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Striking

At five a.m this morning we put a lock on the cabin door. A half moon directly overhead illuminated the stones in the trail leading away from my house. After a couple weeks of dust and sweat, a 8 by 10ft. Shepherd's tent now sits attached to the rear of our habitation. The insides have be mildly refurbished to accommodate the new additions to our village family. In the flat blue lunar light every thing looked ready for the sun to rise on another year as a family (now slightly enlarged with the addition of Cameron and Elizabeth) living in uncertain India. The sun looked ready to rise on a year full of possibility.

Darjeeling is ten days into a 'bandh', a general strike. All shops are closed (no cement for the new school or rice for the workers), no vegetables in the bazaar, the green, white and yellow flags of the political party du jour are flying and all vehicles are all parked. The Nepalese in India are agitating for their own state... "Gorkhaland". If the Government of West Bengal doesn't grant them their request, the leader du jour, Bimal Gurung, is threatening to extend the general strike up until March 28.

We left our cozy little cabin and hot water bottle warmed beds behind and walked along the moonlit trail through the cold February night air. Tomorrow morning Amanda, Asher, Ian and Elizabeth will arrive at New Jalpaiguri train station and we have to be there to meet them. Our hope was to enter into the state of Sikkim (without valid inner-line permits) travel by jeep up to the border of Darjeeling District, to use smooth talk and coercion to get a vehicle to violate the ban on vehicle travel and cover the 60 kilometers to Siliguri without incident. Our path led us down a set of 1000 steps in the wee hours of the morning, across a river and up a mountain.