DARJEELING, GORKHALAND
When we last left our fair city, the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha had ordered all residents of Darjeeling to cease all business activity. I mean everything. All transport in and out of the city was cut off, everyone who needed to be somewhere had already left and the town was dead. The photo below is the same area as the one in the previous post.

The only services allowed to operate were pharmacies, hospitals and ambulances, which were manipulated brilliantly by a disarmingly friendly Englishman I met the night before. He needed to catch a plane out of Bagdogra, but he didn’t hear about the bandh until it was too late and ended up stranded in Darjeeling. Locals and “seasoned India travelers” insisted he was out of luck (the latter usually adding, “well you should have known better, I guess you just haven’t been in India long enough”), but our hero thought he might as well try. The next day, as a giant middle finger to everyone who pussed out in the face of second-rate political turmoil, dude sneaks into the back of an ambulance with an old German woman and makes it out of town.

We didn’t really have anywhere to go, so Kate and I made a half-assed attempt to stock up on emergency rations instead. A bag of bananas, a kilo of Nepali cheese and two bottles of rum were all we really thought to buy for the two-day death of Darjeeling, so it’s a good thing the restaurant next door was willing to make food (don’t tell anybody).