Heading Home

All too quickly, it was time to head home. The trip down the mountain was lovely, passing through tea gardens and many little towns along the way. We stopped for a tea break and ordered a plate of momos, only to find a cockroach steamed into the dough of one of them. Needless to say, that took away my appetite. We stayed at a hotel in Siliguri for the night, to break up the trip back a bit more. The next morning we hired a jeep to take us to the border, in hopes of finding room on a bus to take us the rest of the way. We crossed the border with relative ease, stopping at only 5 different little check posts. We then discovered that the buses would not leave until evening. So we hired a micro (minivan of sorts) to take us to the next big town where we could get a direct bus back to Dhaka. Because of the small size of the vehicle, our driver was able to by pass the bridge that was out and thus save us a couple of hours. We pulled into the Rangpur bus stop and immediately were surrounded by beggars and bus-ticket-sellers. By this time it was mid-afternoon and we hadn't eaten lunch yet. Another crazy set of events transpired, including needing to desperately bargain for seats since we were running out of local currency and there was no place to change over more. In the end, kindness was shown and Austin spent his last takas on bread and bananas for lunch, just as the bus was ready to pull out. We were very happy to get home about 10:30p.m.! The only downer was finding that acid from one of Austin's batik supplies, had leaked all over the studio floor, where we had our bedding. It was quite late till we got it cleaned up but, still, it was good to be home.


Here are some scenes from the road, on various trips we took.