A Reason to Step Out Into the Rains
a few days in Kalimpong
Three decades in Calcutta, and the first time in Kalimpong. It was a mysterious aberration explainable only because of a dusty dry humid pass-through experience we had one noon years back, which made us feel that Kalimpong was another hill station to be filed as ‘no longer liveable or visitable’!
Maybe the niltavas called out, or the rhododendrons threw their fragrance our way, but that’s where we headed to, once Calcutta’s humidity became unbearable. And the regrets came fast and furious - why hadn’t we been here before?
Kalimpong can be anything you want it to be. It could be the mist-strewn lost valley or the tiny nook with a quaint cafe, it could be the town you despair for as it bursts at its seams or the edge of a valley where you see nothing but cloud-encrusted hills and hamlets with lonely cottages. Kalimpong could be a homestay in the middle of a paddy-field or a luxury hotel where you see Kanchenjunga without lifting your head from your pillow. In its length and breadth, Kalimpong is as breathtaking in its diversity as it is diverse in its history. And it is easy to see the attraction of its charms for both the holiday-maker as well as the wage-earner, as both feed into each other, to make coexistence possible, necessary and desirable - well, not always desirable.
A Buddhist monk we spoke to in Geden Tharpa Choling Monastery said that the word Kalimpong meant “the hills where people met” in Lepcha - and I wondered about a language which had a word for that gorgeous endeavour! But it made sense when I heard that Kalimpong was once a part of Bhutan, the happiest country in the world. Till, of course, the Britishers came and did what they do best - fight a war and make this beautiful region their own. Unsurprisingly, Kalimpong at that time was a hamlet with a handful of families eking out their living. Settlers followed, as did trade. The Bhutanese stayed on, Nepalis saw the growing prosperity of the region and came in droves, missionaries salivated when they saw legions of ‘non-believers’ and poured in to set up churches and schools, Buddhists came in whilst fleeing a China busy annexing Tibet. In fact, Dalai Lama visited Kalimpong in the 70s, and consecrated the Zang Dhok Palri Phodang monastery, home as it was to many Tibetan scriptures.
Kalimpong is a place for wish fulfilment. We could never get tired of doing slow travel there, to stop and absorb the pine trees and the monasteries and the valley views, and walk the back alleys, completely lost, and happy for it. We ambled between precariously constructed houses, small meadows overflowing with brambles and children, sit-outs with women happily gossiping, and children racing the slopes on rickety bicycles and laughing when they fell. A kind-faced man on a burly motorcycle offered a ride to us, and a shopkeeper offered one pack of ParleG in lieu of change.
For a city overflowing with warmth, it is quixotic that it is known for its cacti. In Pine View Park, one of the many cacti nurseries, one can see the incredibly beautiful cultivation and the sheer variety found in Kalimpong. Not surprisingly, if one comes in season, one can see hills filled with rhododendrons and gardens overflowing with orchids and gladioli. We were just happy to revel in the pure unperturbed pine tree forests of a place like Lava, which, by the way, is a place to stay in, in one of the many homestays strewn around, for the purest air and the least crowds.
Though the planners of the city did attempt to keep the purity of the city’s charm integrated into its more obvious and constructed charms. The science museum, for example, is incredibly fun and scenic, as a host of its interactive exhibits are on the slopes of a hill, often lost in thick mist! Or the wayside Buddha Park, which is literally on the main road, with its oversized statue, serene even as the bells of a nearby Shiv temple raucously self-declares omniscience. Taking a contrarian view to existence, Mangal Dham temple just let a city grow around it, into its maze of unplanned construction and lanes overflowing with the living and their sufficiencies.
A walk through the town is instructive. It is built, determinedly and with cavalier randomness, on the curved ridge between Deolo and Durpin hills. You can see its width from Deolo Park - and be dismayed. We drove and walked through its length multiple times. These were not pretty scenic lanes of a dream hill station, but functional locales, for business and residence, obviously mismanaged by an incompetent municipality. But it was a town with everything. Tailors to fistula cures, hot vegetarian food joints to a café called Baked in Bombay, sheltered fruit vendors to alfresco Shiv mandirs, JaiShreeRam flags on doorways to prayer flags on roofs.
But, as I have always held, to garner the best of every Indian hill station, you have to go beyond the destroyed center town. And Kalimpong was no different.
One of the best walks we did was in the cantonment area. We walked beside the 9-hole jagged golf course with its tough greens, till we reached the Green Gale Cafe in front of the beautiful ivy-strewn Morgan House. This area is ten minutes away from town, and seems to be a different township. And, of course, we hiked to Tiffin Dara, when on the way to Lava. It was a lovely hike through a friendly looking-&-sounding forest (none of the dark and deep resonances!!). The view was not to die for, but the journey was worth it all.
It was raining profusely when we went to Delo Park. But who cared, when the mood was in and there were oversized umbrellas over our heads? In the park, there is a path which curls right up to the edge, which is also the precipice to the mountainside. And we were offered a sudden clearing and a view of a deep and endless valley, stretching till our eyes could see no more. We lingered, unwilling to tear away, with droplets from the ferrule of the umbrella falling like blessings in front of us. The path meandered into a forest, getting darker and deeper as we went in. We sat on a wooden bench in a tiny shelter, at one with the rain-infused silence.
We knew we would be having a bowl of steaming Maggi and ginger tea on our way back. We knew we might decide to linger. Maybe we would fold away our umbrellas and get wet.
It was nice to be in a place where all decisions were right.
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