This was my third visit to India, the first two having been taken in 1976 and 1978 while living and working in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. I was now living in Japan in 1982 when my friend Tony Willoughby asked me to accompany him and Don McLean to Sikkim. He had gone to the same school as the Chogyal, the former rulers of Sikkim, and a visit to the “Hidden Kingdom”, let alone the trek Tony was envisaging, sounded like a great adventure. At the time Sikkim was under military rule by the Indian Government. Its proximity to China rendered it a sensitive area of that part of the Himalayan region and travellers, who wanted to travel beyond the immediate area of the capital and the surrounding monasteries, needed a permit to visit West Sikkim added to their visa.
I wrote this account on our arrival back in Tokyo while Tony had written his own account which was published by the Tokyo Weekender in December 1982. I have checked my recollections with Tony’s article, and where necessary used some of his account to fill in gaps in my own. I have also used information available on the internet on the modes of transport taken, hotel sites and countries, cities, and towns we visited.
ITINERARY
1982 19th October – 1st November
Sikkim is an Indian state nestled in the Himalayas in northeast India, bordered by Bhutan, Tibet, and Nepal. It has some of the highest and most beautiful mountain peaks in the world, including, India’s highest mountain, Kangchenjunga at 8,586m. It was known as "the Hidden Kingdom" because of its inaccessibility. After India won its independence from the British in 1947, Sikkim chose to remain an independent monarchy and in 1950 became an Indian Protectorate. After years of political uncertainty and struggle for and against accession by India, and anti-royalist riots, the Indian Army occupied Gangtok in 1975 and the monarchy was abrogated. Following the results of a referendum Sikkim became India's twenty-second state, with Gangtok as its capital.
Our journey to the Hidden Kingdom involved a variety of transport - planes, trains, jeeps, and buses; and places - Kolkata (then Calcutta), Darjeeling and Gangtok.
19th October Tokyo: On the date of our departure Tony arrived at Ueno Station with one minute left to catch the Keisei Skyliner to Narita. There we were, three intrepid trekkers setting out with our backpacks, trekking boots, and sleeping bags fit for all seasons.
At Narita, we checked in to find that our Group ticket (for the three of us) showed us returning to Tokyo 4 days later instead of November 1st! Apparently, this was a common practice among travel agents as a means to obtain a really good price for their customers, but we could only correct the return date in either Bangkok or Kolkata. PIA proved to be a rather unsatisfactory airline with grumpy stewardesses, dreadful food, and a dirty cabin - however for a ¥128,000 (£278) return, who was complaining? After a brief stopover at Manila airport, we arrived at Bangkok airport around midnight where we checked into an airport hotel. Our flight on Thai the next day left at 8am, so no time to see Bangkok! We arrived in Kolkata around 10am.
20th October Kolkata: We took the airport transit bus into the centre, avoiding the entreaties of countless taxi drivers and others at the arrivals gate. I had been to Mumbai and Delhi before, but never Kolkata, but as you would expect of India, nothing was ever still. Life carried on apace. Shacks made from any available building material lined the perimeter of the road into the city; streets crowded with hawkers, beggars, street vendors, people hurrying back and forth carrying bundles of different cargo in different shapes and sizes; a cacophony of street and vehicular sounds assailed our ears, and ever encircling dust from the dirt roads seemed to permeate the bus. Tony rightly expressed that “Calcutta was a delightful monument and living proof of man's ability to coexist”.
We were headed for Sudder Street where all the cheap tourist hotels were located. The bus dropped us off at the corner of Chowringhee Road (now Jawaharlal Nehru Road) which had been the commercial centre under the former British rulers and earned Kolkata its soubriquet of “City of Palaces”. We were immediately surrounded by cries of “do you want a nice girl”, “marijuana, cocaine”, “rupees”, “airline tickets”. Ignoring them, we went in search of Kolkata’s best kept secret.
The Fairlawn Hotel: a green oasis (it was painted that colour) in the middle of the city, an old colonial mansion, built in 1783. The same family had run it since 1936, when a Mrs. Sarkies bought and converted it to a hotel, and later on handed over control to her daughter Mrs Violet Smith. It had always been a very personal institution - pictures of the British Royal family were hung on almost every wall, as well as their own belongings – and these memorabilia-filled rooms remain. Today the Fairlawn is considered a Heritage Hotel. In 2014 Violet Smith died at the age of 93, her husband Ted having died 12 years earlier, both legends in the city. Their daughter Jennifer Fowler ran the hotel with her mother from 1997 until 2018 when it subsequently became part of The Elgin Hotels & Resorts Group.
Enclosed by a high wall the Fairlawn had an open veranda fronted by a palm tree patio, with a balcony running around the first floor. The reception area had a few wicker chairs and behind that the dining room and the kitchens. In the centre of the yard was a huge tree which provided both shade and a “post-box” for travellers. Guests pinned messages to the tree trunk telling friends and fellow travellers where they would be heading to next.
A grand staircase led up to twenty bedrooms, furnished in chintz with overhead fans, showers or bath and a multitude of electrical pre-war wiring. The room charge was US$27 (£16) for a double and included breakfast (mango, cornflakes, bacon and egg, toast and coffee), lunch (fish, meat, sweet, appetiser, and coffee), tiffin (tea and cake) and dinner (soup, meat, sweet, appetiser, and coffee). Fantastic value! This tariff was only taken off the menu after Violet died. A bygone era.
Don had made a reservation for our initial day, and so we confirmed a reservation for 2 nights when we expected to return from Sikkim. We dumped our bags and went off to change our airline tickets and purchase our train tickets to Darjeeling.
We headed for the Govt of India Tourist Board offices, about half an hour walk away, as Tony had somehow managed to get a Letter of Introduction to the Tourist Board Chief, whom he had been promised would be able to book us seats on the Darjeeling Mail. He confirmed he had indeed asked his contacts to do so, and he kindly provided a car to take us to Sealdah Station. This was where we first experienced legendary Indian bureaucracy. Having spent a good hour in one queue for tickets, we were then directed to another office to collect our reserved seats. There we joined yet another queue, as I wrote in 1982 constantly fighting off “a million and half other Indians telling them to go back to the end of the queue“ in the politest fashion only to find that when we presented our personal introduction for our "reserved seats", they were no longer available! The Chief had said if we had any problems, we should ask to see Mr. X (I forget his name), which we did. He said, “There is plenty of room on the Kamrup Express which gets in half an hour later than the Darjeeling Mail but goes from Howrah instead of Sealdah. Please go and stand in Line 13”.
Line 13 appeared to have half the population of Kolkata waiting in line and there was only half an hour left before the booth closed for lunch. So, we said, “No way, you do it” which he did, and we got our tickets to New Jalpaiguri within 10 minutes. The cost of a sleeping car was Rp240 (£11) 1st class and Rp75 (£3.50) 2nd class. Amazing disparity but not much difference in accommodation, only the number of people. We chose 1st class.
We had a little time before our train departed at 7pm, so Tony and I took the opportunity to wander through the SS Hogg Market, or New Market as it is better known and down to the Hooghly River, as both were relatively close to the Fairlawn. Don went off somewhere else and promised to meet us at the hotel later on to pick up our luggage.
The New Market was Kolkata’s first municipal market set up in 1874 to “cater to British residents who were averse to brushing shoulders with the “natives”. It was named after Sir Stuart Hogg, the municipal chairman of Calcutta. (The Times of India, Dipawali Mitra, TNN, August 7, 2023). Shoppers could purchase dresses, shoes, stationery, and books at retailers such as Ranken and Company, Cuthbertson and Harper, R.W. Newman, or Thacker Spink & Co. These companies appear to have long since gone, but then as now over 2,000 stalls under its roof sold everything from garments and accessories, crockery and utensils, and flowers.
Vegetable stalls, fishmongers and slaughterhouse butchers plied their trade selling raw meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, and spices. I remember in particular exotic pets, vegetables piled high, poultry clucking away in cages waiting to be strangled, and slabs of raw meat lying around. It was a chaotic scene as well as a sensory experience.
Everywhere children, smiling and eager for photos while others hustled on the street, working on stalls, or accompanying their mother or father.
In the streets, vendors selling fresh lemon drinks, coconut slices, bottled concoctions, betel leaves, iced water, yapping toy dogs, oranges, nuts, old magazines, shoe shines, cane sugar drinks, and various cooked foods. You would see bundles of grass, crushed cane, coal, broken glass, general rubbish, string, tin cans being carried on peoples' heads, even an office cabinet balanced between four heads.
Huge billboards offered an escape into the fantasy of cinema, others into the realism of abortion, sexual diseases, and politics. The incessant noise and sights of varying modes of transport, from the omnipresent Ambassador car to the rickshaw, the horse-drawn hansom, the familiar red London buses leaning precariously at 45 degrees, the oxen cart, and the beginnings of the Rapid Transit system which I reckoned at the time was going to take a mighty long time to complete judging by the manual workers in the tunnel near Sudder Street. Three lines are now in operation Line 1 (1984), Line 2 (2020) and Line 3 (2022). More lines are under construction. The Ambassador, fondly known as the Amby, was based on a Morris Oxford Series III, and manufactured by Hindustan Motors of India with various improvements and changes until 2014. A variant of the red London bus the Leyland Titan PD Series had been produced by Ashok Leyland since 1969.
Between the river and Chowingree Road, at the end of Sudder, is the Maidan which was and is considered the historical and cultural centre of Kolkata, as well as one of the city's most popular tourist and leisure spots. A bronze 11.4ft statue of Mahatma Gandhi stands at the crossing of Mayo and Dufferin roads. Along the river was a promenade which then was rather unkempt but must have been an exceptionally beautiful walk. The Hooghly itself was very wide and muddy with a large community living on boats on the river and on the railway line which straddled the bank. People were fishing, swimming, and washing themselves from the banks.
We got back to the hotel, and in early evening, with dusk approaching, we set off in a taxi to Howrah station, on the other side of the Hooghly. Our taxi crawled across the bridge skillfully avoiding the thousands of people hurrying past on their way home or to work whilst others shouted out their wares on the pavement, selling everything from drinks, copper bangles to fortune telling. Howrah Junction, a dimly lit massive Victorian edifice was a mass of humanity, loudspeakers blaring, vendors shouting, trains whistling - all India in one place. One poor unfortunate who had appeared to have stolen something was being dragged into the police box by three middle-class Indian women. There must have been 50,000 people rushing here and there, back, and forth, from every corner of the Indian subcontinent; groups in white saris, others in bright reds and greens, carrying everything on their heads from bedrolls, large suitcases to baskets of fruit, bearers with sleeping bags, passengers with luggage, beggars begging.
From the 20 platforms, it wasn’t immediately clear which was the Kamrup Express, but we found it. We were catching the Down train. Indian Railways use “Up” and “Down” to indicate the direction of a train’s travel, a “Down” train meaning it departs from its divisional headquarters and is designated by an odd number.
Our companion in our four-bed sleeping car was the son of a Mr Mukherjee. The carriages were old but very comfortable and soon we were rolling through the countryside up to New Jalpaiguri where we would catch our connection to Darjeeling. Sleep came easily and we were unmolested by the vendors at the occasional stops who would pass chai and sweet meats through the window bars of the second-class cabins.
21st October New Jalpaiguri: New Jalpaiguri Junction serves as the entry point to North Bengal, Sikkim, the seven northeastern states (Assam, Arunachal, Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, and Meghalaya) as well as Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh.
As the Assam Rail Link Project, originally completed in 1950 had both metre-gauge and broad gauge and the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) was narrow-gauge, New Jalpaiguri had been established in 1960 as a broad-gauge connection from Kolkata to serve the city of Siliguri.
The DHR railway was built between 1879 and 1881 and is about 88 km (55 mi) long, connecting Darjeeling Bazaar to New Jalpaiguri. In December 1999, UNESCO declared the DHR a World Heritage Site.
Having caught one Down train, we had intended to catch the Up train at 8am, but we arrived too late at 8.30am, so we settled down to wait for the 9.35. There were more direct services in 1982 between New Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling than there are today. The three carriages on our service were built in 1910 and the coal-fired engine had been rebuilt at the Talapur yards in 1939. Ahead of us were 8hrs of 56kms of 18 stops, 5 loops and 6 zigzags. First class ticket Rp75 (£3.50), second class Rp10 (50p)!
The carriages were very hot, crowded, and rather dilapidated, so we bribed a guard with a Polaroid of himself and spent the entire journey on the roof of the carriages. The climb up to Darjeeling was superb, amazing vistas, deep valleys, and terraced rice fields. The train climbs from about 100 m (330 ft) above sea level at New Jalpaiguri to about 2,200 m (7,200 ft) at Darjeeling, using the zig-zags and loops to gain altitude. The train had to stop every half hour or so to· be replenished with water, and whenever the gradient got too steep two attendants would stand in the front of the locomotive and sprinkle sand on the rails to provide the traction needed. For most of the trip, the railway follows Hill Cart Road which it crisscrossed regularly, with no warning other than a loud whistle from the train, and in some instances, it shared the road through a town or village.
All the time people were hopping on and off - the only ones who seemed to pay were those who had started out at the beginning of the journey. Life continued, on the road, beside the track, and in the stations.
At one zigzag, we decided to stretch our legs and walk up to the next station while our train waited for the Down train to pass. It took us 10 minutes and the train 30 minutes! The highest point and India’s highest railway station is Ghum at an altitude of 2,258 metres (7,407 ft). It was the third stop from our destination Darjeeling Bazaar.
21st – 22nd October Darjeeling: As we passed Ghum Monastery, Darjeeling came into sight - a spectacular town perched on a hill with the Himalayas as a backdrop.
We were greeted by many hotel scouts at the station, and after rejecting a few hotel offers, in particular, one where the manager couldn’t understand as to why the three of us didn’t want to share one big double bed and wash in a bucket, we choose the Hotel Maya mainly because it had a fairly decent restaurant, a hot shower and only cost Rp140 (65p) a night per person.
Between 1833 and 1850, Darjeeling had become a Hill station under the British Raj, an official retreat for British administrators and later it became the summer capital for the Governor of Bengal Province. Of course, the nature of the town had changed since those times. The population is a mix of Nepali, Tibetan and Indian. The Nepali influence is due to its proximity to Sikkim where the majority speak Nepali while wealthy Tibetans had often sent their children to Darjeeling's schools, and some had settled in the area. After the annexation of Tibet by China in 1950, many more Tibetans emigrated to India and Darjeeling in particular, and after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, the Dalai Lama and thousands of refugees followed.
It was too late to walk around, and as we were covered in black soot from the endless shower of cinders from the train, we settled for a hot shower, a hearty supper, and an early night.
We were up early the next morning as our primary purpose for visiting Darjeeling was as an entry point to Sikkim. Our Sikkim permit, issued in Tokyo, needed to be approved by the Deputy Commissioner’s office before we could carry on to Gangtok. We found the office but spent most of the morning waiting for it to open, and then finding someone in charge to perform the task. By midday, after everything had been triplicated, we were able to proceed. As Tony described it “Britain's greatest legacy to India has been politics and bureaucracy, both of which combined apparently keeps half the population employed and can at best be described as sustained inconvenience.”
As it was both a foggy and rainy day, we decided we might as well go straight on to Gangtok. We bought some seats in a jeep, the price of which changed depending on where you sat - the front seat more expensive than the second, while the back seat was dead cheap. There were 13 of us, as well as luggage and backpacks. Five in the front, four in second, two in the back and two on the tailgate.
The trip to Gangtok began with a 3,000-foot descent through neat, well-maintained tea plantations to Teesta Bazaar which is only 329m above sea level. We took it in turns to stand on the back of the tailgate! It was much more fun. At Teesta, passengers embark for the return journey to Darjeeling or disembark to change transport for Gangtok or Siliguri.
We had to wait a further half an hour before our new jeep filled up and we could continue our journey to Gangtok. Teesta Bazaar is the concourse of the Teesta and Rangpo rivers. It is spectacularly wild. We crossed over on a single-track suspension bridge, which had been rebuilt as a replacement by the Indian army in 1980 after the last one had been washed away, and began the slow, gradual climb to Gangtok, passing several checkpoints where we had to produce passports and fill out forms. The upward journey to Gangtok took about four hours.
22nd – 23rd October Gangtok: Gangtok was a delightful town of 35,000 set on a hillside at 6,000 feet with an excellent view of Kanchenjunga and range. We arrived early evening and found some rooms at the Green Hotel and for the princely sum of Rp100 (£4) ate an excellent dinner and had buckets of hot water for our shower in the morning.
Tony went off to the Royal Palace for his rendezvous with the Chogyal. His father Palden Thondop Namgal the 12th Choygal, who had gained some notoriety in 1963 when he married Hope Cooke, an American socialite, had died some nine months previously. His son had been crowned in February 1982, but the Government of India had not recognised either the coronation or his title. Tony came back around midday informing us that we had been invited to join him, and some friends he was expecting from England for dinner!
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking Gangtok, which had a busy city centre, with buildings and houses spread up the valley. There was a ghostly mist in the air from burning fires. Everybody was friendly. There seemed to be more liquor shops than food stalls.
We had our first shave since leaving Tokyo, washed, found some clean clothes, and duly turned up at Tsuklakhang Palace. It looked more like a bungalow or large country house rather than a royal palace. It was situated on a ridge overlooking Gangtok and had spectacular views across the valley. Although his full title was Tobygyal Wangchuk Tenzing Namgyal, he was introduced as Prince Wangchuk and our other dinner guests were Susan Whitworth, Andrew, and Penny Heale. He put us at our ease, and the evening was extremely enjoyable.
Despite enough drink to send us to sleep that night, howling dogs in the street outside our hotel did their best to keep us awake most of the night.
24th Rumtek: The next day we started to plan our trek. Tony had worked out that if we started out from Rumtek, the walk to Phodong was probably about 15 miles, at most 25, and only required the crossing of one small stream. “All we had to do was to walk along one ridge, on which there is always a path, and by nightfall, we would be there.”
We hitched a lift on a Land Rover across the valley to the monastery of Rumtek, a journey that took about 90 minutes, about 15 miles from Gangtok at an altitude of about 1,500m. Rumtek was one of three monasteries originally established by the 9th Karmapa, the spiritual leader of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism– the others being Phodong and Ralang.
The 16th Karmapa, who had fled Tibet in 1959 with several monks, found it in ruins but decided to rebuild as he considered the site had many auspicious qualities, being surrounded by flowing streams, mountains behind, a snow range in front, and a river below. It became his main seat in exile and sacred items and relics taken from his original seat in Tibet were installed. It is the largest monastery in Sikkim and home to a community of monks who perform the rituals and practices of the Karma Kagyu lineage. We arrived on the eve of the first anniversary of the death of 16th Karmapa. A large picture of him wearing a gold Rolex hung in the main hall of the large tunka-festooned temple, indeed it seemed to be the watch of choice as many others seemed to be wearing them!
The monastery was a hive of activity preparing for the festivities next day. The monks were very friendly, and they found us a bed in an adjoining building for Rp100 (45p) a night, including a bowl of rice and some tea for dinner.
25th – 26th Rumtek – Phodong - Gangtok: The next day we were up early and with help from the monks who pointed us in the right direction; or at least so we thought, started walking. Five hours later, lots of leeches, stinging needles, prickly bushes, and very little progress, we admitted that possibly we had underestimated the magnitude of our walk. We decided to leave the ridge path and head for what was marked on the map as an unmetalled road; this took a further two hours down a rather treacherous steep hill through which we had to force our own path. Amazingly, we managed to flag down a Land Rover and luckily for us was only carrying 11 people. They made room for us, and as Tony recalled that “Despite many suggestions, lots of sign language and very little English, the only thing we could understand was that Phodong was still 70 kms away. Seldom had his map reading failed so miserably”. It later transpired the distance between Rumtek and Phodong as the crow flies was 9.5kms but by road, between 70 and 90 kms.
The driver invited us to stay at his home, a 20-minute walk up a hillside. He turned out to be the local Zamindar, a landowner responsible for collecting taxes and maintaining law and order for about 300 people in his area. In fact, while we were there a man turned up with blood all over his face. He and a friend apparently had had a little too much chhaang that morning and got into an argument. One had bitten the other's finger quite badly, and in retribution, the other attacked him with a sickle putting two huge gashes in his head. Don luckily had a medicine kit, as well as experience of sewing people up in Africa, so he proceeded to clean the gash, wound a four-inch bandage around the man's head, and told him not to wash for a week, although whether he understood was another matter.
Eating under a poster of Bruce Lee, dinner was by oil lamp, modest, friendly, and filling. We were offered some chhaang as well. We were in bed by 10pm, exhausted. Familiar farm noises - goats, sheep, cats, dogs, cows, and cockerels – woke us around 5am. Thanking our host profusely, who I think thought the whole thing rather amusing, we caught a bus for Gangtok which left at 7.
Ironically, we could see Phodong, ten miles away, as the crow flies, framed by Himalayan Mountain ranges and deep valleys. By the time we arrived in Gangtok, the bus had filled up completely. We spent the rest of the day wandering around Gangtok, as we hadn’t had time to do so before. We still had 2 days left before getting back to Kolkata, and as Tony had been invited to go and stay at the palace, Don and I decided to return to Darjeeling.
27th – 29th October Darjeeling: We caught a bus for our return journey to Teesta Bazaar and then on to Darjeeling. The downward journey was the reverse of the upward journey. It took only 1½ hours to reach Teesta from Gangtok, instead of the 4 hours coming up, but 4hrs to get back to Darjeeling rather than the 1½ hours coming up!
We returned to the Hotel Maya and Don, and I did a bit more exploring. Darjeeling had become a tourist attraction for Indians and there were horse rides around the top of the hill which in the British period must have been a spectacular walk with magnificent views of Kanchenjunga, the third-highest mountain in the world in the background – and of course, it still is, but the path was overgrown and the balustrades rusty. Many of the original buildings and houses dated back to the Raj and one could imagine you were in Eastbourne with cottages and bungalows called Rosy Cottage and Sunnyside, and hotels called Langholm, architecturally similar to any large, detached house in Hove turned into a hotel.
Of course, there were also the local houses, invariably made of wood or tin and fairly decrepit, and a lot of shops and bazaars selling mainly Tibetan artefacts, tea and Kashmiri carpets. I bought a Tree of Life carpet at the Gift House.
We visited the Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Centre, which had been established in Darjeeling in 1959 following the exile of the Dalai Lama to provide emergency relief to refugees - partly to see Tibetan handicraft, which was the centre's main activity, and hopefully to see if the Dalai Lama was in residence! There was a special room for him whenever he visited. Sadly, he wasn’t, his last visit had been a year before.
29th October New Jalpaiguri: We caught a bus from Darjeeling to Siliguri, a journey of some 3 hours, which was a rather exhausting drive down steep, endlessly narrow mountains that required the driver to blow his horn at every corner, and we were rather glad to sink into our seats on the overnight train to Sealdah Station, Kolkata, a journey of another 11 hours.
30th – 31st October Kolkata: We had two more days in Kolkata before we caught our plane back to Tokyo in the early hours of November 1st. We checked into the hotel and then mid-afternoon we walked back to Howrah Bridge. We had been intrigued by what we had seen on the bridge, which had been built in 1943, and was known as the “Gateway of Kolkata” and formerly the “Grand Old Lady of Calcutta”. It seemed to us that it was a microcosm of life in the city. As we had experienced in our taxi, cars honk their way across, avoiding a seething mass of pedestrians and street vendors crying out their wares. If you had something to sell, you did it there. We saw one man selling single nails.
Nowadays it apparently carries a daily traffic of approximately 100,000 vehicles and 150,000 pedestrians. At one end of the bridge, there was a flower market, and the other seemed to be the bathing area.
We walked back to the Fairlawn through the Maidan. This time we saw the Victoria Memorial, the largest marble monument dedicated to Queen Victoria, as the former Empress of India, built between 1906 and 1921 and in its own 64 acres of gardens. It is now a museum.
Back in the hotel, we were also able to take full advantage of the Fairlawns’ tariff of tiffin and dinner that evening, and breakfast and lunch the next day; as well as supping beer under the large blue and red canopies and reading all the messages of travellers hoping to catch up with each other. It was a relaxing end to what had been a rather frenetic two weeks.
Arriving back at Narita, we must have looked relatively shifty, and our point of departure suspicious, and given Japan’s reputation for rigorous enforcement of its strict anti-drug laws, we were subject to a rigorous check. I had to unpack my backpack, sleeping bag, and unroll my new carpet. They dug out some dirt from the soles of my boots and inspected the contents of my washbag. In those days toothpaste tubes could be unrolled and drugs inserted. 30 minutes later we cleared customs, and we were home.
The Travellers
Don McLean
Tony Willoughby
Richard Thom
The Dinner Party
Richard Thom
Susan Whitworth
Prince Tobygyal Wangchuk Tenzing Namgal
Penelope Heale
Andrew (surname unknown)
Tony Willoughby
Image dinner party: © Don McLean
All other images: © Richard Thom
Resources:
Article and Map: Sikkim – trip to the top of the world, Tony Willoughby, Tokyo Weekender Vol. XIII, No 48 December 3rd, 1982.
Website: https://www.Elginhotels.com/elgin-fairlawn-kolkata-heritage-hotel-history/
About the Author
Richard Thom had worked in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia between 1976 and 1980 for Aramco’s Internal Audit and Contract Cost Compliance departments. He left in May 1980 and by November of the same year had relocated to Tokyo, Japan where he worked for three years for an Inchcape Group company. This trip was during his second year.
His previous articles on India were Letter from India and Sri Lanka 1976 and Letter from India and Nepal 1978. Other articles for AramcoExpats include a review of Not the May Ball 3 in September 2022; a 10-part serialization of the unofficial history of the Dhahran Rugby Union Football Club, a look back on life after Aramco “Dance in the Desert”, “Jimmy Abdul McGregor, and other Stories: Tales from the Yemen” and Dhahran to London 1978, a journey in 10 parts.
Richard published a book Dance into Business in 2018 based on his experience as Finance Director for the Royal Academy of Dance. A how-to guide for dance students, teachers and professionals wishing to start up a dance studio or go freelance. It contains helpful tips, practical examples, and points to consider whether just starting out or already in business. It is available from Amazon websites as a printed book, or an e-book priced locally.
