Off The Cliff Travel Adventures

 

The thing I love about travel, especially road trips, is the sheer unpredictability of events and circumstances that can suddenly crop up even in the best of planned down to the minute expeditions. The things that happen, how we cope with them, and the sheer hysterical laughter later, make for some good stories and memories down the line.

This last January, bhai and Lisa were visiting from California, and we drove off for an extended visit to North Bengal, starting with Siliguri and doing Gorumara and Kurseong before we returned to the Metropolis.  The resort at Lataguri was nice, and we made it our base as we did different directions on different days. More than one trip into the forests, looking for birds for my avid birdwatchers; looking for elusive glimpses of the Indian Bison, Leopards, Rhinos, and what have you; driving off into the hills for the cool and the food/tea. The trip went swimmingly and while bhai and Lisa saw, heard, and catalogued dozens of species of birds, I got hundreds of shots and really loved the peace and the “time off”.

On the day before the day before we were to leave, we took the hotel car up to some place called the five-point tourist spot. Apparantly, you drive up to here, park your vehicle at this large ground surrounded by small gift/curiosity shops and food shacks, and then take one of “their” jeeps – some kind of local government tourism thingies – and they take you round to 5 different places including an old dam, a riverside forest bungalow, a hill “spot” and more. Since we had already done most of what we had planned, and Rishyap, Lava, Kurseong, and Margaret’s Deck to boot, this seemed like a good choice.

So off went the three intrepid travellers, the Indian, the no longer Indian, and the American, after a hearty breakfast. To go see what we could see. From the charts there, offering some 8 or 9 different combinations and destinations, and decided which five places we wanted to do on this particular trip. Now this parking place is quite a bit uphill from Lataguri, and being familiar with serpentine mountain roads from my childhood in the Himalayas, I was glad to have an expert and steady person behind the wheel of the hotel car on the way up.

 So, we arrive, we park, we get into the government jeep and off we go! We did some 5 spots and returned to the parking area about three hours later. It’s starting to get pretty late in the day, and night falls quickly in the mountains, so we have a quick cup of tea each… including the driver of the hotel car we came up in, and start back. And this is when things start to go horrible bad!

I always sit next to the driver at these things, since I want the windscreen clear for my photography, and I start to notice the guy is taking too wide turns and swinging the car across the narrow mountain road dangerously.  I keep talking to him, assuming he is tired and sleepy, since I can’t smell alcohol on his breath, but things just keep getting more and more precarious. He slows unnecessarily when there is no need and speeds up crazily at hairpin bends, almost driving us all off the edge and to our deaths. He keeps getting more and more erratic and the edge of the cliff keeps getting closer and closer, causing heartbeats to rise and blood pressure to spike.

 Fearing for our lives, and seriously worried about what is wrong with this guy, we breathe a sigh of relief when he actually runs the car into a boulder on the hilly side of the road, and comes to a stop.  He gets out to check on the damage, and bhai and I decide that the guy is definitely on something, probably opium or something else that I cannot smell, and that he should not be allowed to drive further.  So we tell the guy to get in the back and that bhai will drive us back to the resort.

But just as we are starting to think we are possibly going to make it back alive this time, the guy jumps back into the driver’s seat , and takes off again while bhai is still hanging out of the car with one foot on the road, dragging him along and wrenching his back (nothing worse thankfully), only to drive headfirst into an oncoming car, while all of us are screaming at him to step on the goddamn brakes and stop the car! Luckily for us, neither our car nor the oncoming one was going too fast, or that would have been the end of the road for the lot of us. Instead all we had was bhai’s wrenched back and a severe muscle pull in my side from trying to wrestle the steering wheel away from the madman’s grip. 

People pile out of the oncoming car, a young doctor and his old parents, who are also – luckily – shaken but not hurt. Lisa taps me on the shoulder from the backseat and tells bhai and I to get out of the car before the madman decides to do something else. The guy is sitting ramrod straight in the driver’s seat with a death grip on the wheel. Before they can start the mandatory road accident argument tending to fisticuffs, we explain the situation to them, and we all call the owner of the car rental company. The owner agrees that bhai should drive the car back, and leave the guy by the side of the road if necessary, but three strong men are unable to pull him out of the seat or get him to let go of the wheel.

Some boys on a couple of bikes pass by, and stop to check out the altercation. They promise to find us some help. In the meantime, it has gotten seriously dark, and I am basically stuck in the dark, in the middle of a forest, with 2 foreign tourists. Prime recipe for possible disaster for anywhere in the world, never mind a developing nation.  And it is DARK! No human habitation for miles in either direction, and street lights are not a concept in the mountain forest reaches. The only light for as far as one can see are the headlights and our mobile phones.

Some elders from the village just down the road arrive, to check out what they can do. They are severely miffed at the driver, for his state of inebriation and his behaviour of putting all of us in danger. “We are a tourist destination,” they say, “all our households earn from tourism, our entire region works on it, it is one or two people like this who give all of us a bad name and affect the entire economy.” They are NOT happy, to say the least, and another round of try-to-extract-the-high-as-a-kite-driver-from-behind-the-wheel ensues, with an equal lack of success.  The driver admits he is high, he took something while we were sight-seeing, admits he is in no shape to drive, but absolutely refuses to relinquish the wheel, even when asked to do so by his boss, and is stuck to it like a limpet.

Anyway, the elders arrange for one of their local car owners to drive us back to Lataguri, and truth to tell they are a shining memory of my trip. Rarely have I encountered such kindness and helpfulness from total strangers in dangerous situations. Off we run, as soon as transport arrives, leaving the madman and his car to the tender mercies of the local humans and wildlife, and make our way back in one piece.

Needless to say, in the light of the day that dawned the next morning, it all looked like a great adventure and by now, six months later, it is one of those hilarious stories to recount to friends. At the time, though, it was not a laughing matter by any means. The thing about near-death experiences is that they do lend a whole new perspective to life.

But is something like this going to dissuade me from more travel? Will this experience prevent future road trips in any way? Highly unlikely!!!