This post is a little lengthy…but there truly is so much to say.
We started off for Shillong at about 1:30 pm on Thursday. We had heard reports of a strike being called that day, very similar to what happened the last time we took a trip to Shillong. It seems that the devil really has a problem with us going there, and for good reason. Nevertheless, we began driving.
After we reached the border check post, we learned that there was indeed a strike. Not willing to be stopped, we ventured across the bridge into West Bengal. We didn’t make it very far before our vehicle was mobbed by demonstrators who refused to allow us passage. We were forced to return to Sikkim and there we waited. Finally at about 5:00 pm they allowed us to continue our journey; all along the way we were stopped by angry people who we had to convince to allow us to continue.
At this point we already knew that we had missed our train because it was scheduled to depart at 6:00 pm, but we continued to make our way to the train station with the hope that there would be a later train to catch.
At around 7:00 pm the unimaginable happened. Our jeep completely died on us. We were driving along and the engine began making some terrible noises, we drove as long and as far as we possible could but finally the jeep just wouldn’t move. We were stuck; on the side of the mountain road, in complete darkness. Thank God there was a small settlement about a mile from where we got stuck; we pushed the jeep through the winding road to that place and unloaded our luggage. It was sometime around 9:00 pm before we began our journey again.
Finally we found a vehicle that would take us to the train station, and at about 11:00 pm we arrived. We boarder our train and began our 10 hour train ride at 1:00 in the morning on Friday. We would not be stopped, and our determination would be greatly rewarded.
