A Bhutanese Christmas

While all of you in North America and Europe have been engulfed in the Yuletide season of lights, bell-ringers, carols, and rampant consumerism since Thanksgiving (or, these days, since Halloween), we here in Bhutan have been going about our day-to-day lives. In Bhutan – being a heavily Buddhist country (almost 80% of the population and the official religion of the state) and the rest of the population being Nepali Hindu – Christmas is, of course, not celebrated. There is a small small Christian minority (<1% of the population), but no official churches to speak of in Bhutan. The absence of the Christmas craziness that holds December hostage in the United States was certainly different and didn't make it feel like Christmas to us, but at the same time it was a little refreshing to have Christmas out at arm's-length rather than right in your face.

Nonetheless, Emily and I found our own ways to celebrate Christmas with old and new traditions and with a blend of Bhutanese and American cultures.

It began to feel like Christmas time when we received a care package from my mom that contained some of the delights of home that are absent here: Reese's peanut butter cups, M&Ms, mixed nuts, a chocolate orange (a Christmas Eve tradition in my family), homemade snickerdoodle cookies (also a Christmas tradition in my family), and many other things. Included in our package were a few Christmas decorations that my mom threw in on a whim. We also received several Christmas cards in the past few weeks from both our parents and from Emily's cousin Jenny. That was really nice!

Our Christmas decorations. Safe to say that Shiva, Ganesha, and Buddha don't usually sit
above Christmas stockings.  

Christmas Eve, for both the Schuelka's and the Brandl-Salutz's, is a time for a wide assortment of snacks and holiday treats. We replicated that as best we could here, although many many substitutions had to be made. For example, one of my favorite things around Christmas is the ranch-flavored chex mix that my family makes and is consumed without abandon by my sister and I. Since zero of the ingredients that go into that mix can be found here (crispix cereal, cheez-its, pretzels, and dry ranch seasoning), that beloved snack had to be forgotten this year. Instead we made things like peanut masala (a new favorite that will find its way to Christmas Eve in the States) and had things like nimbu pudina flavored crackers and a favorite Indian mix called Chanachur. As you can see below, we also had some familiar things like popcorn, cheese, crackers, peanut butter, sweets that my mom sent us, and amazing tortilla chips with salsa and guacamole courtesy of Salsa Fiesta in Thimphu – the only Mexican restaurant in Bhutan. Emily also made hot toddies with Bhutanese whiskey.

Our Christmas Eve spread. 

Our friend Samir came over to enjoy the snacks and to watch some Christmas movies. We watched a new episode of The Office that we downloaded from iTunes called "Dwight's Christmas" (very funny) and then watched Bad Santa, a movie that is a tradition with my sister and I and the perfect anti-Christmas-schmaltz movie. We all enjoyed that and had a good time together.

The next morning we woke up early to skype with our families (our Christmas Day, their Christmas Eve, since Bhutan is 12 hours ahead of Minnesota). In what is becoming all too frequent here, we lost our internet and phones in mid-morning for the rest of the day, so we were glad that we were able to talk with our families for a little while at least. We made a big brunch and listened to Bach's "Christmas Oratorio." We didn't exchange any presents, but we did buy a very nice tea set when we were in Darjeeling and shipped it to ourselves via Emily's parents' house. We are considering that our Christmas gift to ourselves.

Christmas brunch.

In the afternoon we watched It's a Wonderful Life (a cliche, sure, but also a fantastic movie) and then we headed into Thimphu. We had tea at the Taj Tashi hotel – the gigantic five-star hotel in the middle of Thimphu (and also where I had my birthday dinner). The Taj, catering almost exclusively to wealthy Euro-North American tourists, was decked out for Christmas. These were the only Christmas decorations that we saw in Thimphu. Apparently, the Bhutanese government had issued 5 permits to cut down trees for Christmas. Not sure where they all went, but at least several of them went to the Taj and I would guess the rest went to other five-star resorts. 

The entrance to the Taj. 

Impressive ginger bread house in the Taj lobby.

The Taj lobby. 

Having Christmas tea. Notice the nutcracker! 

For Christmas dinner, we went to the Bhutanese Folk Heritage Museum Restaurant, which serves up some of the best and most authentic Bhutanese food here (and for a fantastic price, compared to the Taj Hotel). Emily and I were invited by Bonnie and Mike, two American volunteers at the hospital. We were joined by other doctors and health care workers that were here through Health Volunteers Overseas. Unlike all of you, who probably had your Christmas hams and turkeys with all the rich, buttery side dishes, our Christmas meal consisted of ara (Bhutanese moonshine, essentially), pork livers, momos, dried beef, ema datse (chilies and cheese), steamed turnip leaves, buckwheat pancakes, and red rice among the many dishes. It was all quite good and, needless to say, a very unique Christmas dinner! 

My Christmas meal, served in traditional Bhutanese wooden bowls that fit together to keep food fresh. 

After dinner, we had a white elephant gift exchange, which was a lot of fun and there were a lot of goofy presents to be had!

One of the great gifts we ended up with was a toy yak.
Here he is enjoying some ara. 

Yak's getting a little tipsy. He found his way into our other great present,
this odd and strangely alluring tiger mug. 

Purvi and Nipun and their golden plastic Buddha. 

Norman ends up with one of  our gifts, a notebook that reads,
"Easy to writing, you will share your happy to me!"

Me and my tiger mug. 

After the gift exchange, and enjoying each other's company, it was time to go and the restaurant called taxis for us. The restaurant manager came up to Emily and I and meekly told us that there was a taxi that was headed up towards RTC, but it had been transporting meat and smelled. She asked us if this would be okay for us. I have to admit that part of me was revolted (having walked past many a Bhutanese meat shop with an aroma that will make you gag) but part of me was also intrigued. What a funny story to tell about what came to be known as the "meat taxi!" Unfortunately for the story – but probably fortunately for us – the taxi smelled more of lemon-scented cleaner than anything as it was obvious that they had dumped a whole bunch in the taxi after hauling around meat. Emily and I packed in the taxi, already filled with the taxi driver, his brother, and his father, and off we sped into the cold and dark Bhutanese night. Merry Christmas!

Since the semester got out in early December, the campus has been a ghost town with almost the entirety of the faculty gone to go back to their homes (Bhutanese, Indians and Americans alike) and a lot of the staff taking vacations as well. Right now, Samir and the two of us are the only ones living on campus (whereas there are usually 600 – students, staff, and faculty). Our other friends Chris and Liz were going to be around, but then decided to go to Thailand.

It is getting much colder, with RTC always being colder than down in the Thimphu valley. Besides electrical, internet, and phone outages, we can now add water to the list as the pipes keep freezing. We are now forced to leave a faucet on all the time to keep the water flowing in the pipes so it won't freeze. What a waste of water! This is apparently common practice in Bhutan. Between the electric heaters, zero insulation in the buildings, and the always-running water, Bhutan in the winter is an incredible inefficient place. We are now reduced to wearing long underwear along with several layers, gloves, and winter hats inside of our apartment.

In 10 days we will be off to Thailand and Malaysia, where the temperatures will be in the high 80s and the humidity will be high. It will be a very different feeling than now! We're looking forward to it...

An empty campus, but full of fantastic views. 

  

In Which I Become an Amateur Medical Anthropolgist

As many of you know by now, I finally got registered as a nurse with the Ministry of Health in late November and have now been at the hospital for the past few weeks. Over this time I feel both that I have learned a lot and that I have no idea what's going on half the time. I'm currently working on the maternity ward, which is a concept I don't think exists in the US. It's basically all inpatient OB/GYN except delivery. Women who are in labor are kept in the maternity ward for the first part of their labor and are transferred down a floor to the birth center when once they are in active labor.

Approaching the hospital

Near the entrance of the hospital, parking garage to the right

Grand staircase that greets visitors just inside the entrance

The maternity ward is, in fact, an actual ward, which I hadn't seen in person until coming here. There are 36 beds total, 18 on each side of the hall. All beds are visible from the hallway through a clear glass wall (think US nursery style). Beds are clustered into 6 bed "rooms" (in quotes because while there are partial walls between the clusters, it is still possible to walk between all "rooms" located on the same side of the hall). There are no curtains between beds. If more privacy is needed there are cloth partitions that are available to put up. And forget about having private conversations. If someone's within earshot, they know your details. As might be obvious, there are no private bathrooms. On either end of the ward there are patient bathrooms that consist of three stalls and two sinks. I don't think there are showers but I've never gone inside to investigate.

It's not uncommon to see women breastfeeding without covering themselves, even when men are present (although this happens in public spaces too – imagine that!), or just walking around with their chests only partially covered. It was reassuring to see that breastfeeding is considered to be a normal part of life, not something to be hidden (as in the US context).

As you can probably tell just from the floor setup, nursing is Bhutan is very different from nursing in the US. I will attempt to describe many of the differences here, but just thinking about all of them is overwhelming. What I miss in this initial post will no doubt come up in the future. Here goes:

Work flow/patient management: I can't claim to be an expert on this (and have a feeling I may never quite understand how everything works) but I can at least tell you about how it differs from past nursing I've done. Here nurses are not assigned specific patients to follow throughout a shift but instead have more task-based work. By this I mean that nurses will go perform certain tasks for certain patients (for example, start an IV, change a dressing, check a blood pressure, etc.) depending on what needs to get done. I personally don't like this for several reasons, the main reasons being that there isn't a lot of personal interaction with the patients and a chance to get to know them and, if something were to start going wrong, it would be harder to tell because the nurse isn't as familiar with the patient's baseline. This nursing setup is somewhat made up for by an attendent-based system of patient monitoring. This means that each patient usually has at least one person with them (friend or family member – those not with the patient often camp out near the elevators, bedrolls and all) who is responsible for telling a nurse if something is needed or if something going wrong. The attendants are also responsible for bringing the patient food, water and all personal items (including bedding) as the hospital furnishes very few of these. With so many people coming and going in these large wards, and very little cleaning between patients, it's probably not a surprise that the overall level of cleanliness is somewhat low. That is, the ward is not obviously dirty (it's mopped daily), but it is very common to see cockroaches (mind you, just the small ones) and other bugs crawling on the walls.

And even though nurses rarely write things down, they all know what's going on with each patient. I assume they are used to keeping all this information in their heads but it's certainly not a skill that I have mastered yet! Part of what I've come to realize in the short time I've been working as a nurse here is that nursing school and the required clinicals provide a way for nursing students to learn the role of the nurse and how they fit into the medical system. Since I obviously didn't go to medical school in Bhutan, I missed out on all that and am trying to learn all of this somewhat informal knowledge through observation.Working in a new cultural context certainly makes you realize the things you learned without even trying.

Two nurses work at the desk. Paper charts = endless paperwork

I've thought quite a bit about these work flow and patient management issues in order to try to make sense of them. Based on how I was trained in the US, the system here makes little sense and seems full of room for mistakes and unnecessary emergencies. I can only conclude that there is more of a community system of care going on (with community being patients, friends, and family members that are in close proximity within their 6 bed clusters and, of course, the nurses and other medical staff when they are present). This cannot and would not happen in the US because of privacy issues and private or semi-private patient rooms. I can't be sure, because no speaks to each other in English, but it seems that everyone has a general understanding of what's going on around them and keeps track of any patient changes and what might need attention. For example, one day I was checking on all the babies with one of the other nurses and one of the mothers couldn't remember if her baby had peed yet. A mother from a bed across the room piped up and said, "Yes, the baby peed. I remember." I've talked about this with other Americans who have experience at the hospital and we all agree that the system seems to work. It is, of course, not perfect, but seems to function in a way that is beyond our understanding and is surprisingly effective. For now, it doesn't seem like this patient management system can change due to the high patient to nurse ratio. Today, for example, there were four nurses (including me) working on the ward with 30 patients and several babies. Yeah, it's a busy place and this leaves minimal time for functional improvements.

Medications:  Medications are kept in short wide-mouth bottles made of opaque plastic that are stored in a cabinet near the nurse's station. On each bottle is taped a label with the name of the medication (some spelled wrong) and sometimes an expiration date is listed. Each day a pharmacist comes to the ward to refill the bottles. She does this by popping all of the medications out of their blister packs and dumping them together into the bottles (which is why the expiration dates are probably not all correct).

Pharmacist restocking medications

Medication records for each patient are kept in a binder. Each patient has their own page on which is hand-written their medications, dose, route, and time to be given. No allergy information is listed (or really anywhere in the chart that is obvious to me). The dose is sometimes written as "one tab" or "one ampule". To my knowledge there is only one dosage of each medication available on the ward, but still, I would like to know the amount to be given. 

To prepare medications, each is removed from their little plastic bottle and placed in a small medicine cup that has a number taped to it (I think it's actually rare for the medical staff to know the names of the patients – they are referred to by their bed number). The number corresponds with the the bed of the patient who is to receive the mediation. Then the medications are then distributed to the patients, sometimes by a different nurse than the one who prepared them. 

Meditations are charted as administered by crossing out the time that they are due. No signatures anywhere. I don't usually prepare the medications because I have a hard time understanding what's going on on each page. Between the sloppy handwriting and array of differences in drugs (some are not available in the US, some are rarely used in the US, and some just have different names than in the US), I'm not very efficient at the task.

Injection preparation area

Charts: Medical records are not electronic (which is probably not surprising) and are thin binders that  are reused between patients and that contain an array of papers from different sources. Patients are responsible for keeping all of their outpatient records, which for maternity includes all prenatal care. The government has designed and distributed a Mother and Baby Handbook that all women carry and that contains all important information related to pre and postnatal care, as well as child growth and development information. It's very helpful to have all that information standardized! As with the medication records, the medical records are very hard for me to understand. Between the handwriting and the abbreviations, of which I think many may no longer be used in the US (or I may just be unfamiliar with some of them), I rarely can get a complete picture of a patient's history. In addition, very little is recorded about a patient's condition during their stay; mostly just general observations and doctor's orders.

Supplies: For me, part of feeling competent as a nurse is being familiar with the equipment available and that is something that I'm lacking in certain areas here. For example, the IV tubing is totally different and the IV solutions are in plastic bottles instead of the bags that I'm used to. There are also no IV pumps so it's back to the basics of counting drops manually! These are very small changes, but even those can throw off a normal routine. In addition, many items that would come in kits in US hospitals are assembled by the hospital staff themselves. For example: gauze and umbilical cord ties. I've spent parts of shifts folding gauze and packing cord ties to be sent for sterilization. I've also had to learn to dip gauze in Betadine solution and wring it out using forceps in order to be able to clean surgical incisions. The first time another nurse watched me do this she said, "You've never done this before, have you?" Nope! I've pretty much only used pre-packaged/pre-soaked swabs. And that was very obvious.

IV solution storage

Wrapped and sterilized dressing kits on the lower shelf

Uniforms: As my parents did in the hospital nursing days, I too get to wear white. Every nurses dream, right?! The nursing uniform is a white collared shirt, a black sweater or blazer, and a white kira. I was dreading wearing white, but it's not as bad as I was expecting. Since there is no birth taking place on our floor (except the occasional unexpectedly fast labor) and the attendants do much of the hands-on care, we're actually not exposed to much body fluid (which is always a good thing even if you're not wearing white...).

Bhutanese Nurse Emily

Sisters/brothers: Nurses are called "sister" or "brother" (so I am "Sister Emily"), which simultaneously has a nice familial quality but also makes me feel as if I have somehow become a nun. Matt and I think that this nomenclature may come from the days of medical missionaries in India (they use the term there too).

Whew, that's a lot of information and I'm sure I haven't even gotten it all down. I will no doubt be doing more posts about the hospital and my experiences there since there's always a lot going on and a lot to take in. So far I have enjoyed being there despite the very different working conditions and their constant humbling effect. The nurses have been great and very helpful. They are very smart and competent, and are definitely doing their best given the situation. All the staff I have met have been this way, in fact. Any of the negatives described in this post are not the fault of any staff but rather an adaptation to a system that is severely understaffed and underresourced. What I have missed the most is getting to know patients and their families personally, especially when their families with new, cute little additions! I get it where I can and try to check back in with patients and give them a little extra attention as I am available.

Anyway, that's all for now. This is Sister Emily, your amateur medical anthropologist, signing off.

But before I leave for good, let me remind you: please don't spit in the hospital

Gorkhaland – Part Three

Day Five: Saturday, 15 December 

As fast as Kanchenjunga shows itself, it is swiftly replaced by another grey day ...

On our last full day in Darjeeling, we had breakfast at Glenary's and then decided to walk to Happy Valley Tea Estate, which is about 2 km outside of town. The walk took us down onto Hill Cart Road and we slammed into the frenetic pandemonium of the main bazaar in Darjeeling. 

Descending into the streets.

This picture cannot even begin to capture the craziness of the main bazaar, but it was my only opening.

We finally broke free of that and made it to the steep and rocky path that peeled away from the road and descended into the verdant tea fields. It was a welcome relief from the roads. 

The main building for the Happy Valley Tea Estate.

Hills full of tea bushes.

When we arrived at the Happy Valley gate, a man came out to meet us and took us around the factory. December is not picking or processing season, so there was no activity inside, but it was still interesting to see how leaves are sorted, dried, rolled, fermented, and sifted according to different tea grades and styles. Our tour guide didn't really speak English, but we got the gist of what he was saying. Besides what is sold onsite, the Happy Valley estate sells its tea exclusively at the famous Harrod's of London. After the tour we did a tea tasting and purchased some boxes.

Making our way back up from the estate, we found a street that wound its way up from the main road and avoided the traffic. We walked up the steep hill and stopped for lunch at a local favorite called Hasty Tasty that makes good dosas and good thali. Because of table and chair shortages, we ended up at a table with a nice Indian family that lived in Darjeeling but spoke limited English. We had a short and awkward conversation, and the rest of the time kind of smiled at each other. 

After lunch, we walked up to the Buddhist temple atop Observatory Hill near downtown for which Darjeeling was named (it was the site of the Dorjee Ling monastery). Far from the subdued and calming nature of Bhutan's temples, this one was pretty hectic and featured many grifters on the grounds looking to "bless" you for tips. 

A disarray of colors and prayer flags.

Apparently prayer flags make great fun for monkeys.

After the temple, we walked down some very steep and winding streets to the Tibetan Refugee Center. This is a place for the refugees that offers services and provides them a place to practice traditional arts and industry. There were different buildings for wood carving, weaving, painting, etc. There was also a photo exhibition about Tibet and the diaspora after the Chinese invasion. It was interesting, although a pretty long walk down and back (about an hour). 

The road down to the Refugee Center. 

After a long day of walking, we were pretty beat and ended up at Glenary's one last time for tea and desserts. After stopping back at the hotel for a short rest, we had dinner at Kunga's downstairs from the hotel. Kunga's is a Tibetan place that serves good Tibetan noodle soups (e.g. Thenthuk). 

Day Six: Sunday, 16 December

We begrudgingly woke up at 5:30am to catch a taxi for a three hour ride back to Bagdogra airport. That early in the morning, the drive back was much smoother as there weren't yet the numbers of cars and people on the road to make it crazy. 

The Druk Air plane took off in the warm haze and when it peaked above the clouds, we were treated to a magnificent view of Mt. Everest and Kanchenjunga and, eventually, Jomolhari – Bhutan's sacred mountain. Just as quickly as we graced the tops of the clouds, we descended into the valleys of Bhutan. When I made this landing in July, the mountains were flush with the green of monsoon rains and the rice paddies shown like jewels on the hillsides. Now Bhutan is quite brown and yellow, having exhausted the moisture from the past rains and waiting for the Spring and Summer to burst forth again with color. 

Emily and I both agree that Darjeeling was interesting to visit, but we were happy to be 'home' in Bhutan. India is a place that doesn't make any sense to me, and it is my personality to make sense out of things. It's funny how Bhutan has come to make sense in my mind, even if there still is a lot of cognitive dissonance. Coming back from Darjeeling, Bhutan was home to me and perhaps it is when you leave a place and return that you can truly come to appreciate it. 

Gorkhaland – Part Two

Day Three: Thursday, 13 December

After breakfast, we walked about a kilometer down the road from the resort to the Japanese Peace Pagoda. This temple complex was constructed by the Nipponzan-Myōhōji Buddhist Order of Japan and they have built similar pagodas all around the world.

Approaching the Peace Pagoda was far from a peaceful experience, as a whole bunch of tourist jeeps tried to cram themselves up and down the dirt road leading to the pagoda, all the while honking at each other without abandon. There were lots of Indian tourists crowding the pagoda itself, but it was very nicely built and peaceful in its own architecture.

The top of the pagoda. 

'Teaching Buddha'

One of many such panels around the pagoda.
This one tells the story of Buddha receiving a gift of mangoes. 

'Meditation Buddha'

One of the cooler experiences of our trip to Darjeeling, after walking around the pagoda we entered the adjacent meditation room where a monk was beating a large drum and chanting. He invited us in to sit and gestured that we should take the small drums laying on the floor and join him. We did just that, and soon other people were entering and taking up drums. Eventually, over a dozen people were seated on the floor and drumming in rhythm as the monk chanted. Just as the drumming began with a single drummer and crescendoed into a room-full, the meditation ended by a slow decrescendo as people left the room slowly. Emily and I were the first to enter and the last to leave, so we were able to receive the full effect of complete strangers entering into meditation together and then exiting the room one by one. The monk blessed us as we left, all the while beating his large drum in a steady and unwavering rhythm.

We only planned on staying at the Dekeling Resort for two nights, so after returning from the Pagoda we packed up our things and took them to the Dekeling Hotel downtown. Up many flights of stairs, the Dekeling Hotel is perched right above a busy roundabout called Clock Tower Square. It's a nice place considering some of the alternatives, but it's pretty bare-bones. There were no heaters in the rooms, but they did provide us with hot water bottles at night in which to tuck into our beds. (Emily can attest to the effectiveness, having enthusiastically picked up the practice here in Bhutan.) On one of the levels was a very nice bukari stove which was a popular sitting area among the guests and allowed everyone to interact and meet each other.

After depositing our things in our room, we made our way once again through the shops up to the main plaza. We stopped for a tea sampling at Golden Tips, which is a very large international distributor of Darjeeling tea. 

Tea tasting at Golden Tips. 

Check out that view! Just kidding – still just a monochromatic blanket of haze. 

One must be proper about these things. 

For lunch we ate at the Frank Ross Cafe, which serves up a good South Indian dosa but also features an eclectic menu of nachos, enchiladas, pizza, and sorts of menagerie.

After lunch we went down to the train station to purchase tickets for the "Toy Train," which is a famous railway in that it is one of the highest in the world and runs on a two-foot wide track that goes right down Hill Cart Road. The entire railway was declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999. Typical to India, the queueing for the train tickets was mostly chaos and most people just went up to the window ignoring the line. Eventually, we were able to purchase tickets for the next day, so more to come on the train in a bit...

On our way back up to Darjeeling center, we stopped at a newish mall called Rink Mall which had a movie theater, fashion shops, and a large store called "Big Bazaar" which featured almost everything you could ever need – from clothes to groceries – kind of like a Walmart or Target. We ended up practically going grocery shopping, getting items we couldn't find in Bhutan (mostly spices and different flavors of chips) and Emily found a few Indian shirts that she liked. 

Oh, I also forgot to mention that this mall had a Domino's Pizza! Very weird. 

In the late afternoon we went to one of the fancy hotels – the Windamere – for an English high tea. When we went to the front desk to inquire about the tea, they escorted us to a classic British parlor room with a large roaring fireplace and we sat with an Australian couple on a grand world tour and a German man that was travelling around India doing drawings and illustrations for a book. It was amazingly quiet in this parlor room, so the only good way to break the awkwardness was to talk to each other. They served us tea with scones, sandwiches, and various desserts. It was very nice, although both Emily and I agreed that it couldn't beat our English high tea at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton, Canada.

The flowers at the Windamere.

Enjoying my tea and scones, all tickety-boo. 

Since we were on holiday we were, of course, on the progressive meal plan and went out for a drink and more snacks at the Shangri-La Restaurant in the late-late afternoon. Emily was loving the Christmas decorations there: 

Emily with a star on top. 

After the drinks and snacks, then we went out for a very nice Indian dinner at Lunar, situated directly below our hotel. By the time that was all over, we were positively stuffed!

Day Four: Friday, 14 December 

We awoke this morning to the mighty Kanchenjunga, floating above Darjeeling like a palace of clouds...

The view from our hotel room window.

The view from our hotel window looking across Darjeeling.

The view from our hotel window looking straight down. Indian road caos! 

Walking to Sonam's Kitchen. 

A monkey perches on the edge of a food stall roof,
hoping to snatch a tasty breakfast.

We had breakfast at Sonam's Kitchen, a great little hole-in-the-wall that serves up eggs and pancakes with real coffee. (The Lonely Planet guide aptly described Sonam's as "an oasis of good coffee in a tea-loving town.") Because there are only three or four tables in the entire place, we sat with a bunch of tourists from the States and two from Sweden. That is pretty much the norm in Darjeeling: forced integration and interaction with world travelers. Not that there's anything wrong with that... It is an interesting contrast to Bhutan, where tourist restrictions mean that the calibre of tourist we receive are usually older and wealthier. The kinds of chilip tourists that are in abundance in India are exactly the kinds of tourists that Bhutan wants to do without: young backpacking hippies with small budgets looking for an "experience" (see also: Nepal). Unfortunately for Bhutan (or maybe fortunately), wealthy tourism means that the tourist get a completely skewed picture of the "real" Bhutan as they are put up in five-star resorts, whisked around the country by tour companies, and never really forced to confront the problems faced by the country at the moment. It's a facade, which is exactly how Bhutan wants it. In India, it's almost the opposite, as lots of tourists want to see the grime and grit, the negotiations of daily living that one must do to survive in a country of over one billion. 

Anyway, I digress...

After breakfast we went down to the train station and boarded the Toy Train on a "Joy Ride" ticket that does a loop to the station of Ghum and back again, with the whole trip taking about two hours. Many of the other trains that are part of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railroad system are diesel powered, but this "joy ride" train uses the old coal and steam powered engine that dates back over 100 years. Emily and I were right in the front of the front car, which meant a lot of coal smoke and loud train whistling. It was still an interesting experience and I got a lot of good pictures of street scenes – which I guess makes me guilty of being that kind of Indian tourist since I am also interested in how people live their lives in different places around the world. The train tracks are right on Hill Cart Road, and the train ends up going within inches of shops on one side and cars on the other. It was definitely an experience! 

The view from the train station of Kanchenjunga and Darjeeling. 

Making our way along the road. 

A roadside Hindu temple for the god Ganesh. 

Children play on the tracks. 

Badminton is a very popular game to play in the streets. 

Binoculars help to get a better view of Kanchenjunga.

Stopping at Batastia Loop. 

An engineer perches on top of the engine,
monitoring the steam and coal in one of my favorite pictures from this trip.

After we returned to Darjeeling, we went for lunch at Glenary's, did more shopping, drank more tea, and ate more food. This time we went back to Glenary's for a drink and then went to Shangri-La for a delicious tandoori dinner. 

Emily's hot toddy. 

A pint of Kingfisher at Glenary's.