Darjeeling 2019

Last November was the fourth time I have visited India, drawn by the magnet that is the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. I first experienced its subtle but irresistible pull in 2002, courtesy of Darjeeling Tours, a small travel company based in Darlington and run by the treasurer of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Society. The format has been broadly
similar each time, flying in to Delhi or Kolkata and visiting local attractions (such as the Taj Mahal or Kolkata’s remaining tram system) before transferring by plane or train to
Siliguri, the base station for the 2ft gauge Darjeeling Himalayan Railway.

The DHR is a wonder of the Victorian railway-building age, originally constructed to
allow British administrators to escape from the oven that is Kolkata in summer to the
relative cool of a hill station on the lower slopes of the Himalayas. The steepest gradient over its 50-mile length is 1 in 23, there are numerous loops and reverses, the views are tremendous and the proximity to local life is as close as it could possibly be.

This trip differed slightly in being organised by David Mead, the almost-but-not-quite-retired carriage and wagon supervisor for the West Somerset Railway. David has much experience of India and its railways, both as a tour leader and more recently as a loco engineer, assisting the DHR workshops to maximise their potential as a refurbisher of the steam fleet. Fifteen went in total, a mixture of railway enthusiasts, accompanying spouses and one or two just up for the adventure. The eldest was a lady of 86, and game for virtually anything. I shared a room with Tony Kuivala, who is not quite 86 yet.

With this type of tour you get up and close with the local people - you are definitely not kept at arm’s length in a sanitised air-conditioned coach, its double glazing separating you from the noisy chaos which is Indian city life. This time we experienced an auto-rickshaw ride through Old Delhi’s narrow, crowded streets (culminating in a visit to a spice shop) and a steam charter behind one of the DHR’s iconic Class B 0-4-0s. Regular stops for watering and attending to the fire gave ample opportunity to cast an interested eye over how loco and crew were performing. Regrettably maintenance is not what it should be, and our engine needed banking assistance occasionally from a diesel bringing up the rear - an unfortunate precedent which hopefully will not be the norm for future charters. However the ride is still as dramatic and exhilarating as it was the first time I experienced it - there is nothing like it anywhere else!

Another aspect of this tour was that David and Val Mead, along with myself, are trustees of Darjeeling Railway Community Support, a small charity which raises money to send to India for educational and social projects in the Darjeeling area. We wanted to see some of the results of our work, so David arranged for the group to visit Rohini school, in a village between Siliguri and Darjeeling. Last time I was there the school building was a small bamboo hut, barely adequate in the dry season and unusable in the monsoon. Funds from the DRCS and other sources have allowed a brick-built school to be constructed, and further donations have provided for desks and computers.

The visit was quite extraordinary - we arrived to see about 60 pupils and teachers forming two lines to applaud us enthusiastically as we walked down the middle to our seats in front of the school. After speeches of welcome we were treated to several displays of traditional dance, before being invited to inspect the school. The first and probably the last time I have been treated like royalty! By our standards the facilities seemed very basic, but there was no doubting the commitment of all concerned to education, which reflects the wider view in India that qualifications are the way to get on in life.

Darjeeling itself is a busy, rapidly-expanding hill town that is acquiring a traffic problem more akin to the larger settlements in the plains. The universal mode of transport is the jeep, as the DHR has long since given up trying to be the main way of getting people and goods up and down the Hill Cart Road. Nowadays it manages just one three-coach diesel-hauled train in each direction, with a supposedly-daily steam service over the upper part of the line and the occasional two-coach charter train.

Fortunately much of the character of Darjeeling remains, despite a modest amount of gentrification as living standards gradually rise. One essential visit was to Hayden Hall, a charitable organisation providing job training, education and health care for underprivileged women. We were able to see the workshops where they teach traditional weaving skills, and buy hand-made clothes and craft items in the shop. This led us on to a meeting with a small group, led by a local Jesuit priest, who were looking to build Darjeeling’s first old peoples’ home. They had identified a suitable plot of land and were looking for our agreement to use DRCS funds to purchase it. We were immediately taken by the warmth and determination of this group, a mix of social workers and teachers, plus a very competent-sounding engineer who seemed to have a good handle on the technical matters. Their leader was also a lawyer, and well versed in the legal aspects of land purchase, so we came away well satisfied that they would make good use of whatever resources we could channel in their direction. Next day David accepted an invitation to visit the site, currently a rice paddy in the bottom of a valley.

Back to the trains. I must confess I took the easy way out and opted to fly from Kolkata to Siliguri, but the majority took the all-day train, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. You meet the local travellers, eat freshly-prepared chicken curry from the kitchen (just follow the squawking) and sit admiring the view courtesy of the air-conditioning (an open carriage door). I also gave the Taj a miss (been there, done that) but others reported on the quality of the all-new train service from Delhi to Agra that stood comparison with Mr Branson’s best efforts. Instead four of us attended a Steam Congress at the National Railway Museum in Delhi. The NRM has a new Director, and it was apparent that he had made an impact, with spruced-up exhibits, plenty of visitors (particularly schoolchildren) and a heritage carriage repurposed into offices.

The meeting was typically Indian, lengthy introductions and welcomes, a relaxed attitude to time-keeping and no facility for asking questions of the speakers. This last was probably just as well, as David and his colleague David Charlesworth both gave presentations highlighting the need for the DHR to improve if it is to retain its UNESCO Heritage Site status and continue to attract visitors. Shortly after, a senior Indian Railways engineer gave a presentation praising the efforts of DHR management in providing an efficient, profitable service with frequent trains and plenty of steam traction! Perhaps the current coal handlers’ dispute was affecting services more than we gave credit for, but the contrast between what we experienced and what we were being told was significant.

As you can see, we packed a lot into the two weeks or so of the trip, and that is without describing the breathtakingly extravagant preparations for a wedding at our Siliguri hotel, the elephant ride and tiger-spotting at the local safari park, buying grown-just-outside-the-door product from a tea factory, rush hour at Kolkata’s Howrah station, which makes Euston seem positively pedestrian, and the 1930s time-warp that is the Windamere hotel in Darjeeling, complete with coal fires and hot water bottles. Needless to say, Tony and I are going back again next year, with Jim and Fiona Ford, to experience the re-instatement of the original route of the Darjeeling Mail, through what is now Bangladesh. Perhaps this time the weather will be clearer in the mountains, and we will actually see Everest and Kangchenjunga this time...