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These signs and colors (green/white/yellow) were everywhere from Bagdagra to Darjeeling. After spending two weeks relatively untouched by the surrounding protests and demonstrations for the creation of Telangana in Hyderabad, I found myself smack-dab in the center of an aggressive campaign for statehood in West Bengal. Or more appropriately – trying to avoid getting caught in the middle of it.

Joshua, Sailusha and I had spent a magnificent weekend in Darjeeling and needed to get back to Bagdagra for a 2PM flight to Kolkata on Monday. There was talk throughout the weekend about upcoming strikes and demonstrations on Monday. As we embarked on a full-day of sightseeing on Sunday, we ran across a small group of demonstrators holding some signs, a fair amount of people wearing traditional clothes, and one car driving around to rally members to meet-up at a particular point the next day. But, nothing major. As we pulled into our hotel (or rather the bottom of the steep hill leading to it because the car couldn’t make it up the hill), our driver kindly informed us that there was going to be a 24 hour strike in one of the cities between Darjeeling and Bagdagra. In other words, nothing would go between the city from 6AM Monday to 6AM Tuesday.

The solution? Get to Bagdagra before 6AM. And since our driver needed to get back to Darjeeling before he got stuck in Bagdagra himself, this meant leaving at 2:30AM. We didn’t really have a choice here – leaving later in the morning meant we risked missing the flight. I was utterly useless while Josh and Sailusha coordinated the details in Hindi with the driver – there are times in your life when you’re 100% dependent on other people – this was one of them.

So, after another cold night in our hotel room, we were off at 2:30AM. One thing about the roads around Darjeeling are that they are tiny. They are bumpy. There are also no lights. Our driver was pretty impressive at navigating the roads so we were literally flying down the mountains with only the headlights to guide us. I was too tired to really be scared and after awhile everything became a blur. We made it to Bagdagra around 5AM.

Unfortunately, the airport wasn’t open. Our driver found some drivers on the street and asked about hotels – there was a small one close by but after knocking on the door it turned out that all the smart people had booked rooms that morning for a place to sleep before the impending strike, so we were out of luck. Thankfully our driver didn’t just dump us on the street for the next 5 hours. He found another driver, who, for the price of 500 INR, let us sleep in the back of his cab. He drove us to the airport parking lot, which was almost deserted, parked, locked the car, and strode off to kill time with some other people awake (that’s another thing about India – there are always people up at weird times — why?). I somehow slept soundly for a few hours and awoke to Joshua’s snoring and a stiff neck after leaning against the plastic window of the cab.

This was our shelter for a few hours.

This was one of those situations where it was too ridiculous to be angry about, and something you could almost call sort of an adventure, particularly after a full day of sightseeing and sitting in a car that took us around Darjeeling. And I have got to hand it to the drivers in India – they may drive like maniacs, but they’re good people. We trusted our driver to take us in the middle of the night down some terrifying roads to the airport and he helped us find some shelter for a few hours. Remember how I said there are times in your life when you’re 100% dependent on other people? This was the second time it happened in 12 hours.

As we left the airport parking lot, sore from sleeping in the car, we saw other families that had gone through the same ordeal, some in smaller spaces than us. The airport was crawling with people by 10AM, even though flights weren’t leaving for 3 more hours. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be to be stuck back in Darjeeling. I also feel for the people who arrived today only to find that they can’t go anywhere for the whole day.

Despite this, the trip was incredibly worth it. Atop Tiger Hill at 6AM, we saw Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world:

So that’s the scoop on my Monday in Darjeeling (or mostly Bagdagra, Koklata and Hyderabad). I’m in Hyderabad for a few more hours before flying off to Dubai and then to California! In the coming weeks I hope to finally sit down and write more about my trip(s) and share all my photos.