Early in the morning of February 27, we sat outside in the cool air in front of the Avongrove bungalow drinking CTC tea, watching the sun come up through the mist and thinking about our imminent parting. We said our goodbyes to the Subbas, and SMC gave us a ride into the town of Darjeeling, where we were invited for a delicious big breakfast at the home of his friend the travel agent.
Then it was time for my wife and I to say goodbye to SMC. He was going to Assam, and we were headed for Sikkim. We had with us some of the brilliant 2005 first manufacture teas of Rohini and Avongrove, as well as some tasty but somewhat older teas. We also had some beautiful memories.
Late that afternoon we were in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim. Gangtok is about the size of Siliguri (200,000 people), but that's the extent of the resemblance. The Sikkimese city is peaceful and orderly, and it's a pleasure to breathe its air and walk its hilly streets. We walked to the shopping district at the center of the city, and found that the long commercial street at the heart of the district was open to pedestrians only by that time in the afternoon. So we slowly walked its whole length on one side, and then retraced our steps on the other side of the street, looking into the shops that interested us. The only purchase we made was in a shop that featured spices but offered teas as well. I asked if they had any Sikkimese teas, and indeed they did: Temi, which some readers will recognize as having a family resemblance to Darjeeling. It was 70 rupees ($1.60) for 250g, certainly worth taking a chance on, and when we got back to Calcutta we thought it was better than the generic Darjeeling our relatives were drinking.
The next morning, we did some serious Sikkim tourism at the Rumtek monastery, the biggest Tibetan Buddhist monastery outside Tibet. There's plenty to say about Rumtek, but I'll limit myself to something tea-related. On the monastery grounds, we found a tea stall where customers could sit on rough benches. (Most of the people there weren't sitting, though; they were young novices playing a soccer-style game of catch, which is to say, no hands allowed, with a packet of cheap candy as the "ball".) The stall offered what it billed as Tibetan tea. This excited me, for I've long wanted to taste the real thing, with Puerh, butter, and barley. We ordered it, and they strung us along, asking if we were sure we really wanted Tibetan, not Indian, tea. Sadly, what emerged a couple of minutes later tasted like railroad chai plus salt.
/Lew