Day 106, Buddhabare, Kaffer, Samthar Ridge [Monday 17th March 2008]
Previous day: Day 105, Lava, Gumpa Dara, Samthar Ridge [Sunday 16th March 2008]
Next day: Day 107, General Jimmy Singh's Farmhouse [Tuesday 18th March 2008]
A bloke from a house down makes us big bowls of porridge and brings them up to the tea stall for breakfast. We check out the gumpa that this this village, Gumpa Dara, is named after. There is a huge, 6ft tall prayer wheel and a golden statue of Goutham Buddha, which Kate walks clockwise around 3 times, as per the instructions given nearby. Then we continue on.
The walk to Kaffer takes us past cardamom farms and pretty houses, their wooden balconies decorated with multitudes of pot plants and flowers. We see women and children stagger along, bent over under huge masses of greenery — food for their cows. A group of milkmen go past us — 4 boys with big metal churns strapped to their backs.
We get to Buddhabare around lunchtime. It's a tiny village, and unfortunately there are no lodges or restaurants. I ask a guy who is sitting on a bench in the dusty street, "Khana hai?" He shouts to a passer-by, who then leads us down the road, into a sweet shop and through to a kitchen at the back — it's his family's house. There, while his blind grandmother noisily uses the toilet, his mother dishes us up a lunch of rice, dal and sabzi (vegetables). It's good, and there's plenty of it. We can't quite dispel the notion that we're eating somebody else's lunch. I ask him how much we should pay for the food, and he says "Your wish!", so I leave Rs. 100 on the table. As we are leaving Kate says thanks for the delicious food, and her words are parroted back to her with uncanny accuracy by Grandma! Everyone laughs.
We walk on to Kaffer through more woodland, with gorgeous views down into the valley. On the path we meet a young English bloke with a headful of long, blond hair who is teaching in one of the local schools as part of a gap year placement.
When we reach Kaffer we are disappointed to find that it's a bit of a tourist disaster. Hotels are being thrown up everywhere, to join the crowded throng that already line the tiny streets of the tiny village. Kaffer has excellent sunrise and sunset views and as a result attracts most of the Bengali tourists, who arrive in taxis. The local council have recently begun to exploit this, and have created a forest park, including a forest canopy walkway, in an attempt to lure daytrippers. As a result, though, it's a crowded, soulless village with too many visitors and not enough infrastructure. The locals are surly and the hotel staff, the ones we met anyway, lazy and arrogant. Luckily we find a decent little room for Rs. 350 above a restaurant, where the woman cooks us a delicious egg curry while keeping an eye on her favourite TV serial!
Next day: Day 107, General Jimmy Singh's Farmhouse [Tuesday 18th March 2008]
Previous day: Day 105, Lava, Gumpa Dara, Samthar Ridge [Sunday 16th March 2008]