Pampered Silly in Kurseong

Photograph by Preeti Verma Lal

In four days I have seen piety in the Buddhist monastery where tonsured nuns sun-dry magenta rhododendrons; at the Ambootia tea factory I am suffused with the scent of fresh organic tea; in the tiny bazaar I rub shoulders with chaos as the steam rail engine hisses on the tracks while I haggle over the price of tempting tamarind toffee; huffing and puffing at the St Mary's trail I wait for the large ferns to unfold from what looked like hirsute buds; at Cochrane Place I soak in grace and gourmet food as Rita and Dhiraj Arora pamper me silly with champagne tea and exquisite cuisine that I fatten on...

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." Centuries ago Elizabeth Barrett held her fingers and started counting the 'ways' she loved poet Robert Browning. I am no Elizabeth and this is not about any Browning, but as I sit in the 125-year old Cochrane Place in Kurseong looking at the snow-bathed Kanchejunga from behind the chintz curtains, I wonder about the 'ways' to describe this hill station that abuts Darjeeling like a coquettish neighbour. What do I call it? A monk's retreat? An epicurean's delight? A trekker's bliss? A naturalist's haven? A perfect getaway? In four days I have seen piety in the Buddhist monastery where tonsured nuns sun-dry magenta rhododendrons; at the Ambootia tea factory I am suffused with the scent of fresh organic tea; in the tiny bazaar I rub shoulders with chaos as the steam rail engine hisses on the tracks while I haggle over the price of tempting tamarind toffee; huffing and puffing at the St Mary's trail I wait for the large ferns to unfold from what looked like hirsute buds; at Cochrane Place I soak in grace and gourmet food as Rita and Dhiraj Arora pamper me silly with champagne tea and exquisite cuisine that I fatten on; and at the candle-lit dinner when the town's best crooner strums his guitar and hums a tune, I mull over booking a room eternally at Cochrane Place. Well, I didn't… But I still don't know how to describe Kurseong.

Think of it, I didn't really know the place. My closest encounter with Kurseong was ages ago when a friend sent a postcard from there. And then came the email from Jennifer Khathing, the manager of Cochrane Place, who is not only gregarious, she is also tech-savvy. She reads travel stories online, found me in cyberspace and sent an invitation. I had just returned from the desert and the hill station seemed like a blissful escape before Delhi's summer singed me.

So one bright spring morning I landed at the Bagdogra airport looking around for a placard that had my name. Kurseong would prattle about tea, I had assumed that much but even the placard would be shaped like a cup-saucer was way beyond my imagination. But at least the placard was there and Ayung Shatsang soon took charge as we raced past the crowded city streets to take the Pankhabari route that requires drivers to have special permits. As the pony-tailed chauffeur manoeuvred one jagged bend after another as the car climbed roughly 5000 ft above sea level, you fathom the permit bit. Not many can swerve safely on the one-way macadamized road that is flanked by mountains on one side and deep valley on the other. One blink, one wrong move and the car can easily slide down hundreds of metres in the gorges. If you are faint-hearted don't look askance, look straight and listen to the tea tales that Shatsang spins. In the one-hour drive from Bagdogra to Kurseong, I picked more information about tea than what an encyclodpedia could have churned.

Laden with information and curious about the place that takes its name from a white orchid, I get off at Cochrane Place to first notice what looked like a shell of a rail engine parked in the courtyard of the hotel. Intrigued I walked up only to realize that the shell carries a staircase in its belly and leads to the restaurant called Chai Country. Interesting! But that was just the beginning of interesting things that fell my way in Kurseong. No, I did not plan any of it, Dhiraj Arora is the itinerary man - he decides where to take you and when. But nothing begins in Kurseong without a good cuppa and in Cochrane where they concoct 40 different blends of tea it is a difficult to pick one. I am not a tea drinker but when Dhiraj mentioned white tea I got more nosy - white tea is almost silvery white, had without milk or sugar and is made only out of tea buds picked during the first flush in spring.

The first evening was earmarked for St Mary's trail - it is a long walk in the forest where large ferns and pine grow in abundance. The breeze is pristine, pollution unheard of and there is no other soul walking around. You have the entire world to yourself; you walk lazily, wait for the sun to go down the pine and kneel at statue of Virgin Mary at the grotto where the holy water flows from a natural spring and candles burn eternally. At the grotto you even have the god to yourself - you can sit as long as you want, for there is nobody else waiting for a moment with divinity. However, the walk up can take your breath away - literally! I huffed and panted, stopped every five minutes and it took me so long to get back that Ludo, the chauffeur, came looking for me; he thought the grizzly bears have had me for supper.

In Kurseong, wherever your eye goes you see tea shrubs looking conceited about their leaves and buds that are diligently hand-plucked by humans (I insist 'humans' because in China monkeys are trained to pluck tea leaves and for some simians it is family business, they have been doing it for generations!), collected in wicker baskets, then taken to the factory for withering, rolling drying, grading and packaging. As I stood in the midst of the shrubs, learning to be a plucker - and being chided by an old woman for picking up thick leaves - I tried sniffing around for the aroma of tea. There was none; but when I walked further away I could feel the trace of tea in the air. I was not wrong, not too far was Ambootia, one of the largest organic tea factories in the area. The tea that you buy in Harrods is actually hand-rolled in this factory; its leaves picked from the 966 hectares that the tea estate comprises. Anil Bansal, the general manager, was generous enough to let me into the factory where green leaves pipe down from a chute into gigantic machines, mounds and mounds of tea leaves are turned by spades, and hand-rolled for the curls. From plucking to packing - it all happens within 24 hours.

If men in shorts and sola toupees were drying tea leaves, not too far rhododendrons were being dried in a monastery. A narrow cobbled hastily-made path takes you to Kunsanum Doling monastery where live about seven Buddhist nuns, away from the world but praying for its peace in the sanctum that is replete with idols of Buddha in various avatars. The entire place is tinged with red - the robes that the nuns wear, the rhododendrons that grow wantonly, the red of the walls and the biscuits wrapped in red that were offered at the altar. In one corner sat another nun moulding mundane clay into exquisite pagodas to be sun-dried and offered during special prayers. When I smiled the nun held my hand, gave me some clay and the brass mould and taught me the art of rolling and pressing clay meticulously. She giggled when at the first attempt instead of a pagoda I probably made a toad, but when I finally got one right, she smiled, patted and offered special Tibetan tea as a perk. Tibetan tea? I assumed it would be just a tad different but when I walked into the nun's kitchen to lend a helping hand, I learnt how elaborate tea-making could be. As the tea leaves simmered in the aluminum pot, rock salt and sugar was added, but when she threw in a dollop of home-made butter and mixed it with a wooden churner, I wasn't sure whether it was tea that we were waiting for or a soufflé. She kept peeping in the pot to check the colour and finally served tea in whisky glasses. Sitting in a monastery drinking tea out of a whisky glass seemed funnily anomalous, but it was utter delight to be entertained by giggly, gracious nuns.

You might write quires and quires about Kurseong, but you cannot go home without a trip on that famous Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. This is no ordinary train, it is the famous blue train that hisses between Darjeeling and Siliguri on a gauge track that is barely 2 ft wide. Perhaps it is the last steam engine that still chugs and it is all of 125 years old. The train was the brainchild of Franklyn Prestage, an agent for Eastern Bengal Railway who took eight years to submit a plan to Lt. Governor Sir Ashley Eden. Work began on the loops and switchbacks cutting through the spurs of the Himalayas hills in 1879 and two years later the locomotive and its three coaches puffed through Darjeeling. The final cost: roughly Rs 60,000 per km.

The steam engine is a fascinating experience - you can see the fireman shove coal into the tender, the driver adjusting the brass valves, the engine hooting, the locomotive hissing, the engine spewing clouds of steam and coal dust adding a sheath on the tree leaves. And when the train stops at junctions for a boiler refill, you can jump off, have a cup of tea, indulge in a debate, probably go for a haircut and then jump back. So leisurely is the pace that it takes nine hours to cover a distance of 88 kms. You can hurtle down the hills in a car and reach Darjeeling in an hour but the train ride is an experience you would not want to miss. The sight is stunning from Ghoom, the highest railway station in the world.

And as if these temptations were not enough, there is the food at Cochrane Place - from nearly forgotten Anglo-Indian cuisine, to Nepalese and Tibetan dishes. It is not just about the food though, it is pretty arty too - you could have boiled eggs that look like penguins, mangoes that seem to wear laced skirts, curry in stout bamboo containers and chicken in coconut shells. Of course, there is tea that is served in champagne glasses and chang (millet brew) that you can quaff out of humungous wooden tumblers. If you are fortunate and the scientist-industrialist pair of Anuradha and Arun Lohia is at Cochrane on an extended sojourn, you could have home-made flax-seed bread; Anuradha makes the world's best bread. The next best thing is to enjoy a picnic in the bed of river Balason and if highs give you the kicks, you can walk on the ancient creaky suspension bridge that was once an appendage of the hydroelectric station. The bridge rasps and trembles perennially but that's where the kick stems from.

Now that you know so much about Kurseong, would you help me describe it? A monk's retreat… An epicurean's delight… A trekker's bliss… A naturalist's haven…A perfect getaway? Tell me, how do I count the 'ways'?

Published in India Today Travel Plus, 2006

Contact: Preetivermalal@gmail.com