Apr 13 - Day 9 - All good things must come to an end

Day 9 -

Pelling to BAgdogra - Drop to BAgdogra airport. Clients need to book flights leaving after 1.30 pm

Final morning in Pelling. The trip is almost over… well it is over. Now for the loooong journey back home. We are ready to leave by 6:30AM. Bills paid and all. We bid goodbyes to Minoti and Mukund and the five of us (Anuj, Ron, Viji, Mona and I) leave in the car with Piran.

Final Goodbyes from Pelling. We leave Minoti, Mukund and the kids behind today.

Long drive back to Siliguri (in West Bengal) which is where the Bagdogra airport is. Viji and I work through the bills in the car. We have spent so much money in the last couple of days on Mineral water, Pakoras, Tea and Chakna (Masala Papad and Masala Peanuts) J But its all tallied up and sorted out. We stop at a 24hr ATM to withdraw cash. “Its closed sir” a local boy tells us. OK, off to another town. Slowly, but steadily we drive down the mountains and cross bridges following cars with signs like “Don’t follow me, I am lost too” and “Get back in Peace, not in Pieces”. The driver’s phone rings to the tune of ‘Resham Firiri' and we all start singing the song to the complete amazement of the driver "You know this song ?? Very famous song of Nepali". When I get back I have to find this on youtube and learn the song.

Views on the way down from the mountains



More views of the drive down

Back at the Bagdogra airport, we cannot help but remember that first day when we had landed here all excited and full of enthusiasm for a 7 day hike in the Himalayas. Man proposes, nature disposes, and then man finds a way to have fun anyways J Because that’s what we do. A group of 10 of us, with the help of a guide from Bombay and few highly hospitable local folks had figured out how to make a fantastic vacation out of a failed hiking trip. Not that we did not have our disagreements on how to spend our time together (or on how to fix the national government), but we still managed to keep it together because we valued each others company and wanted to enjoy our time together.

Melli Checkpost - This is where we were we should have gotten our ILPs on the way up :-)

Hillside Town - A last view before we get to the Plains

Soon we were toasting to this in the Bagdogra airport restaurant which serves awesome paneer, alu mutter and beer. We parted ways first with Piran (who was at the airport to meet his family coming over from Bombay) and then with Viji who took the flight to Bangalore, and boarded the flight to Delhi.

Fairly uneventful flight to Delhi, except for a couple of seat shufflings, and then Ron and Anuja went off at Delhi, while Mona and I continued to eat outside Delhi airport J Finally boarded the last leg of the journey to Ahmedabad, as I am catching up on my ‘journalling’ on the plane. Get home at 11:30PM to see the kids sleeping in our room. Rohan wakes up a wink to show off his new Batman toys and new clothes to Mommy and goes back to sleep. The two of them have been absolute gems throughout this time, not giving any trouble to their grandparents. The two of us shower and crash in bed, ready for my birthday tomorrow.

Yup, only 30 minutes more of charge left on the ultrabook, so I will stop the journal of the trip now. Glad I didn’t carry the charger around with me as I clearly didn’t need it (not that we had electricity in most places anyways J) But now that its all typed up, I can upload to blogger.com :-) My first online journal...