Futile Effort...

At some anonymous bus station trying to find our way to the border town of Jaigoan. Incidentally it took us a train, a car ride, and a bus to get there from Kolkata.
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After we arrived on the all night train in West Bengal state at 7 AM, we made our way by "taxi" to the only airport in the region.  By about 12:30 we had completed buying our tickets to get us back to Delhi in time for our flight to Beijing so we got on a bus for Jaigon.  The main attraction in Jaigon isn't actually in Jaigon.  The main attraction is that according to the guidebook you can enter Bhutan for one day without a visa from there as long as you are back by 10PM.  In Bhutan...  THEY EAT COWS!!!!  That was all I needed to know...  I was on my way!  I couldn't wait to put them back in their place for a moment...

Break stop during the bus ride. Good thing I didn't have to use a WC as I am not sure were we were supposed to go. Men just did it wherever and who cares about the womens' needs.
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We spent 3.5 hours in a shaking, hot, exhaust-filled contraption doing a bus imitation.  We got to Jaigon in the evening and were ready to crash and head for Bhutan and a big steak the next day.  We dutifully awoke the next morning, wandered all over trying to arrange transport out that evening and after thwarting many attempts to cheat us had it figured out.  We walked happily to the border anxious to leave the lying, cheating, vegetarians behind and get to the land of steak and cleanliness...  Only to discover the rules had changed since the book was printed.  We couldn't go in!  All we could do was look through the gate and dream of what might have been.  Crushing!!!  We left immediately on the next contraption out of town.  Once again a "bus" but this one had a horn on it that felt like it was honking in the middle of my brain!  It was the most high-pitched, ear-splitting, vehicle horn I have ever heard.  (And on this trip we have heard a lot!)  The trip to Jaigon was a total failure...  But, like any adventure, the failure became a part of the adventure and it was pretty funny how much we went through to get there and back for absolutely nothing!!  Sometimes the most fun is looking back on frustration and Jaigon certaily was.  So many little details...  Me trying to do an old guy on a pedal rickshaw a favor by using him instead of a faster motorized rickshaw with a young driver and then upon arrival having him fight over the price and want more than the motorized charge thinking I wouldn't know!  The "travel" agents sending us from one place to another to find out we should have been someplace that actually sold what we need...  etc.