It's the weekend. Grab a beverage.

This follows straight on from the last two Sikkim stories. It's two days later. No parental warnings required; no death, nudity, drugs, randy monks or Bongos. But it would be fair to say - adult content.

As we all know - sometimes travel is the people you meet, not the sights on the way. Sometimes they are the real tourist attraction.

Here's the first part. Rest later.

His face clouded over. He seemed to sag a bit, sunk still further into his mobile and listened intently.

‘Problem?’ I asked, not very helpfully. It was my last day in Rinchenpong.

My host waved his hand and kept on listening. Obviously he was being given detailed instructions. He frowned, looked away distractedly, his eyes resting for a moment on the huge black pig snorting contentedly nearby.

‘That’s a very fine pig,’ I said to the owner and she nodded and giggled and didn’t understand a word.

This was the woman with sixteen children I’d come all this way just to see. The mother of the century and I were stuck together in the back yard with the pig while our conduit and translator was deep on the phone. Her English was non-existent, my Sikkimese likewise – so our conversation had foundered briefly. I was half-listening to the mobile, trying to interpret what was going on while at the same time discussing the merits of a pig with a woman of such astounding fertility it simply took my breath away.

Her sixteen children were scattered throughout the house, happily occupied taking pictures of themselves with my camera at the time.

‘You can take one thousand pictures,’ I said as I showed them how the camera worked and they were taking me at my word. Mum was very happy and beamed proudly. I was probably not the first foreigner to wander down the hill from Yangsum Farm to witness her living miracle of fecundity, nor would I be the last – but I was the first to cast his camera to the children and for that I got a special smile.

Rinchenpong put the phone down.

‘There is a bandh in Darjeeling,’ he told me, very seriously indeed.

‘A bandh?

‘All the roads are blocked from the border of Sikkim to Bagdogra.’

‘What’s a bandh?’

‘You can’t get out.’

Or, as it turned out, in.

A bandh was a general strike and in Gurkaland that meant total shut-down – including the roads. When a bandh was called in Darjeeling, poor little Sikkim - squeezed right up there between Bhutan, Tibet and Nepal - was isolated from the India side, cut off completely from the outside world, the only link the helicopter I had flown from Bagdogra to Gangtok. So that’s why the Government sponsored that helicopter...

His phone rang again. Once more he listened intently. His face brightened. He nodded furiously at me. He put the phone to one side.

‘There is a plan.’

He returned to his phone and furiously began writing notes on his hand.

Dogster was bundled into a local taxi and pointed towards India. It wasn’t far, an hour or so through a stunning valley of rock - down, around, down, around, down, down, down to Naya Bazar in the Ranggit valley where the next piece of the jigsaw would fall in place.

Dogster was dumped in the street. My driver, a kind local lad, disappeared with my passport and bags, leaving me alone to wander the crowded market streets. Mysterious forms must be stamped, official documents seen and signed. Nothing was explained, all was trust in total strangers. The white man was truly adrift in traveler space; no documents, no luggage, not knowing, not caring, on the road again - alone.

Instructions were to meet at Street No. 3 Naya Bazar. There were only four streets in town. Even the geographically impaired Dogster could work that one out. So it was, after an hour of wandering the market, the car, driver, passport and luggage arrived back in my life and I was driven out of town. By this time I truly had no idea what was going on. Explanation was minimal, as was my driver’s English. I picked up the occasional word.

‘River’.

‘Cross’.

‘Permission.’

That was all.

We pulled off the highway after twenty minutes following the Ranggit River along the border of India and Sikkim. Just over there, on the other side of this muddy brown water was India. We drove down a side road towards the bank. I thought I’d have to swim across. It looked very deep to me. I pointed at the water.

‘Me?’

He wiggled his head enthusiastically. Big smiles.

We were reduced to sign language. I was reduced to tears.

We stopped. We had to. There was no more road. Six men in green jumpers and starched white trousers leapt to attention. They ushered me to a green folding chair, specially placed like a throne in the middle of the main street of the tiny town of Bangitar.

Ah-h-h, Mr. Dogster was to be King again.

A green icebox was produced, opened, a thermos of cold nimboo pani and a damp towel extracted and then a tin de-lidded with a flourish. Cake and finger sandwiches were offered and my passport removed yet again, this time taken away to an avuncular local policeman for more inspection. There was much shaking of hands, wiggling of heads and smiling. Maybe I wouldn’t have to swim.

We set off down the hill, a hunting party of green sweaters and the Dog. One wiry man was given my large suitcase, hoiked it on his shoulder and charged ahead. It was heavy. I was impressed.

Barely a hundred yards down the hill was a path that led around the face of an outcrop of rock. We turned and there, unexpectedly, was an ancient and completely unnecessary suspension bridge. It seemed to cross from nowhere to nowhere. Bangitar Bridge, said the sign, was ‘constructed from provincial funds and opened for traffic in May 1902 in place of the old cane bridge carried away by the cyclone of 24th September 1899’. It still didn’t say just why there was a bridge here in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps it wasn’t the middle of nowhere in 1899.

The party crossed the Bangitar Bridge in single file. Things were getting very intrepid, indeed. Once we hit the other side we were in peril, a target for every disaffected Gorkalander with a gun. Maybe that was why they sent the guy ahead with my luggage – to draw their fire. Dogster looked up and around for the secret glint of sun on rifle, the hidden posse in the hills. We were at the bottom of a deep wooded valley. It was the perfect place for an ambush.

So far, so good.

Nobody else seemed to be looking out for assassins, he noticed. Obviously they don’t know what I know, he thought - then about half-way across the bridge Dogster realized that he didn’t know anything at all - and that he’d made the assassins up. Such was the state of his brain at the time. In the absence of any information at all, the stupid addled mutt had substituted his own.

He’d created his own little world of green cowboys - and Indians.

On the far side a tiny path led left or right on either side of an overhanging cliff. We went left; below us the raging Ranggit River - well, perhaps not so raging today, just a little pissed off. Ahead the track curved up into the tree line, disappearing in brush and green. Puff, puff went the tragic King Dogster. Wheeze, wheeze, his Majesty went. The monarch’s knees hurt. He was old.

One green jumper looked at another. I could tell what they were thinking. Soon, we’re going to have to carry the old bugger. Luckily, after another ten minutes of this there was a regal carriage. King Dog was glad.

We drove off along the river bank for a mile and turned off towards the water. There in front of me was a river hut; in front of it a check blue tablecloth on a table set outside for four, a floral arrangement, a waiting staff lined up to greet me, the dashing young man who ran the place and a young couple who appeared to be from Outer Space. It was all somewhat surreal.

I had beaten the bandh – or rather this dashing young man had. He hatched the plan, he followed it through, a hundred telephone calls later had tracked my every step from Yangsum Farm in Rinchenpong till the moment I sat down beside him. He was the puppet master, the manipulator extraordinaire.

I was in. But now I couldn’t get out.

intermission.

Time for MY refreshing beverage. Back later.

Ah, great start to another adventure!

Hi Dogster, the regulars will start gathering around the Fodor's campfire eager to hear the latest from you.

lol - that takes me back to my Boy Scout days.

Well, you can all do a few rounds of
'Ging gang gooly gooly gooly watcha!
Ging gang goo, ging gang goo..'

while you're waiting.

I'm just making a few last minute changes to the second half.

*has gathered but is softly singing kumbayah instead as is unsure of ging gang gooly tune*

Ging gang gooly gooly gooly gooly watcha
Ging gang goo ging gang goo.

Ging gang gooly gooly gooly gooly watcha
Ging gang goo ging gang goo.

Hayla, oh hayla shayla, hayla shayla, shayla, oh-ho
Hayla, oh hayla shayla, hayla shayla, shayla, oh

Shally wally, shally wally, shally wally, shally wally Oompah, oompah, oompah, oompah

Yes, this should keep me busy while I'm waiting - NOT!!!

Mind if I just have a drink instead? Thanks, I didn't think it would be a problem.

Lol Amy, I love this.

I was a Boy Scout in Hobart, Tasmania, sometime in the early years of last century. Photography, I remember, hadn't quite been invented.

I seem to remember at that time in his life young Dogster had only one thing on his mind. Others were awarded with a badge for knotting and compass. Dogster, as you know, received his badge for hand-practice.

Of course, songs with actual WORDS were way too hard; songs with words of three syllables like 'kum - bye - yah' well nigh impossible.

Hence 'Ging gang goolie...'

Ahhh, but I digress. Here's the rest of the story.

Now, if ever a story needed an accent on a word, it's this one. If I only knew how to make those little letters lean sideways, so you knew I was stressing that single word... but I don't know how.

I'm treading a delicate path here, I'm trying to be discrete. Alas, Devil Dog cannot resist. Let's hope you catch his drift...

The drowning man didn’t know he was drowning, all he knew was he just couldn’t breathe. He was a wilted British banker in the grip of his Australian fiancée, on his way to a new life in Melbourne, poor sod, to get married, have children, get a mortgage, build a house - and then die. He could see it all spread out in front of him. He was weak. She was strong.

‘Help me,’ his eyes were pleading, ‘help me out of this - now.’

They were both completely average in every average way, on their average trip of an average lifetime; a pre-honeymoon - his last gasp, I suspected, before she locked the door and threw away the key. They’d just come, she told me proudly, from ‘Rajanisthan,’ a trip, apparently from hell. Christine had organized it, of course – or rather she had found and entrusted their travel agent pal to do so. The friend of a friend of an Indian friend hadn’t done a terribly good job of it – but such things must not be mentioned aloud.

‘Everything was f-i-i-i-ne,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘everything was f-i-i-i-ne.’

Peter helped on the road by getting sick as much as possible. He was limpness personified in the body of a rugby player. He looked strong, healthy, a little over-weight, sitting there trying to suck in his stomach and make conversation, a ruddy British fellow who liked a drink, his cricket, his mates, an unreconstructed man in the process of being trained; trained to be a husband, trained to be a father, trained to be the kind of man that Christine expected; a man just like her Dad.

What is it about these British men? Removed from their normal surroundings they simply fall apart. The first people who get sick on the road are always British husbands. I don’t know why. They retreat to their cabins, feebly demanding attention from their Mummy-Wives; a pestilence of minor infections, bad backs and Delhi Belly.

Peter had hurled, poohed and grizzled his way from Jaipur to Udaipur, Pushkar to Jodhpur, scarcely drawing breath before arrival in Darjeeling. He didn’t care much for India but didn’t dare say so. It was different. He didn’t like different. All he really wanted was Mum’s cooking – and Mum was a long way away. His eyes filled with tears when he thought of his first Christmas coming up away from home.

But he had no say in it. She was pattern set, eyes blinkered – Christine was a girl on a mission. She was going to be the next woman with sixteen children. She had decided on him to father them. It was time. Now he was hers.

They were in their late twenties, settling in for a lifetime of suburban torpor – a not unattractive couple who coexisted without the merest flame of passion. When not obliged to talk they didn’t, preferring to sit and read by the fire. She didn’t quite bring his slippers out, but nearly. A lifetime of this yawned ahead of them. They seemed powerless to defy the expectations of their upbringing. This was how it was.

They scarcely looked at each other, scarcely talked; sat quietly with their books, behaving like their parents, with nothing at all to say. They were just about to get married. You’d think they might still have a few conversations left in store, but no – even those seem to have evaporated, along with their interest in the world.

Within a millisecond of marriage she’d be pregnant and into their young, dull lives would come a reason for co-existence; then another, then a third. She was focused and locked in to that desperate breeding imperative. She would hurl babies from her open womb with a regularity that you can set your clock by until menopause stopped the rut. Poor thing, she had no say in her condition - this was nature and nurture combined in a need she was powerless to resist. This was what she was placed on earth to do. He was there to be the husband. He had been selected. That was that. Her certainty was the most terrible thing of all. She was cheerful and relentless in her task. He was by no means certain. He was just too limp to say ‘Whoa!’

We were all trapped together in the tea-fields of Darjeeling.

Around us the roads were blocked. Any car braving the picket line could face attack. This was real – Dogster’s fertile imagination hadn’t conjured this bit up. Right now troops were on stand-by in town. Martial law had been declared. A big man, head of the GNLF party, had been beaten up by supporters from the rival GJMM party. Enraged GNLF supporters rampaged the town brandishing ‘khukris’ and blockaded the police station demanding the arrest of the bad guys. Businessmen put up the shutters, tourists made a dash for the safety of their hotels and Darjeeling closed down – indefinitely.

They take their politics very seriously in West Bengal.

What they want is an independent state. They want Gorkaland. I couldn’t begin to explain. While we were chatting politely by the Ranggit River the GNLF and the CPI-M were battling it out with GJM, the CPRM, the GRC, the AIGL and GNLF-C in front of the PSC in Delhi.

Work that out if you can. It’s a labyrinth. Internecine party politics had shattered the already over-complicated political order and created sub-parties, rival factions to the rival factions. Whether or not Darjeeling should become Gorkaland, an autonomous government, was lost in a swirl of accusation and counter-accusation. Bandhs were called hourly for the slightest of reasons. Everything connected with everything else. For whatever reason, good, bad or ridiculous, people were on edge. It didn’t take much to tip them over.

When an Indian mob is angry it’s best not to be around. Things get out of control very rapidly. Up in town the situation was described as ‘tense, but under control.’

‘Tense but under control.’

Yup, that seemed about right. Dinner was excruciating.

This young couple were way, way out of their league, bless them. They had yet to develop the social skills needed to have dinner with total strangers. They were common folk on their best behavior. So, of course, are we all when push comes down to shove; Dogster came from supremely humble stock but he’d long ago worked out a way to pretend in public, he knew all the right moves – and then some.

Dog’s problem was that he couldn’t be bothered doing any of them. He was retired. He’d left the smarm behind, long ago given up being polite. He was what he was – the smart ones got it, the other ones didn’t. That sorted them out without Dog having to do anything.

They couldn’t do the dinner dance – he wouldn’t. So he entertained himself, drank too much, asked leading and intrusive questions then ignored the answers, rolled his eyes and sighed. Yes, he should’ve been kinder, yes, he should’ve been nice - but Dogster found his latest companions devoid of entertainment, lacking in good fun, oicks from the outer suburbs, disinterested in the world, disinterested in their companions, disinterested in anything but themselves.

They were like two spoilt children kept locked in a cage. Accidentally their cage door opened and they found themselves in the world. Instead of running free in their new-found kingdom, they stayed huddled inside, reading books by the fireside – preferring the things they knew to freedom, just outside.

‘Outside’, to Peter and Christine, was an odd, unfamiliar place. It was different. They didn’t like ‘different’. Trips to ‘different’ and ‘outside’ could only be done through a travel agent. Plans may not be changed.

I lurched out into the gardens for some fresh air. After that dinner I needed it. We were on a hilltop. Across the valley and up high was Darjeeling, twinkling on the horizon. Far in the distance I could see flaming torches. As I watched more and more flickered into view. Ten in a line walking down one path, another twenty along another, ten more - then a larger group; a flaming snake of light, bobbing along the path. All seemed to be heading to a central point.

After ten minutes I could count a hundred torches, after twenty minutes two hundred more, all moving steadily across the mountains in shuddering snail-trails of flame. One line of fire would meet another on some far distant pathway; the two would join, and join again. Now there were three, four big marches, snaking down different hills, heading towards the plantation.

‘How wonderful,’ I said and raced to get my camera.

The staff didn’t look too sure.

I charged back out and headed down the drive.

‘No-o-o-o-o’ said a breathless green jumper, ‘No-o-o-o, please Mr. Dogster, come inside.’

He grasped my elbow firmly and pulled me back. I stood with the staff instead and we chatted away as the flames came closer.

‘What’s happening?’ I asked. We were all standing in a line along one side of the house looking into the darkness. It was getting chilly.

‘Sixth Schedule,’ said one.

‘Gorkaland,’ said another.

A babble of voices broke out behind me.

‘GNLF.’ ‘No!’ ‘GJMM.’ No!’ ‘Yes, GNLF!’ ‘No!!’

‘These are people from the other tea plantations,’ a deep voice said behind me.

This was Sanjay, manager of the estate, the dashing young man from before; a handsome, cultured young Indian full of ooze, full of charm - with not a sincere bone in his body.

‘Why not your tea-pickers?’

‘They’re marching too.’

I can hear them now, moving from up the hill, shouting something. They sounded fairly pissed off.

‘What are they shouting?’

‘Justice! Justice!’

Down at the front gates, now. The shouts were louder, I can see faces glowing in the flames, hear the anger, hear the chanting.

‘Justice! Justice!

It occurred to me this might be quite serious.

Sanjay dripped charm.

‘There’s absolutely no threat, of course,’ he said.

The marchers kept going past the gates and continued up the hill. The staff visibly relaxed. Three more columns of torches were arriving at a meeting point about a kilometer up the track. Now they were all together, a field of torches, a distant angry shout.

‘JU-U-U-U-STICE!’

‘Come and have a drink,’ he oozed.

Sanjay was a man in the prime of his life, able to quote Shakespeare and Gilbert and Sullivan, a man who knew which arm a lady should be offered when going in to dinner, a man who knew the difference between a first flush and late season, low grown or high, who knew the logistics of running a factory, distribution and acreage, a man who had it all. He had one fatal flaw. He couldn’t stay away from his dick.

His love life was either legend, odyssey or myth. It was impossible for me to know which – but I had some little knowledge of his disease. We talked late into the night, mostly about him, his life, his loves, his dreams. He was at a stage in life where he was the centre of Sanjay World; we were all here to do his bidding. Handsome and fit, dressed to kill, with a great job, great education and great prospects, he had just one little problem. Our Darjeeling lothario had a great little wife.

‘What to do?’ he confessed after a guzzle of whisky. ‘I get a sexy fe-e-eling, what to do?’

A great little wife didn’t appear to stop Sanjay in his pursuit of pleasure. He was a staunch defender of the rule of law, of the educated, professional way of life. He would defend to the death their moral code – but didn’t really feel as if it applied particularly to him. Nothing could defeat that daily tickle; nothing could prevail against that ‘sexy fe-e-eling.’ He considered himself a bit of a stud. He was one of those men who wanted you to know.

Not, of course, on the plantation, there his die was cast; there he was The Manager, a paragon of virtue. Sanjay had to go away to play – and play hard and fast he apparently did. My companion was famous as being the biggest sleaze in Darjeeling.

‘I have known one hundred women,’ he said very seriously.

‘Wow,’ I said, completely unimpressed.

‘Any man in India who says he has not known many women,’ he paused dramatically, ‘is a liar.’