Of Football matches, Political agitations and being the only tourist in town

The football match between the Pelling school team and a visiting school team from a neighbouring village at the Pelling village football ground does not really look in the favour of the home team. They are trailing 1 - 0 in the second half and the whole crowd in this ground is hoping for an equalizer. Why am I watching a local school level football match ? I'll get to that later but the point is when you are in a small touristy village like Pelling and you are an outsider you can't really go unnoticed and to make it worse I happened to be there in a time when I was the only tourist in the whole village. Well there is a foul called by the referee and the home team just got a free kick from some 30 metres from the goal.

Pelling is a beautiful village some 80 Kms from Gangtok. Tourists flock this place for a beautiful view of the Kanchenjunga. The hotel rooms are generally packed and as one would expect that finding hotel rooms which offer a brilliant view are slightly heavy on your pocket. But if you plan it out smartly like the way I did you might get a good deal. I reach this place in the first week of August 2013 and I manage to get a spacious room with a king size bed with huge windows that overlook the kanchenjunga peak, very clean bathrooms with hot water etc etc all for a paltry sum of Rs 500 a night. All of this was achieved because the month of August being the rainy one over here and the month with a somewhat permanent cloud cover it is not exactly the tourist season. So rooms get very cheap. Well there is always one odd thing that you can ignore. I stayed there for three nights and not even once could I view the Kanchenjunga peaks.

Still being the only tourist in a village has its own charm. Since this village does receive its fair bit of tourists, a tourist wandering around is not probably an unfamiliar sight but then everyone looks in amusement thinking "What is this moron doing here at this time of the year" and chuckle. Fortunately people in these parts are sweet enough not to think it out loud. Other perks include that the only restaurant open in the village at night time (which closes by 8:30 pm) send their waiters to the hotel room (which is a good 500 meters away from the restaurant) to check if I am having dinner before they decide to close the place down. Most importantly though, a school level football match also kind of gets you excited.

Coming back to the football match and why the hell was I there ? Most unpredictable situations in this country can be blamed on the political climate prevalent and this one is no different. Had it not been for a political agitation in a neighbouring state, I might have in all likelihood missed this football match. A wonderful one I must add in hindsight and hence I am willing to take part of the blame.When I had started from Gangtok towards Pelling the fuel in my tank was on the lower side and skipped the intelligent advise of people I met in Gangtok to fill up the tank in Gangtok before heading to Pelling. Long story short when I reached Pelling in the evening, the fuel was on reserve. Now Pelling does not have a petrol pump in the village but ration shops sell petrol in bottles at a slightly higher price. So all was good or so I thought. The next morning I realized petrol was not reaching these parts of Sikkim because of the Gorkhaland agitations in the Darjeeling hills nearby and locals around convinced me that there is no fuel trucks reaching these parts and nowhere in a 40 Km radius is it likely to get any fuel. So that upsets all my plans of riding around to nearby places and monastries and come back to the room by evening. So when you sitting there laughing at yourself at being stuck in a village where you can't even view the Kanchenjunga peaks, someone somewhere mentions a football match that is about to start at the village ground and your eyes light up. I think why not. I just might be the lucky charm that this school football team of the Pelling village needs to decimate the visiting team. So I am here and there is this guy who is about to take the free kick which the whole crowd is hoping to be the equalizer.

At this point let me just mention I was taking still pictures in between the game from the sidelines. (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.145712808969182.1073741857.101961743344289&type=3#!/media/set/?set=a.145712808969182.1073741857.101961743344289&type=3) Not that I am too much into high school level football but I just thought when I am very easily the odd one out in the crowd I might as well do some attention seeking stunts. I initially thought I might try my hand (or rather feet) at a bicycle kick or something like that but I generally resist the temptation to perform such stunts in the month of August and the seven months preceding and the four months succeeding August in the calendar. So I chose to take pictures instead. But there was something about this free kick. I just thought I'll take a video of this particular free kick as somewhere I believed this would be the equalizer. And it was. Here is the proof

I had imagined that the grateful villagers will come running up to me to celebrate the goal and there would be talks about constructing a monument in my honour in this particular village. Nothing of that sort happened and I was crestfallen that the villagers never acknowledged my contribution to the equalizer. I really believe I had a part and had I not captured that free kick in video the equalizer would have never been there. I guess it just serves them right that they ultimately lost in the penalty shootouts.

Oh by the way the next morning I did take a jeep taxi to the town 12 Kms away and got some Rs 450 worth of petrol from a petrol pump which was sufficient to make me reach the next petrol pump on the way to my next destination. Well it was a little difficult to procure the petrol - I'll give you that but it just was not impossible to procure as everyone in Pelling made me to believe. I guess I am not the only one who exaggerates for effect :)

About Me:

A 7 month motorcycle ride that took me to every state in India, parts of Nepal and Bhutan and one town in Burma. These blog entries are inspired by this trip. Stories about people I met, stories about places I saw. Things that intrigued me, things that amused me. They say traveling changes you, they say traveling inspires you and they say a lot of other stuff. I don't know. I think a gun on the head is a better way to change people. I just hope that my travel stories entertain you

Right now I am in the process of writing a book based on this trip and figuring out the difference between a writer's block and procrastination.

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