Tagne 2001

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Dan's Diary

Day 45 - Saturday 11th August 2001

Alan plays his new sitar

It had just gone 8am when I awoke. Andy phoned over fifteen minutes later to say they would be going to breakfast at 8:30am. We were seated by a member of staff and tucked straight in to our eating fest. The pace was fast and furious at the start as platefuls of various cooked breakfasts were tucked away. Come 10am we were still going back for more although putting it away was getting more and more difficult. By 10:30am they started to pack away the breakfast things. There were only a few other people left at tables so we ate up and left for our rooms feeling full. We lay on our beds for an hour or two, watching telly and letting our food go down.

Come midday Alan, Steve and I went next door to Jon and Andy's room where we prepared a report of the horseman accident and filled in a customer satisfaction form for Eco-adventures. By the time we had finished deciding how to phrase things it was 1pm.

Andy went off shopping and ended up buying himself a fold-up table, while Alan and Steve went to change some money. Steve returned to the hotel first shortly followed by Alan and Andy. Alan then went off to the music shop to buy a sitar - a musical instrument similar to a guitar but made from a hollowed out and dried pumpkin. Andy and I went to check emails to see what Exploboard wanted us to do with their equipment on our return to London. We were directed to the tenth floor of the hotel where we were ushered to a computer. It cost 400Rs per hour, compared to the 60Rs we had paid in Manali. There was a bowl of mints by the computer and we made sure we got our money's worth.

We were back in our rooms at 4:30pm feeling sick of mints. Alan tuned his sitar, or attempted to, while Steve and I watched more telly. Jon and Andy came over at 6pm as we had planned to go for our meal but a climbing programme on the National Geographic channel about Al Hinkes delayed us.

Our hotel by night

Come 6:30pm we left the hotel and walked through the street sellers and hagglers that congregate on the street corners outside the hotel. An underpass took us under the main road and a few streets later we were at the Rodeo - a Tex-Mex with a "beef licence". We walked on upstairs where we were shown to a table. A certain shortage of money ensured we had to be careful what we ordered. Despite this and a long wait for the food we all had a nice meal. I had a chicken lasagne and Mississippi mud slide but unfortunately the portions weren't that big. The waiter brought us a questionnaire to fill in about the quality of the service so we let them know exactly what we thought. Andy and Jon left as they had arranged to meet Colonel Singh in the Hotel reception while the remaining three of us waited for the bill so we could pay.

Back at the hotel Alan, Steve and I met Jon and Andy with Colonel Singh and David Singh. Colonel Singh told us there was still no news from the search party or the police and there was also no news from the party that had been dispatched to inform the horseman's family of the tragedy. The horseman's family was apparently four or five days walk away as he had come from a different area and was new to where we were trekking. Colonel Singh gave us all a small gift-wrapped box inside of which were cast iron statues of Hindu gods, before we exchanged e-mail addresses and said goodbye.

Back in our rooms we finished squashing the last remaining items into our already bursting rucksacks. We were just about ready to leave at the arranged time of 9pm when Andy came across and informed us that Eco wouldn't be turning up for another hour to take us to the airport. He had told us to be ready for 9pm so we wouldn't delay the proceedings. We could see his logic, since we were often late getting ready but we weren't particularly pleased about it. Steve especially had long since ceased to see any humour in the practice. Fifty minutes of random television watching later and we started to ferry our backs down in the lift to the reception. I sent my bags down with Jon and Alan and then checked the room for any left items once Steve had taken his things out. Having completed a through search and not having found anything I shut the door and took the lift down. I was greeted with the news that Andy had gone to get me - we had crossed paths in different lifts! The Eco-rep was there waiting for us. Once Andy returned from his wild goose chase we paid the bills and checked out. Our luggage was loaded into a jeep parked outside the main doors and we jumped in another jeep behind it. It was the same jeep and driver who had taken us to the Taj Mahal. The air-conditioned jeep took us on a twenty-minute journey through the busy city streets to the international airport.

The jeeps pulled up outside the terminal entrance. We jumped out into the warm and sticky air where a chorus of horns rang out. The airport was crowded. People were everywhere. It was the end of the evening and yet the terminal was still packed. We were told it was because all the flights bound for Europe left at a similar time. Only passengers were allowed inside the terminal building so all the crowds were outside and armed guards ensured no one but ticket holders got through. We looked for trolleys for our luggage but there were none. We managed to acquire a trolley that wasn't being used to its full potential and plonked our kit bags on it. Then putting rucksacks on we said goodbye and thank you to the Eco-rep as he couldn't come into the terminal before fighting our way through the crowds to get to the entrance. Suddenly, once inside the cool building, there were few people and lots of space to breathe again. We tried to check in but were intercepted by a British Airways woman who told us we had to have our hold luggage security checked before we could check in. We retraced our steps and put all large rucksacks and kit bags through the scanner and a guard at the other end stuck fluorescent orange stickers on them, which said "security checked".

Back at the check in desk we barely had to queue. All nine pieces of luggage went on with not a question asked nor a bag weighed. We said farewell to our luggage thinking of the chances of it going missing and never being seen again. Steve and Jon got chatting to a security guard (and mountaineer) about our expedition, so Andy and I went and gave an 'OK' wave through the entrance doors to let the Eco-rep know that everything was all right and he could head home.

We all went through to departures where we bought some nasty cokes with our spare rupees and sat down. We had barely time to finish our drinks before the British Airways official was asking us to go on through to our gate. I had images of a fat guy behind a desk following our every movement on CCTV, telling the British Airways officials what to do and where we were. We all proceeded through to the gates. On the way we got our bags scanned and a full body check, followed by a hand held scanner for our boots. My bag had made the alarms go berserk, so I was asked to unpack. I came to the Hindu God but something else had obviously caught the officers eye as he asked me to keep on going. He was intrigued by my rock and wanted to know where it was from. I told him the Himalayas, but he still thought I had brought it over from England to show a friend and was now taking it back. I told him that I was a geologist and the second time he understood and let me go. I thanked him for letting me go and quietly cursed him for making me unpack everything.