Touring Tea Town

There are stray animals everywhere we go, and if it were possible May would bring all of them home.

At this roadside shrine we saw a man jog towards it, do 100 feet of high legs, swivel and say a swift prayer towards the shrine with a bowed head and jog onwards, all without missing a beat.

This is a Darjeeling street at 9am. By evening it was wall to wall people.

We spent the day bumming around in Darjeeling, touring a tea factory and walking through the crowded markets all over town. Street vendors line many of the narrow roads, which compresses the foot traffic and makes dodging vehicular traffic more interesting. There was still the atmosphere of a festival, and we stopped to watch some small stage performances of singers and a play. 

Our friend who called May ‘Enggy’ (rhymes with Benji)

My favorite part of the day was visiting the local Tibetan Refugee Camp. There was a small museum chronicling the invasion of Tibet and occupation by the Chinese, with beautiful photos of the Tibetan people and cultural artifacts. It was heartbreaking. We were then able to take a tour and see the traditional Tibetan dyes used on yarns, and watch a few adorable grandmothers spinning the wool. There were several people weaving the yarn into incredibly beautiful rugs by hand on giant looms in another section. It was like stepping into the past to see each row systematically hand knotted, pounded tight, and trimmed. It takes two months to make a 6ft x 3ft rug. A little girl darted in and out of whatever part of the camp we were in, giggling and obviously curious about who we were. In the gift shop, she asked the English speaking shop keeper if May and I were friends or sisters. Both the shop keeper and the little girl expressed surprise when I said that May was my daughter. The girl shook her head and said the Tibetan equivalent of ‘no way’, pointing to May and saying ’Enggy’ (slang for foreigner, derived from ‘English’), then pointing at me and saying ‘a che’ (sister in Tibetan). The shop keeper shook her head in embarrassment, but said “You do look Tibetan”. The girl skipped around us the rest of the time we were at the camp shouting merrily, “Enggy! A Che!”. As we drove away, May said dryly, “Well, that’s one word in Tibetan I won’t forget”.