At the age of about 12, I captained the first tour from my school in Calcutta, with 16 other boys. We took a train from Sealdah station to Siliguri, and then boarded the so-called toy train, which chugged very slowly up to the hill-station of Darjeeling. The toy train still exists, but India's steam engines have all been retired.
We were full of mischief, curiosity, enormous appetites for food, sight-seeing, and staring at the local children, with their cheeks as red as ripe tomatoes, especially the girls. We found the cheapest place to stay, in the basement of a Marwari dharamshala. Since it had a dirt floor, we had to unroll our own bedrolls and spread them out in order to walk on them instead of the mud beneath. It was so cold that for seven days, I was the only one who bathed, and that too with great difficulty, in the icy-cold water coming out of the tap.
No comments:
Post a Comment