In the last month of a financial year, it is not unusual to hear people complain about being tight on money, what with tax-saving investments and premiums to be paid. Not so for me this year. First, because I ended up saving an amount against a premium I no longer needed to pay. Second, because I was to take off for Darjeeling.

It was to be my maiden trip to the Queen of the Hills, and that too months ahead of retirement.

I grew up outside Bengal, came to Calcutta for higher studies and never left. And in all these years, I have lived with the feeling that I hadn’t earned my right to be called a true blue Bengali since I hadn’t completed the “Dipuda” circuit.

Dipuda stands for Digha, Puri and Darjeeling, three done-to-death holiday destinations for anyone in Bengal. I had been to Digha and Puri but somehow the Darjeeling trip had never materialised. I almost honeymooned in Darjeeling, but finally landed up in Puri.

As the plane took off from Dum Dum, I settled down to think back in wonder. I had the aisle seat, so I could not look out of the window. I had first landed at Bagdogra over three decades ago en route to Siliguri. In subsequent years, I have passed through New Jalpaiguri Junction on the way to Chalsa, Dhupjhora, Samsing. But Darjeeling remained stubbornly off the map for me.

On reaching Bagdogra a little after 9.30 in the morning sometime in mid-March, we — a cousin, her daughter and I — hired a cab to Darjeeling. On the way, the driver-cum-owner of the cab, Nitesh, suggested we go via Mirik to make the most of the day. And so it happened that Nitesh ended up chalking out our itinerary and driving us around.

Walking into Alice Villa that afternoon, a few minutes from the iconic Mall, felt like walking into a slice of history. Escorted by a staff member down the long, red-carpeted hallway lined with sofas, I wondered how the heritage cottage might have been pre-
Independence. The wooden stairs to the first floor had an old colonial charm but I couldn’t imagine film stars staying there. But they did. In Amader Katha, Bijoya Ray writes that during the shoot of Satyajit Ray’s Kanchenjungha (1962), the legendary actors Chhabi Biswas and Pahari Sanyal had been lodged here while the rest of the crew stayed at Hotel Mount Everest.

Little did I know then that that would remain my only “connection” with Kanchenjunga.

Post lunch at Fiesta, a restaurant on the Mall, my companions pointed to where the third highest peak of the world is located. Looking beyond colourful sweaters, shawls, mufflers and pine trees, all I saw was a white wall. Difficult to even imagine a majestic mountain there, forget five peaks — in Tibetan, Kang-chen-dzo-nga means five treasures of the snow.

Although we had no intention of doing touristy things, we did go to Glenary’s but sans the mandatory selfie. We also paid homage to Keventer’s (whose roof displays a signage that reads “Kev’s”), Ghoom Monastery, Batasia Loop, Peace Pagoda, Lepchajagat, Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, etc., etc. We ticked everything on the list except Tiger Hills.

For three days I kept scanning the horizon, looking wistfully at the fog which showed no sign of dissipating. A few days before our trip, an acquaintance had quipped, “It seems there’s some deal between Glenary’s and Kanchenjunga. We could see her from
Glenary’s but she had vanished by the time we reached the Mall.” The mighty mountain didn’t deign me even that.

My cousin, for whom it was the nth trip since her childhood, had told me that the weather in Darjeeling was unpredictable. I wished it’d play out in my favour at least for a second. A friend consoled me saying she had never caught a glimpse of Kanchenjunga and she had been to Darjeeling five times. I could well appreciate the pain of the character from Ray’s Kanchenjungha, industrialist Indranath Roy Chaudhury played by Chhabi Biswas — he itinerantly complained about how the Kanchenjunga continued to play hide and seek with him. It was only in the last few seconds of the film that the elusive mountain emerged in all its glory.

I returned a “Bengali”, yet not fully so. One day after that, I spotted a photo of the mountain on a friend’s WhatsApp status. “From Sikkim?” I asked. “From Lepchajagat,” she replied. Lepchajagat is a small village located 19 kilometres away from Darjeeling.