We planned to go to Darjeeling to celebrate T's birthday and as a bonus escape Delhi's heat. We were going to leave on tuesday the 25th....

...but as fate would have it, on friday the 21st Madan Tamang, President of the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League, was killed in Darjeeling. This photograph is typical for Indian media....all the gruesome details are displayed for anyone who takes interest in them.

As a result the shops were kept closed and the government sent extra troups to the area to insure the peace in the hills.....the hills that we were planning to hike in! Not that it would have been much fun anyway, because it apparantly is raining in Darjeeling!

No mountain vieuws of the Himalayas, no trekking in the hills, no shopping, but the risk of being stuck in the hotel for 5 days and another rist of being stuck in Darjeeling alltogether because in India tempers are explosive....and once they expload a primitive force is released that you really do NOT want to get stuck in!

We could have gone, the hotel assured us things were peaceful and quiet...but in India, one never knows. Because in India life seems to be worth very little to so many.... you live, you die. It is as if death, or the fact that you will die one day, is so much part of every day life that it is not even given a second thought!

The son of the neighbour of our masseuse (yes...this is how in India relations go) was very ill, he had TB in his bones (!?!). He was on the verge of dying and his mother, a single mother who is very poor, could not afford a decent doctor. So our masseuse chipped in and in the end, so did we.
Because for us life IS worth something, and if our money helps save someone, even if it is for one more day, then it is money well spent. And at the same time, thank God not everyone in India who is very ill lives, or there would be 1,5 billion people, most of whom below poverty-line, instead of 1,2 billion.
But do I dare think this, or worse...say it? Because I am a lucky one, with fairly good health and money to pay for a decent doctor, instead of having to go to a government hospital where grossly underpaid doctord consider their lunch more important than their patients. After all, what's another life, if tehre are 1,2 billion others to care for?

Incredible India. Beautiful, crazy, cruel India. Full of spitting, honking and peeing people. Full of injustice and corruption. And yet it grabs you.....

So for now, we are going to Goa. We will forget about life and death for a while. No hills there and no Gorkha's....though, knowing T, the monsoon will probably start once we land. (Money could be made off this man! I am sure that in the Sahara they will pay a fortune for him!)
But for now we are looking forward to fish and coctails and an infinity pool.....and we will worry about injustice tomorrow....or will we?