Actually, the four directions of India have differences in themselves. Here it is said that the dialect changes every 11 km. Living in this unique country, I am getting a chance to taste different places and tastes every day, and I am enjoying this diversity very much. On March 5, 2024, I along with my friends drove 1500 km by car and reached a village in West Bengal, located in the eastern direction of India, whose name is 'Rimbic'. The district of Rimbic is Darjeeling and it is just one and a half hour away from Darjeeling.
Graphic created in Adobe photoshop
From Darjeeling till here there are only tea gardens. The aroma of tea gardens is spread all around and the beauty of this place will not be ignored by your eyes. So after having a deep sleep at night, we wake up at 8 in the morning. The interesting thing here is that here in the East the sunrise occurs much earlier than in our North. At 5 o'clock the sun comes over the horizon. Now I am not as surprised as I was when I came here for the first time and that was the year 2018.
After breakfast we set out for the Rimbik tour. Rimbik is not a very big village, its population is only 3000. Because this place is located on the India-Nepal border and is 3 hours away from the city, it is a challenge to transport building material here and that is why there are very few permanent houses here. Here people build houses with the help of bamboo, wood and mud. Tin is used to protect roofs from rain.
If we talk about religion here, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians live together. Hindu temple, Buddhist monastery and Christian church are present here. Government and private schools are also present here. You have to believe that the school education here is very strong and I am saying this because the knowledge of the children is very good. Children here take great interest in football and are seen playing in a small ground after school holidays. I like this culture here very much because compared to the rest of the country, people here do not follow cricket at all.
Because this village is situated on the India-Nepal border, there is a lot of import and export in terms of trade between the two countries. Due to its emergence in the last few years, the governments of both the countries have imposed strict restrictions on the banned goods. For example, there used to be a lot of export of liquor from here and there was a lot of meat trade from Nepal, which has now been stopped. Due to its proximity to Nepal, Gorkha and Sherpa people are found in large numbers here. Both these breeds are so strong that every day they carry 80 kilometers of goods for about 40 kilometers to the village situated in the mountains.
While roaming around the perimeter of this village, I talked to the people here about the race for which we have come here. Because this race has been happening for 6 years, the local people here have complete information about this race. Anyway, the people here participate enthusiastically in this race. The people here have records in all three categories of this race. Nowadays, peas, cabbage and potatoes are sown in the fields in Rimbik. Last year we came in May so we ate a lot of peas. But this time we will have to wait a little.
Today we passed our time by roaming in and around Rimbik. From yesterday we have to travel 65 km. The work of marking the route has to be started. The good thing is that now the boys here have become experts in route marking...so there is not much pressure on us now. There is a lot of enthusiasm among the people here for the race to be held on 10th. Because everyone knows us, everyone wants to take us to their home and have tea. The environment here is very pleasant, I want to build a house here and live there. And who knows, in the future I may buy a house here and live here forever.
Disclaimer: This post is originally written in Hindi and I have used Google Translator to tranlate the Hindi text in English. All the photos have been clicked by me from android poco f1 and edited in Lightroom/photoshop.