White Knuckle Express.

Warning this blog is not suitable for our younger viewers amd those that get car sick.

Dave has asked me to write this blog as he starts to sweat and become incoherent at the thought of the car trip down the mountain. I do not have this problem as I believe that in this life I am the reincarnation of Juan Fangios nervous system ( for our younger viewers ask mum or dad who Juan Fangio was). Accompanied by our travelling companions, Megan and Matthew from Dubbo we set off on the journey down the mountain this time taking the short cut at Kuresong. Megan coped very well on the trip down considering on the trip up she apparently sounded like a Tibetan wolf barrrrfing all the way up the mountain. She then spent a night or two in the Darjeeling hospital.

Our driver whose name I will never remember nor forget had a somewhat relaxed and inscrutable manner about him, quiet, polite and calm and not obsessed with using the car horn as a sign of his virility. This was going to be a relaxed scenic drive or so we thought. What was the first warning sign you may ask? It was when he bent over the steering wheel and genuflected (without the knee touching the ground) like a new Catholic nun and then he quickly touched the steering wheel, the internal rear vision mirror and about three or four other parts of the Mahindra vehicle ( like a big jeep diesel but not four wheel drive). Oh boy here we go again as I turned around and looked at Dave as he was already having the same thought. By the time the driver did it the 3rd time I had already beaten him to the punch, I was crossing myself faster than the priest in the exorcist.

A couple of other things I should point out. There are no seat belts and one of the rear tyres was bald. I was too scared to check the other tyres remembering that ignorance is bliss. The seats appeared to be made out of the same material as a cheap covered foam mattress from Ikea, very spongey. We did have a partial peeled sticker or two of a Hindu god on the dashboard, very comforting, after all the more gods the better.

It was a very steep descent to say the least, but the scenery was magnificent when we had the nerve to keep our eyes open. Clumps of bamboo as high as trees, with the bamboo as thick as a small coconut palm. It was like driving through a rain forest and after coming from the brown of OZ the greenness(?) of it all is quite stunning. The green of the tea plantations with their flat trimmed plants looking like a well manicured English hedge with the trees in amongst the tea plants, an amazing site considering the steepness of the terrain.

There were countless children of all ages that were walking up the steep road to various schools in the region. The children looked very impressive in their smart clean uniforms. I was like watching a fashion parade for a group of English private schools. There were many children with asiatic features ( a lot were from Nepal and Tibet). Not one of these children did we run over.

The road was very narrow and occasionally we had to reverse to let other vehicles through. Our driver went back to what most Indian drivers do, sounding the horn, speeding, overtaking on blind corners in fog, spending an inordinate amount of time on the wrong side of the road, overtaking vehicles when he could see up ahead that vehicles were already overtaking in the on coming lane. It was like being in a 2 hour urgently duty run in the police without the sirens and being driven by someone with a death wish. Some of the journey I have filmed on my digital camera..it is quite shakey I don't know why. This will be put on the blog shortly.

Dave and I had a discussion about the Indian drivers we have had and have come to the conclusion that they just want to get to the destination as fast as possible so that they can turn around and get another passenger and hence make more money.

Stayed tuned for the D-Day action blog.

Ian and Dave