Give Me Novocaine

Where bicycle rickshaws go to die
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By Christina

Sometimes the best laid plans…fall by the wayside. Such was the case with our recent quest to reach the town of Darjeeling in northern India. For the third time in three countries (Kenya, Sri Lanka and now India), political strife got in the way of tourism, when a massive strike shut down the entire Darjeeling region just six days before our scheduled arrival. All public transportation was cancelled, all shops were closed, all tourist sights locked shut, and food was limited. Hugely disappointed at missing out on this beautiful “gateway to the Himalayas” (not to mention the toy train – a narrow gauge train that is a World Heritage site), we had to console ourselves with camping out in the town of Siliguri for two days. We made the best of it.

Downtown Siliguri
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Our first challenge was finding a hotel. This proved to be a bit difficult because all of the other Darjeeling-bound tourists were also stuck in Siliguri. It took five tries, but we finally lucked out at the Lifestyle Hotel, located in the heart of the city. The hotel had everything we needed: it was close to the market where we could wander around and stock up on depleted necessities; it had an adjacent restaurant from which we could order room service (to Abby’s delight, they made a mean toasted cheese sandwich); and it had a television with loads of channels. The TV would figure prominently in our time in Siliguri. With nothing much else to do, we indulged in re-runs of Friends and lots of Animal Planet. Best of all, however, was American Idol, which we took to like curry on rice.

Bird Flu in the making
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Back home we had never had the time to watch American Idol, even though we all knew it would be fun to see. Now, with nothing but time on our hands, we watched it for two nights in a row, enjoying the men’s competition one night and the ladies’ the next. We loved it and had fun critiquing the contestants’ song choices, clothing and singing ability. I predict we will continue to make an effort to watch this show in the weeks to come, although our ability to find a television that offers up American Idol might be tricky.

Abby and I also managed to kill some time getting hot oil treatments on our hair at the “Ladies Beauty Parlor” down the road. I couldn’t resist checking out the place, as it was shrouded in curtains and the door handle actually said in big red letters “ladies only”. We had a great time hanging out with the ladies (as always the worker to customer ratio weighed heavily in our favor) and the head massages were great. The ladies loved having Abby around to pet and pinch her cheeks, although I did feel a bit extravagant taking her with me since half of the women in the city probably could not afford the place.

Our second night’s dinner was a bit of a fiasco. We were determined to eat something other than room service, so we cruised over to what Lonely Planet claimed was the best joint in town. We gave ourselves two hours to get there (it was about three blocks away) and finish dinner in time for our TV show. Service in India is notoriously slow, so we tried to move things along by asking for the menu as soon as we walked in the door. Of course they only brought us one menu, so we had to ask for three more. We haven’t quite figured out what the deal is with the one menu phenomenon. I haven’t had this confirmed, but I think that when Indians dine out, the man at the table usually orders for the group, so there is no need for more than one menu. Or, perhaps it has something to do with the low literacy rates here. Whatever the reason, we didn’t want to lose precious minutes waiting for each of us to peruse the menu and make a choice.

We placed our drink orders at the same time as the food order, and we definitely had the feeling that things were being lost in translation. In fact, after that, things went pretty haywire. For one, they thought Dan ordered two large (24 ounce) beers. About twenty minutes later, two 12-ounce glasses of Kingfisher appeared, with the entire glass carefully wrapped in a napkin so as to conceal what exactly it contained. Ten minutes later, two more camouflaged glasses were brought to the table. That was probably more beer than Dan needed, but rather than explain the mistake, Dan suffered through and drank it all.

Then they brought noodles with veggies for Abby, who had ordered spaghetti with tomato sauce. Abby has gotten used to subtleties of ordering western food in India, but she was a little disappointed since we had carefully confirmed that the sauce on the noodles was tomato. We sent the noodles back only to have them reappear a few minutes later reincarnated as chow mein without veggies. Put off by the decidedly soy taste to them, Abby asked for a toasted cheese sandwich. After another twenty minutes or so passed, they brought Abby what I would call “blackened grill cheese”. She made a good effort anyway (she was pretty hungry by this point) and ate quite a bit of it. Grayson and I actually did alright in the food department, as I had basically just opened the menu and pointed at a couple of the veggie items (we are not eating chicken because of nasty Bird Flu problems in India).

While eating, we asked for the bill since we knew that it would take a while to get it. We had to ask for it two more times, as time was creeping perilously close to the anointed hour for AI. Finally, after close to a half hour we got the bill. Quickly hopping on bicycle rickshaws, we raced home just in time for the opening credits.

Sometimes one just needs a break from the rigors of travel….