Having aborted my mission to Ghoom the previous day, I was up early and down to the train staion to book my ticket on the Toy Train by 8.30 (ok not early for some). This time the purchase went through without a hitch, though at 1100 rupees the fare seemed steep. Well, anything for world heritage.
I was back at the hotel for breakfast for 9am where I met Helga from Austria who was on her way back home for a holiday from a stint of teaching in Bhutan. Helga, another one to whom I doff my cap, put me right on a few assumptions I had made about Bhutan and after a pleasant breakfast with her of coffee, fried eggs, sunny side up, toast and mango juice I left to organise myself for the trip to Ghoom and clear my room ready for the afternoon's transfer.
The train journey to Ghoom took around an hour and it's walking pace slow and steamy. It is not without its charms, the most obvious one to me being that of being waved at and waving to children on the way. The world is, in many ways, similar from Dawlish to Darjeeling!
At the Batasia Loop stop, as I was taking a photo of the tourist infomation board (not included), Phyllis from California began a conversation with me which led to my joining with her and Sinon, a former lodger of hers from Turkey, in a mutual exploration of Ghoom. We started briefly with the railway museum for which I had little interest and from there walked down the hill to the Sakya Choling monastery, where we were shown around by a very friendly monk called Thubten, studying English and Chinese in Nepal. On our way out and on the way to Yiga Choling, the oldest monastery in Ghoom and the monastery of Dhardo Rimpoche, we watched the young monks play an energetic game of football with a makeshift ball the size of a tennis ball, where the goal at either end was rarely threatened and into which one of the older monks entered with evident pleasure and amusement. See photograph of one of the goal keepers.
Yiga Choling was more run down than Sakya but the art work in the shrine room was exquisite as you can see from the pictures. There is also a stunning beautiful central rupa of Maitreya,the Buddha to be, though I did not feel right to take photographs of that for some reason. Sangharakshita describes the monastery in his memoirs and the image that I carried was of this mysterious and secret place, hidden away from the town and shrouded in perpetual mist with conches and horns echoing from it. It was not quite like this but very beautiful if run down all the same. I also saw an image of Dhardo Rimpoche and his stupa which is situated to the right of the monastery as you look at it and on which an inscription refers to the contribution made to its cost by the Western Buddhist Order. I did not say to the officiating monk that I was a disciple of Sangharakshita and somewhat regretted this.
From Yiga Choling and aftter some deliberation amongst ourselves we walked down the hill to Samten Choling where Phyllis enjoyed the puja being perfomed by around 30 young monks, none of which I recognised. I bought some fingerless gloves, pressed by a cheerful and persistent sales lady.
From Samten Choling we took a cab to the Thupten Sanga Choling where I did not take any pictures but enjoyed the atmosphere. The Choling, also know as the Dali Gompa, has around 200 monks and I got a sense of a living Buddhist community. Here too football was popular, with a group of monks in one corner managing an impressive display of keepy uppy. The other highlight was some young monk somewhere hiding and repeating in a load whisper 'what is your name?' to me as I stood on a viewing area keenly trying to locate him.
The final stop on what had become a bit of a monastery marathon was the Japanese temple and peace pagoda, to reach which we had to enter and then once again exit Darjeeling by tortuous (to me at least) winding roads. The monastery belongs to the Nichiren Sochu sect as far as I could tell and, after banging a drum in the shrine room to accompany chanting, and receiving some home made mints generously given, I made my way up shoeless on the cold stones steps (whinge!) to the imposing though not very exciting (again to me at least) Peace Pagoda, where I did, however, enjoy the carved wooden depictions from the life of the Buddha (photographs displayed).
From thence home, a quick dinner with Phyllis and Sinon of Tibetan dumplings in soup, a rest and then another dinner, this time of Tibetan noodles and soup with egg, with Helga and her friend Katia, a Tibetanologist from Paris, and then to bed where I was expecting to settle into an easy sleep and did not, cosy as my bachelor bed is.
Love
Davidx
