Fortunately the bus reached Daalkhola (a place approximately 70 kms away from Siliguri) nearly 9AM in the morning on the next day i.e. on 24th May (so we were pretty much on our schedule). Unfortunately there was a huge traffic waiting for us. The main road that we were on was NH 31 (See the route at http://www.oktatabyebye.com/travel-directions/driving-directions-from-Kolkata-to-Siliguri.html). It is a two lane road (rather highway :) with traffics including big goods trucks, rickshaws, tourist cars, buses and bullock carts etc. So we started relaxing and planning for the fall back measures for the late arrival in Siliguri (usually the tourist cars from Siliguri to Sikkim leave before 10am). It took nearly 3 hours to bypass the traffic jam. The weather was getting little gloomy with scattered clouds in the sky.
Farakka Barrage (taken in the morning from bus – pardon the shakes)Lastly we reached Siliguri at about 1pm in the afternoon. Passengers started hurrying up to rush for their ultimate destination. I came down from the bus to unload the luggage from the back side trunk of the bus. At the very moment when all luggage were pulled out and rests of the members got down from the bus, a flush rain soaked us all, an amazing reception!! We went for a shade in a local shop till the rain dilutes. Now the hunt for a car to head for Borong (the amount of Rs. 1760/- for our reservation in Ravongla on 23rd May was already lost). A Sumo Spacio came to the rescue with a price of Rs.3000/- (the car rental of Rs. 3000/- from NJP to Ravongla was also gone). Anyway, we started our journey and halted for lunch near the Teesta bridge (before the entry point of Sikkim). The rice with boiled vegetables and potato fries tasted very nice after a breakfast with biscuits. We resumed around 3.30pm after lunch. The road was turning green with hills and rocky landscapes full of oxygen in the air that my lungs were longing for.
Eventually we found a long queue of cars and trucks after one and a half hour of driving (5pm). Some foreigners were walking down the queue toward us. On asking they said that they were walking for the last 1.45 hours from the spot where the land slide took place, another addition to the comedy of mishaps. I started believing that we can only try to head for our destination but can never be sure about reaching there. Like the famous arithmetical problem of a monkey trying to climb a bamboo soaked with oil J. The driver of our car (Suraj) used the network among his mates and found out that the slide might take 5 hours to be removed which means we can restart only after 9 or 10pm in the night and reach Borong at 4 or 5am in the morning. So we were left with two options – wait 5 hours for the block to get cleared or go back to Siliguri, stay there overnight and resume next morning. After sixteen hours of hectic journey none of us were enthusiastic about the former option so the later attracted us more. Suraj got a good bargain of Rs. 4000/- for bringing us back to Siliguri and driving to Uttarey on the next day (by the way, while we started from Siliguri Rs. 1000/- had been taken for the car in advance). Coming back to Siliguri we checked in to Anjali Lodge (an amount of Rs. 3300/- for our reservation in Borong on 24th May was lost in addition to Rs. 1760/- paid at Anjali Lodge :), a nice hotel with reasonable room rents and good AC in the rooms that helped in drying up our wet luggage and clean beds to make up the sleep we missed in the bus.
No comments:
Post a Comment