Accountant Adventures: Wednesday is Picture Day

Giant Creatures Love to Eat Me

There is a river near Gangtok that has had concrete added to it to make swimming pools. The top most pool, where the river actually comes from has an open part where water rushes out over the road in a very powerful spray. Praj and I got out of the car to play in the pool and the driver wanted to try to drive the car through the rushing water. He revved the engine and raced forward only to slam on his brakes at the last instant before entering the water. He backed up and repeated the same thing a second time without taking the car into the water. On his third attempt he didn’t hit the brakes and passed quickly and safely through the water. I decided to see if it was possible to walk through the water to get to the other side. The current was too strong and the ground was too slippery, I would surely have my feet swept out from underneath me, fall down and be pushed into the jagged rocks on the other side of the road. After the driver had driven the car through a couple more times, he was confident he could drive through the water slowly and I could walk next to the car for support. We gave it a try, the water was to my left, the car and the rocks I was afraid of being swept into were on my right. We started slowly into the water spray and water hit the slow moving car and shot up into the air and all over my body. The water was freezing, refreshing and welcome all at the same time, I normally hate cold water, but I was loving this. At first I didn’t need the car at all but as I got closer to the middle of the spray of water I had to clutch the car with both hands as strongly as I could to keep my feet planted. The water was really strong and I knew for sure that without the car, I would have been knocked down. Step by step I walked through the stream and then I made it through! It was incredibly fun and the words cannot explain it because walking in water next to a car sounds pretty boring, but it was an amazing experience.

While driving to one of the many monasteries we visited, we passed a stopped car going the opposite direction from us on a one lane road and recognized the sleeping couple in the back seat as the people we had shared a cab with from Bagdogra to Darjeeling. Praj and I both shouted for our driver to stop and we hopped out of the car. We shouted for the couples driver to stop and we raced up to the car pounding on the windows. Shekhar and his wife woke up and came out of the car to reunite with us. The cell phone that they had with our number in it had malfunctioned and we weren’t able to get in touch. We exchanged numbers again and decided to get together on the following day.

We went out to dinner at a Karaoke place with Prajwal’s 18 year old cousin Shreya. I ordered a plate of Dragon Chicken, whatever that means, and asked for rice with that. An hour later when my chicken came, there was no rice. The guy had not understood that I wanted rice despite repeating rice back to me. Praj ordered rice for me and then chastised me for trying to do anything on my own. Twenty minutes later when Praj’s meal came out there was still no rice for me. Praj asked him where the rice was and the waiter asked if we would like to order some. Praj became annoyed and I was amused, the guy still didn’t know that we wanted rice. Praj told him “Yes we want rice, he ordered rice, I ordered rice, we want rice!” The waiter was very apologetic, so much in fact that he didn’t leave the table for 5 minutes so that he could keep apologizing. We told him that we didn’t care, we just wanted some rice, stop apologizing and bring us some rice. Another 20 minutes later he brought out the rice, by this time I had already eaten half of my chicken and the half that was left was extremely cold. A girl came up to our table and was talking to Shreya, she pointed at Praj and asked “Is that your Dad?” “No, that is my 24 year old cousin” Shreya responded.