Arrival

4/12/08
I arrived in Bagdogra on the 2nd after a harrowing night in Kolkata trying to find a place to stay at 11 at night. The room was roughly the size of 2x a jail cell, with no windows. Oh I forgot to mention that I did not recover any of my bags (2 duffel bags and a guitar) at the Kolkata airport, it turns out that no ones bags were transfered to the new plane in Delhi. Luckily my support network here is really making it easy to recover the bags, and they are being delivered today.
After arriving in Bagdogra, I Met the driver, Mintu, and he took me through the Sikkim border through ridiculous winding roads for about 4.5 hours. When I arrived in Gangtok, I was brought to Chandmari, which is Pintso's house. I am staying in the shrine room with the altar. the first night I woke at 3 from a throbbing headache from altitude pressure. Yesterday Tenzingla brought me to a local agriculture fair down the road at a park. I was amazed at the level of progressive agricultural engineering activities are going on here in Sikkim. The government has declared it an "organic state" whatever that means, but it seems as though there is a real respect for these kind of agricultural practices. The exhibition contained booths about vermiculture, mushroom growing, animal husbandry, aquaculture, and terracing demonstrations. Also withing a hall there was a huge produce show. none of it was for sale, rather it was all the work of local farmers vying for the 1st and 2nd prize produce. Every kind of fruit and veg was exhibited, it is amazing the richness of variety that is produced here. That night I went to Taktse International School for the first time, and met some of the teachers and students. Tenzingla showed me around the school, and mr Arvind Gupta around the grounds, including some lands that I could consider to use. Last night I went with some of the teachers to see The Dark Night in a theatre in Gangtok, pretty good movie i guess.
Today I came straight up to the school and have been here all day. I hiked up to the retreat up the mountain by myself, I almost got lost, and when I reached a lake I met a guy herding cows, and one of his cows got stuck in the muck it reminded me of artex from the never ending story. this dude was rugged and was like what the fuck is this tourist doing up here? A couple of the teachers and I will be performing a song on saturday for a soiree. Im playing bass. it was surreal yesterday to go back to Gangtok on the bus with all the kids, listening to guns and roses blasting out of the speakers. it still makes me laugh. time to go drink some tea. more to come.