Urine

Decide to give it one more day here using the trekking map provided and head down the 800 metre descent to Relle a tin pot town on the river. Initially excellent stuff for M.T.B' ing, quite steep in parts but plenty of flatter sections and tight corners to make things interesting. Bottom section is pretty unrideable though which would mean a bit of a push so become little down beat. Pep up with biscuits and fizzy pop in Relle and steam back up the track at a frenetic pace only to caught up by a local man who has been on a 50 k.m round trip walk from Pemling to Kalimpong to attend to some business, a trip he says he makes once a month, humbled to see the smartly dressed man bounding up the steep track trying to get back before dark.
Decision made and decide to give Mirik another try and hope that the mist that made Mirik a nightmare has lifted. Arrive the following day after a 7 hour jeep ride. This is pretty much last chance stuff here if no suitable trails around then that is it for the North East. 5 weeks and to date still have only 4 good days riding.
Will finish on a reflection on Indian public toilets. It is common for most public toilets to be manned by a man of the lower castes whose job it is to clean the toilets and collect a small charge usually 1 rupee for a slash "urine" and 2 rupees for a crap "toilet". Yesterday entered a public toilet in Kalimpong and made my way past the attendant with the idea to pay him on my way out. Had a slash but had to wait a bit because of the queue, returned to the attendants desk were the man asked "toilet ?" ; "no" I replied "urine"; "urine" asked the man quizzically "only urine ?"; yes "urine" I responded. The man seemed unhappy with my urine claim and began a prolonged discussion with his mate and assumed toilet tough which resulted in his mate heading for the cubicles to check for signs of non paid toilet use, luckily the attendant managed to refrain him and settled for "urine 1 rupee please". Might just declare myself "toilet" in future .