour to reach the spot that we were told about the previous day — Tieedi Forest Garden. The gates were made with bamboo and interestingly, was on an outward curve. We were greeted by a warm man, Saurabh. A steep stack of stairs lead into a pretty house, were we were served tea and welcomed by another good man Abhishek (watch out for him in one of the next Jayam Ravi movies!) Now, before I had this tea, I decided that this will decide my opinion of tea in Darjeeling. And I can gladly say that the tea was amazing and the cold weather enhanced the experience.
To top the tea, Chungi, an inquisitive and incredibly cute labrador walked in to greet us. She scared my mom but the point remains that she was absolutely adorable and extremely smart (more on that later). My mom is scared of dogs and Chungi immediately understood that and walked away. And obviously, I followed her to find that she had another friend — Coco, sleeping on the side. Chungi walked to the steps, kept watching her friend and followed suit.
We were informed briefly about Tieedi and how it came about. Most of the work being carried out here have been volunteered by people from different parts of the country. There were even a couple of German interns working and inventing innovative methods to work with nature.
Saurabh lead us to a full fledged tour through parts of the forest that they were working to clear and nurture based on permaculture and sustainable forest reconstruction. As we walked past a neighbouring house, I heard Illamai Idho Idho play faintly in the background. But everyone else denied it. It was January 2 after all. Maybe this song was my mind’s way of continuing the celebration with the mandatory new year song. But I digress.
We were taken through a beautiful declining footpath that had bamboo railings when the path gets too steep. Saurabh showed us a decent sized piece of land along the hill that had been cleaned by a noble man for months together, collecting multiple sacks of plastic waste from the ground. This cleaning is imperative, especially along the hills, as plastic can form a layer over which another layer of mud or sand can be formed which makes it hard for trees to hold the soil with their roots, which in turn makes the land looser, making the hill more susceptible to landslides during monsoon.
It was rather amazing how different “waste” products have been utilized for completely irrelevant purposes. The footpath was soft in many areas — they were filled with wood shavings, which is biodegradable and hence an effective replacement of soil apparently.
They are building small houses with roofs that are curved to better capture the available heat. We entered one of the houses that was nearing completion and it was amazing how the temperature was moderated despite being pretty cold outside. The walls are made of solidified mud and there were electrical lines through the mud walls as well (beats me how they got that through!).
We walked through short bridges made, again, with strong bamboo. There were many plants of different species with different needs that were being maintained accordingly through the path. We were quite surprised to see some banana trees on a hill. There was a small curved stream of water running down from an elevated point, beating through small pebbles and rocks. Apparently, the path was previously stuffed with plastic to the extent that it choked water flow. And now, the plastic has been replaced with pebbles, giving greater surface area for the water.
After about an hour of walking up and down a narrow path, we decided to sit on a rock facing the stream and get introduced to the Japanese practice of Shinrin-Yoku, which roughly translates to “forest bathing” using a single leaf.
I remember watching some random short film on YouTube where the plot revolved around a man being considered senile for applying turmeric to “wounded” trees. I didn’t really buy the concept or feel moved by the film and neither did the judges of the reality show it featured in. I couldn’t help but remember that when I saw turmeric and lime being used to treat bamboos. Maybe that video was based on some truth after all then!
Through the journey, we were accompanied by Chungi and Coco. We were clearly too slow for the both of them as they would run through alternate paths without breaking a sweat and wait for us in disappointment. And Coco was quite the poser as well — he would notice me pointing my phone camera at him and stay still till I’m done. Coco left us halfway to take another nap in the comfort of his home. But Chungi kept with us. And as much as she knew how scared my mom was, she kept standing behind my mom to make sure she was doing fine with the steep passages in the journey. She knew the places we were going to beforehand and would wait for us at every stopping point. She would even go down a path and turn around for us — in a manner of guiding us and showing us the way. She is yet another proof of why we don’t deserve dogs.
I was also thoroughly surprised that there are natural ways to treat grey water and that they were using these methods quite effectively. Apparently, banana trees can help with the treatment. They also had a self-sufficient vegetable garden with interesting crops such as spring onions (also known as green onions), parsley, bay leaves and cherry tomatoes. And how do they find the nutrients to grow such a wide variety of crops, you ask? They have their own functioning compost pit.
After a nice walk of 2–3 hours, we were starving. We really wanted to taste some food authentic to the location. As we walked up to the cozy home, we were told that the chef is from Tamil Nadu. I knew it wasn’t just my mind playing Ilamai Idho Idho! Chef Rehman greeted us in Tamil as he laid the plates on the table.
We were served Gunthrukh — a soup made using white radish leaves, dal rice served with Jara — a tangy oily curry made with the root of squash, Saag — a spinach-based gravy and topped it with an exquisite pickle made using bamboo shoots (a Nagaland delicacy).
We were also served Tongba — a warm millet-based fermented drink served in a gigantic wooden container with a wooden straw. This drink is not for the faint-hearted though — you have to really pull hard on the straw to get some of the drink past the layer of fermented millet. There was a very light effervescence to it though. We were later informed that it contained 2% alcohol. The much-consumed Sprite contains 0.2% alcohol. Just saying.
My brother and I managed to pet Chungi to sleep as we waited for people to group in for a photo. Things can’t be more chilled out, can it? We left the Tieedi Forest Garden with a content heart, a content stomach and a confused mind. We were told Tieedi stands for something but were left pondering for an answer — much like Cobb’s spinning token from the final shot of Inception.
On our way back, we planned to make arrangements for a short trip on the train up and down the hill the next day. Paravu stopped by the curb near the Ghum train station. An Innova parking in a corner of a road in Darjeeling is not so different from a share auto coming to a screeching stop in the middle of the road in Chennai because some freaky passenger alarms the driver to stop as the vehicle crosses her/his destination, “just for kicks”.
It was a small station and we ran around the station twice in the same way kids hopped up on sugar run around in wedding halls. And there was no station manager in sight at 4PM. We went back to the car perplexed but Paravu almost seemed like he expected that. Just when I thought things can’t be more chilled out! Maybe Darjeeling could use something more than a space heater to heat things up.
We returned to our rooms, extremely tired. But time seems to stand still out here. We slept for what seemed like eternity, only to wake up at 5:30PM. We found ourselves in the game room again. We played air hockey on a broken machine. It is a lot more fun, tiring, louder and surprisingly dangerous.
After a long session of no-air air hockey, we sat by the campfire to listen to a hired singer croon really well to roughly five people. He did it with a smile and in the biting cold too. One would have hoped for a better turnout.
Just when I thought I had seen enough for the day, the dinner buffet threw me this. It is a legitimate Mughal dish, as it turns out.
