Moving On From Darjeeling - 12/21/08 = Jim

Feeling pretty good today, and it's a good thing, it is time to move on from Darjeeling, we have train tickets from a station about 4 or 5 hours away. We packed last night so we were pretty much ready to move out early in the morning. We had some breakfast, food we bought last night so we didn't have to go out this AM, checked out of our guest house and went to the area where the share jeeps congregate before leaving for various locations. We were going to the NJP railway station near the city of Siliguri. After a while we began to despair that a jeep going our way was going to fill up in time to get us to NJP in time to catch our train and worked out a deal with a driver where we each paid to two seats instead of one, it gave us more room, a real plus in these overcrowded vehicles, and the driver agreed to leave right away. The ride down the hill was pretty uneventful but quite beautiful, we were at about 7000' in Darjeeling and we were going down to the norther Indian plain, probably between 300' and 500'. Once again the jeep made the trip in far less than the advertised time and we were at the NJP Railroad station in about 2 1/2 hours. This gave us plenty of time before the train, which in a train station can be a negative because it exposes you the the various touts for a longer time than usual. We decided to find a little use track and camp out there for a while. This worked pretty well, only a few people begged from us and/or tried to sell us something, one of the beggars however confirmed one of my suspicions about some of the beggars. She came by begging for money for food to feed herself and her family and as it happened we had some food with us which we offered to her, she rejected it insisting on money, which we did not give her. Now, I believe that many beggars are truly in need but I also know, from experiences in the Philippines, that some of them are organized by gangs which use them to raise money, giving very little back to the individual beggar - a shame because it makes it hard to give to the truly needy. Another person came by and struck up a conversation with us while we were waiting, at first we thought he might be trying to sell us something but he just wanted to talk. He seemed to be pretty well educated, his English was above average, and he had an inquiring mind, asking us a lot of good questions about other places and life outside India. It was obvious, though, from the clothes he wore and other things he said that he was jobless and that without some kind of inside track he wasn't going to be able to use his inquiring mind to earn a living. A sad fact of life for many in India.

Finally, it was 2:30PM and we boarded the train to Patna, in Bihar State, from where we would make our way south to Bodhgaya, the village where tradition tell us that Siddartha Gautama became enlightened under a Pipal tree and became the Buddha. We settled in on the train, had a bit to eat from the vendors and about nine I crawled into my top bunk for a bit of sleep, a bit because the train arrived in Patna at around 3:30AM. As I pulled myself into the bunk I heard a voice say "welcome to the attic". It was the guy in the next bunk, separated from me by a partial wall and some grating, who turned out to be a friendly guy about my age from Sikkim who was, together with his family, also headed to Bodhgaya. We talked for a while about life, travel, education, the usual; he had been educated by European priests in Darjeeling which explained his really good English. By the time we finished talking we had agreed to go together in renting a jeep to Bodhgaya the next day, he had a total of five people and there were the two of us, enough to afford to rent the whole jeep. This saved us at least two bus rides and probably more, and a whole lot of hastle. On arrival in Patna we rested for a short while, Sonam, our new friend, had his 83 year old mother in law with him, and then he went outside to negotiate with the jeep drivers. We had agreed earlier that it was best for Adam and I to keep out of sight, the sight of foreigners has an inflationary effect on all prices in India. The deal was cut and we started out in the early hours of the AM for Bodhgaya. However, we were no sooner out of the parking lot of the train station when our driver was pulled over by a local Patna policeman who, quite blatantly, demanded a pay off in lieu of a ticket for some imagined offense. Bihar is known as one of the more wild and lawless parts of India and it was living up to its reputation. After only one more pay off, in the town of Gaya, about 10K from our destination, we arrived in Bodhgaya and incredibly just after entering town I spotted our hotel and we were there. Even more amazing, though it was only about 8 AM, they had a room for us. We moved in, ate a bit, cleaned up and because we really weren't really ready to sleep went out for a walk. Our walk took us to the Root Institute, a Buddhist meditation center and school, were we wanted to check out programs we might take while we were in town. It turned out that there were no two and three day programs while we were there, because of Christmas probably, but there was a talk that evening by a Tibetan Monk, so we arranged to have dinner there and then attend the talk. We then headed back to our hotel, stopping along the way for a good Thai lunch. Now we were tired and we spent part of the afternoon resting before heading back to the Root Institute for dinner and the talk. It was a beautiful cool evening and the walk was pleasant as was the simple dinner. Unfortunately, the speakers command of English was not so pleasant and his talk wandered quite a bit, to bad. We left a little early, walked back to our hotel and quickly fell asleep.