Jeep fall in Teesta : Tourist killed

Bhaswaran

SILIGURI, May 15: Two persons were killed, six injured and three went missing when a Sikkim-bound passenger taxi from Siliguri fell into the Teesta river at Lekhuvir in Kalimpong sub-division around 12.30 p.m. today.

heres the link : http://www.thestatesman.net/page.new...ss=1&id=156431

Lugubert

No need for falling boulders to explain accidents there. Narrow, steep roads (or often rather paths), tyres which long since left their last threads... Never the less, having survived travelling by jeep Darjiling - Gangtok and then back (10 passengers...), doing it once more isn't excluded from my planning horizon.

Zeppy

Eleven people in the taxi (i.e. jeep, I suppose) means 3 in the back, 4 in the middle, and 4 in the front, with the driver probably reaching over a passenger to operate the gear shift. Ten in a jeep is supposed to be the maximum. However, I've been in jeeps there that crammed in as many as 14 people, and I agree with Lugubert that a boulder just complicates what is already an unsafe driving situation.

sirensongs

An overpacked "share jeep" goes over the hillside just about every other week here in Dharamsala-Kangra. By law, they can only hold 10 people; the drivers insist on stopping along the way till there are as many as 16. In which case, my friends and I then refuse to pay upon arrival.

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"Why do people go to India to find themselves? India is where you go to lose yourself."
Feringhee: The India Diaries

Zeppy

10 people already means an uncomfortable ride for those in back. When we discovered that drivers, as you say, stopped along the way to pick up extra illegal passengers, we decided to beat the system by making deals with other tourists to hire our own jeeps. It's much more pleasant to ride with 7 in a jeep, and not so terribly expensive.

By the way, you have to prepay the Gangtok jeeps.

Lugubert

I travelled with 4 back, 4 middle, and 3 front.

Like Zeppy inferred, pre-paid makes bargaining on the way difficult.

tacita

news of this accident comes as no suprise to anyone who's traversed nothern west bengal's and sikkim's treacherous routes. one can't even call them roads, as some of them are little more than wide dirt paths with largely interred-boulder outcrops.

en route between gangtok, pelling, yukson and darjeeling, some stretches were crumbling so badly into ravines that i insisted on getting out of the jeep and meeting my driver on the other side. (some bridges, too!) elswhere, the hairpin turns were so steep that it was impossible to climb them without wide swings around blind corners at high speed. the only way to ascertain the presence of oncoming vehicle was the system of horn warnings that drivers who ply these routes sound for one another.

but it was early in my trip, between the bagdogra airport and gangtok that i (if not my driver) learned to respect these roads the way a sailor respects the sea. two hours into what should have been a four-hour journey, traffic came to a standstill when a truck plunged into the ravine. the onlookers seemed concerned but not horrified, even with emergency assistance nowhere in evidence. the relative calm seemed to speak volumes about the relative frequency of such occurrences. then again, it was also painfully clear that the occupant(s) could not have survived the impact.

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julesa

i'm a vehicle engineer by profession but it's not hard to see what the problems are. having travelled to darjeeling and back by jeep:
1. they often drive like their lives mean little to them, and
2. the vehicles are often unroadworthy. specifically, many jeeps have bald tyres that just invite the thing to slide off the side of a hill.

unfortunately it's hard to tell whether the driver is decent before you're already underway, but i wouldn't get into one of those jeeps with bald tyres.

capt_mahajan

I do not take shared jeeps and buses at all anymore, though I used to. This is because once in Himachal we almost were airborne with the bald tyre thing.

I invariably drive myself on hilly roads. I am much more comfortable, and I know the condition of the car.
Have even paid extra to have a driver sit as a passenger while I drove his car in Uttaranchal.


On two occasions this was not possible, I laid down conditions, eg no coasting downhill with engine off or in neutral... and I will always open the bonnet for a quick look, check for oil leaks, tyre and handbrake condition before getting into the car in the hills.

Takes five minutes.

LunavadaLad

My experience of travelling by road in India was that most bus and truck drivers thought that they were "Rambo" and "Mad Max" devotees.

Hence my new resolution that if I cant get there by train I'm not going.

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If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home. ~James Michener

Diane-PDX

Could the Bagdogra-Gangtok helicopter be safer than going by road? Is the fare really only Rs 1,500? Is there a web site that gives official information about this service and its schedule? I read somewhere that they had a 10kg baggage limit. Is storage for extra luggage available at Bagdorga?

Are there options for hiring reliable cars and drivers from either Bagdogra or Siliguri? We are just beginning to plan for a visit in December and I'm trying to figure out our options coming from Kolkata.

Zeppy

Wow!! I couldn't do that; I have to keep my eyes shut too much of the time.

Zeppy

Diane-PDX, I'm sure others will debate this, but I didn't think the Siliguri-Gangtok road itself was a bad road. I just didn't like being jammed into the back seat of a jeep like a sardine with 2 other people and luggage. Of course I couldn't see much from back there! I didn't see fallen boulders on the road, which as I recall was paved the whole way; but, of course, here we have, precisely, a story of a fallen boulder... It was roads and bridges in other parts of Sikkim that, as Janice says, were scary, very visibly scary. I seem to recall hearing that the helicopter doesn't always fly (was it Janice who wanted to take it and couldn't?).

Bhaswaran

What I can assure you that this Siliguri-Gangtok road is a National Highway and is maintained by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), an unit of the Indian Army. So, despite adverse situations, it is a good and well maintained road, far better than other roads nearby. An accident always sends shivers through the spines, it is usual, but otherwise, the road is pretty good, at least upto Gangtok. You have to take a good car with a good and careful driver, that all. There is nothing to be so scary that you do not take to this road. I myself will be going there in June and one should also enjoy the serene beauty of this road with the emerald color Teesta flowing beside. This is the monsoon season (started raining in the eastern hills for quite a few days) and accidents such as these may occur now (falling boulders, landslides), as the himalayas is the youngest mountain in the world and is fragile and still growing, it is also an earthquake prone zone. All of these makes it vulnerable to such occurances.

SO, dont scare, enjoy India and the Himalayas

regards,

Bhaswaran

julesa

i've heard that it's not.