We drove into the hotel at 11 PM, with all our limbs intact.

‘If you need me to show you around or drive you back to Bagdogra, you can call me,’ said Ram Bhai, flashing a multi-colored visiting card around. ‘With all this taxi association tamasha, business has been slow.’

I considered telling him that the taxi association problem apart, it probably wasn’t such a bright idea to tell your customers upfront that you were a militant either; it just didn’t seem good for business. But I was still within shooting range and the hotel bell-boy still had a couple of pieces to unload from the vehicle; so I just nodded my head, played around with my phone, and pretended to take down his number.

I’d very tactfully booked a room at the Hidden Forest Retreat on our way to Gangtok without the missus waking up. Hence, some puzzled glances were exchanged in the room when Ram, the bell-boy – who we later found also manned the reservation desk, the kitchen, the housekeeping and quite possibly the legislature of Sikkim as well – announced very apologetically:

‘Sir, If you had only called earlier Sir, I could have arranged for some dinner as well Sir…’

I coughed violently till he’d stopped talking, and then asked him if he could at least manage two cups of tea. The missus isn’t much of a foodie, but is extremely partial to the odd cup of tea every 60 seconds or so.

‘Yes sir, yes sir,’ said Ram, wrinkling his face up in a smile that almost devoured his eyes entirely, while bowing down to an angle that I had previously considered humanly impossible and back-stepped out of the room. I might as well have told him I was another reincarnation of the Karmapa.

You will understand that while frantically Googling hotels on my phone, I was not so much looking for luxury as survival. So, as we looked around our room, we were pleasantly surprised – A nice, cozy cottage, hugging the steep incline of a mountain, and overlooking another. The room itself was fairly spacious, clean and well maintained. Stepping out into the balcony, as a chilly breeze greeted us from the sea of lights from the valley below, I tried not to look surprised or over-whelmed in order to give the impression that all this had been well thought through and planned out. While a complement was obviously too much to expect, but the look on the missus’ face said that I’d done rather well. Very well.

We woke up late the next morning. There wasn’t much we’d planned to do anyway. Just the fact that we were not waking up to alarm clocks or doorbells, no thought of having to let the maid in at such and such a time, or get ready for office by this time seemed supremely indulgent and relaxing. Add to that the sight of the mountainside from the window, half covered with clouds, the faint chime of bells/ gongs from a monastery far away, warm tea, and the smell of the thousands of flowers that covered the entire property, and it was as if time had decided to slow down a bit to help us catch our breath. Neither of us spoke a word. We just sat there in bed staring out of window, sipping our ginger tea, and wondering why was it that we lived anywhere else.

Later in the morning, Ram, in his chef avatar, came over to invite us for breakfast. He seemed to be still suffering from guilt pangs at not being able to serve us dinner the other night. So efforts to make up for that translated into a breakfast spread that could have easily satisfied a small army battalion. The food was good, but every time we’d try and get up, Ram would materialize from somewhere, pick up another untouched dish from a remote corner of the table and offer to serve it:

‘Sir, bhindi, sir!’

This went on for some time till we had devoured substantial amounts of bhindi-sir, gobi-sir and what not.

‘This can’t go on,’ I whispered to the missus, as I held my tummy in discomfort. ‘He is feeding us to death!not going to let us go till we’ve eaten everything!’

‘Everything’ at that moment was four more untouched bowls of subzee, some sweets, a couple of omelets, bowlful of fruits and whatever he was going to get from the kitchen next. ‘Everything’ also seemed like imminent death. So, the next time Ram back-stepped into the kitchen, we decided to get hold of all the bowls of subzee, scoop out a spoonful of the content and paste it on the sides of the bowl to make them look used, strewed a couple of plums on our plate, and made a mad dash for our room.

We didn’t have too many days in Sikkim. So while we would have been happy just lazing around after the sumptuous, yet agonizing breakfast, I suggested that we might as well go around town since we were there. The missus liked the idea, but also realized that if all this cordial business went on any longer, I might actually start developing some self-esteem. So, she played her trump card.

‘Great. Let’s walk.’

‘Huh?’

‘Let’s walk to the Mall Road,’ as we left our room. ‘How far can it be?’

‘Sure,’ I said. But I knew this wasn’t going to be just a walk. This was the walk. It was a test that had consequences so far reaching, that it had the potential to alter my life for the next 6 months. I was all too familiar with this line of thought. Walks > panting > stamina > bad health > lack of exercise > triglycerides, cholesterol, doctor >bland food > screwed. But there was very little I could have done. Luckily, the clouds burst open before my lungs did, and we had to get a cab after a few minutes of leaving the hotel. The shared taxi driver quite unnecessarily asked where we were headed (for, in any hill station, you are either going to Mall Road, or leaving Mall Road), but other than that, everything else was fine.

The mall road in Gangtok, unlike in other hill stations where it’s just a marketing concept that lives in tourism offices and websites, is actually a physical entity. Bang in the centre of town, it’s a no-cars-allowed stretch of cobbled street, guarded on either side by an unending line of shops and eateries of every size and variety. The missus had a grand time window-shopping, convincing every shop-owner to take down their entire inventory from the shelves for closer inspection, and then twitching her nose and casually walking away without buying a thing.

‘How much is this bag for?’

‘800,’ the unsuspecting shopkeeper would answer, expecting the exchange to actually end in some kind of transaction.

‘No, 200,’ the missus would answer in that ‘I know about these things and don’t you mess around with me’ kind of tone.

‘400,’ the shopkeeper would answer, his voice betraying his crumbling conviction.

‘200!’

‘Ok, ok. 200’

‘Hmm…I think I will look around some more…’

The idea of bargaining for bargaining’s sake is a concept that has limited appeal amongst men. Being less evolved, most men even find this behavior awkward – but women obviously know better. As we walked away from the first couple of shops, I thought a sympathetic nod to the shopkeeper would ease my conscience. But after an hour of this, I decided the best strategy would be enter the shop a few seconds apart, and linger on a little longer after the missus walked out so as to be able to pretend that we were not actually together.

After about 3 hours of this, we finally made our first purchase. A tea pot. Which I was forced to stand in the middle of the street with and admire from various angles.

‘It’s nice, right?’

‘Yes, yes. Awesome.’

‘You don’t like it?’

‘Of course I do. I just said I do. It’s marvelous.’

‘Are you making fun of my choice?’

‘No-no! This tea-pot is awesome. It would be incredible having tea from it.’

‘That’s why I don’t like coming out shopping with you. You just make a joke out of everything…’

At around 3 PM, our virtual shopping free mercifully came to an end and we walked into a café for lunch. Momos and beer. And momos. And some more beer. It again felt like I was on vacation. I might have overdone the taste-the-local-beer thing a bit, for I hadn’t realized that the missus had started chatting up with a couple on the table beside ours. It was an NRI couple from London. Both of them were lawyers, in their late 20s- early 30s. Smiles and hand-shakes happened. Conversation about momos, Sikkim and world peace ensued (not necessarily in that order). I nodded my head politely at all the right moments to look interested.

As soon as the couple left, I knew I was in some sort of trouble. It wasn’t enough that the guy was an extremely successful lawyer. The fucker was repulsively healthy, unimaginably polite,  talked in an English accent, and had come all the way from London to spend time in Sikkim, teaching mathematics to kids in some remote school.

Sensing the tsunami of conversation that was coming my way, I thought I’d put things in perspective by clarifying that the guy could claim very little credit for his accent as this was totally dependent of where one lives, and that I too would talk in that manner if I stayed abroad, but I ended up inadvertently belching instead. Luckily, the missus was pre-occupied.

‘Isn’t that nice?,’ the missus announced, escorting the couple out of the place with her admiring stare.

‘Hhmmm’

‘Imagine how much fund they must be having…!’

‘Hmmm…are you going to drink that?’

‘…and to think that they came all the way here from London.’

‘Their company must have paid for it…’

‘We should also do something…’

‘…lawyers need to cleanse their conscience every once in a while…’

‘Let’s do it!’

‘Do what?’

‘Something spontaneous!’

‘Another plate of momos?’

‘No, seriously Rishi…’

My name being mentioned in a sentence is usually a sign of me having ‘not listened’ myself in to a tricky situation.

‘Like what?’

***

By the time we returned to our hotel after visiting the couple of monasteries and the usual tourist places in and around the city, it was already 5 PM. And throughout this time, there had been a lot of words like ‘spontaneity’ and ‘adventurous’ hurled at me. But having imbibed Mr. Denzongpa’s finest, I thought I was doing a pretty decent job of modulating frequencies, and merging all this chatter into the ambient noise. That is, until we were back in the hotel and I realized that we had apparently come to the conclusion that we’d seen all that Gangtok had to offer and we needed to do something different now. The brief for the next 3 days was clearly and precisely laid out: we needed to ‘head out’ and do something ‘spontaneous’ and ‘adventurous’.

P.S. The Hidden Forest Retreat is a lovely place. If going to Gangtok, this is the place to stay – great location, very nice rooms, great hospitality.

Next: Sikkim, Part IV (Places of Interest) – Coming Soon

Read Sikkim, Part I and Part II

Hidden Forest Photographs Courtesy: © Hidden Forest Resort

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

It seems obvious on hindsight, but it looked like a very good idea at the time. A break away from work to the salubrious climes of Goa was exactly what I needed. Of course there was the minor matter of me being employed by a company and required to attend office every weekday. So, when I cleverly asked for a well-timed (Thursday and Friday) leave for 2 days from work, judging from my boss’ expression I could just as well have been threatening her life with the stapler I was holding in my hands (which too is not beyond the realms of possibility, but that’s besides the point). Post the perfunctory gasps and sighs to make me feel like a miserable, irresponsible twat, she finally conceded, and made the supreme sacrifice of granting me 2 days leave in the last 2 years. Thus having completely tricked the system, I went home in a rather chirpy mood, and chirped the plan to the wife.

Now, regular readers of this blog (yes, I mean the loyal fan following that I seem to have developed in the region of Africa, who keep leaving me comments asking me to pick up strange packages containing regal jewelry from the airport) that I share a rather unique equation with my spouse. It would not be wrong to say that we complete each other. Without her, I wouldn’t know the things that I dislike, and without me, she would have no clue why she was fed up of her life. For example, something like the mode of travel would be a non-issue with her. But, she instantly knew how much she’s hated air travel all her life the minute I suggested we should fly down to Goa. Of course the knowledge that I was totally against wasting a good 12 hours of my vacation time on a train that seemed to stop at every pan shop on the way had nothing to do with it. I had had it. I decided to put my foot down.

Instead of taking a train that took 12 hours, we thus took the Konkan Express that added another delightful extra hour. I spent the morning clicking images of random strangers trying to look grave and reflective by the compartment door. The train delivered us early in the morning in a place called Thivim, ready to be ripped off by friendly taxi drivers who refused to recognize the independence of our country and kept asking payments in Euros and Dollars. After another hour or so, we reached the hotel that had been arranged for us by my dear friend DJ (more about him some other day). The negotiations on the rates went somewhat like this.

"How much for an economy room for 2?"

"INR 7000 for a day!", shouted back the clerk, obviously irritated at being disturbed by stupid tourists who’d nothing better to do than to check into hotels.

"That’s too much…any chance of a discount?"

"Okay, okay. INR 3000 with a complimentary upgrade to the Presidential Suite and free spa."

Exhausted with the fierce negotiation, I didn’t bother asking which President had the suite been originally meant for. But all said and done, it was a nice enough room, complete with an attached living room, balcony, bathrooms with bath-tubs, etc. I was pretty happy. Having had to spend one full night over me, even though it was on the upper berth, had taken its toll on my wife, and she went straight for her bath. I decided it was time for me to check out the white balance of Goa. Walking into the balcony, I was pleasantly surprised by a nice full view of the swimming pool below, complete with foreigners in all shades of pink trying desperately to turn different shades of darker pink. Moments later, I was surprised once more when I felt a tap on my shoulder while trying to manually focus the camera on a particularly attractive lady who was trying very hard to even out the color scheme on her body. Words not even present in the the Free Online Very Liberal Dictionary were exchanged. I gave her a piece of my mind, and then instantly went and made coffee for the both of us. The following image of her trying to reach out and grab me by my hair can also pass of as a nice little romantic snapshot. Vivitar 285HV from camera right, and fury from subject centre.

Later that evening, I found the conversation veering towards a rather uncomfortable direction. It was only when the suggestion of going and spending time on the beach was floated that I realized why my suggestion of coming to Goa had not been shot down (like the time we’d spent our planned Ladakh trip in Kanyakumari). For yours truly is not very fond of water. Don’t get me wrong, I am pretty okay with drinking water from glasses, et. al. But lounging around the edge of the Arabian Sea was a million light years beyond my comfort zone. The wife obviously knew that.

Thus having failed to convince the wife that a vacation to Goa need not necessarily be turned into a cliché with visits to the beach, et. al, off we went to the sea. A cool beer on a beach chair soothed the nerves somewhat, while the wife romped around mockingly in the water. Occasionally, I took a few snaps of her as well to convince her that she was the reason I’d insisted on bringing along the camera in the first place. And topless foreign tourists? Where? How?

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.