Leonid '98 Nightmare in Darjeeling - My personal surreal experience 
  Extracts from the Diary of Martin Mobberley...A TA Exclusive!!


As every TA reader will know, the Earth crossed through the orbit of Comet 
Tempel-Tuttle at 1943 UT on November 17th. At this time, the Leonid radiant
was well-placed from Asia and, if a meteor storm was going to happen, it 
might happen there, at that time, or slightly earlier (depending on which 
prediction one believed).
In the hope of seeing a really good meteor shower or even a storm, I set 
off on the Explorers Tours Leonid trip to Darjeeling on Friday the 13th of
November. Unlike the Explorers Eclipse trips, only 25 travellers were booked
on this trip and most were also on tour extensions to India's Golden Triangle
(Delhi, Agra, Jaipur) or the kingdom of Bhutan.
Darjeeling was chosen because of it's 7000 foot altitude, clear November
weather and ideal longitude for viewing the Leonid Radiant at the time of 
Comet plane-crossing.
Only myself, John Mason, Hazel & Brian McGee, BAA member Simon Lane and 
Julian Tyacke were on the brief one week Leonid jaunt, although other
travellers from Crayford AS and other societies were on different itineraries
and we would see them all as the 17th approached.

The Long Journey there: Friday 13th/Saturday 14th
----------------------------------------------------
At 6am on the 13th, Hazel, Brian, John and myself started our journey to 
Darjeeling from Terminal 3 at Heathrow.
To say that the inbound journey was gruelling was a massive understatement!
After a two hour car journey to Heathrow and a two hour wait for take-off we 
had a 6h40m flight to Bahrain plus 1h30 stop; then a 5 hour flight to Delhi 
plus 7 hour stop for immigration check/baggage reclaim/breakfast; then a 2h30m 
flight to Bagdogra airport (in the NE corner of India) plus 2 hour bureaucracy
-stop and a spine shattering 6 hour mountaain drive to Darjeeling on mountain 
roads from hell, in the dusk/dark.
A total journey time of just under 35 hours with no sleep!
I will not dwell on the characteristic choking Delhi stench and smog, nor the 
Indian obsession with eradicating all batteries from travellers luggage and
asking all travellers to take a photo with their cameras to prove their cameras 
were not fakes! 
Not to mention the ritual stapling of all Indian Rupee wads of money together
so the traveller has to pay to have the staple taken out!
Nor will I exaggerate the infinite bureaucracy at Bagdogra airport, including a
quadruplicate receipts for any cup of tea purchased in the restaurant, duly 
rubber stamped.
I will leave the reader to grasp the concept of a security guard asking every
passenger at every stop across north-eastern India, on a full 737, to confirm  
that their hand baggage was still their baggage, followed by a head count of 
every one on board!
After 30 hours of travel, the 5 hour mountain road journey from Bagdogra to 
Darjeeling was somewhat unwelcome! It would have been a bit better if the
bus had employed some form of suspension, but am I being too greedy?
But there were two events on that road journey which will stay with me for 
life. 
Firstly, the exquisite sunset which emerged into view as we rounded a mountain
pass and the extraordinary views of the Himalayas illuminated by the setting 
Sun.
Secondly, the terrifying situation our bus found itself in nearing the journeys 
end when, perched on the edge of a dodgy-looking bridge, overlooking a ravine, 
our way was blocked by a wide lorry coming towards us as another lorry 
overtook us! All three vehicles ground to a halt and there was no obvious way 
out; the situation was made worse by the fact that it was night-time and the 
road was in darkness. 
This may seem bad enough, but this was only the start.....read on!!! 
The oncoming carraigeway was not only a road, it also incorporated the rails
for the local train. Somewhat predictably, with the carraigeway completely 
blocked, the whistle of the train was distinctly heard and the locomotive
soon hurtled into view!
I have never seen two lorries get out of an impossible situation more quickly,
one choosing to reverse back past us (and presumably plunging into the ravine)
while the other squeezed past us with inches to spare with the train on it's
bumper! 
Had I ever been closer to death?
An hour or so later we arrived at the somewhat spartan Central Hotel. 
The people here were distinctly different in appearance to those in Delhi;
lighter skinned and many were noticeably Tibetan/Chinese in appearance.
Brian McGee told us that we would probably move to better accommodation 
after that night. It was then 14.30 hrs GMT on Saturday 14th November,
20.00 hrs local time (India is 5h30 ahead of GMT, although Darjeeling's 
longitude is almost exactly 6 hrs ahead). After phoning my parent's and
taking two asprins, I had a look at the night sky out of my window.
It was very dark and crystal clear with many stars visible within the 
Square of Pegasus.......looking good!
I then collapsed onto the bed and sunk into a very deep sleep.

Sunday 15th in Darjeeling
---------------------
Next day, after Sunday breakfast we moved a few hundred yards up the road
to the much plusher New Elgin Hotel. John Mason and I were allocated a superb
set of adjoining rooms in the very roof of the hotel.
This was very handy, as with hardly any other serious technical astronomers
within our group we could get to work on assembling Andrew Elliott's image
intensifier system within the two room apartment. As anyone who has visited
India will know, most hotel rooms do not seem to have been wired by someone 
with a City & Guilds qualified electrician! It was simply a case of finding
which sockets in either of our rooms worked, and creating an almighty lash-up
which would power the intensifier, associated CCD camera, video recorder
and TV monitor.
Possibly the greatest challenge in this was trying to tune the Darjeeling
TV set into the VCR. This was, eventually accomplished; thankfully we
could tune the video in, if not the sound channel.
With John's bathroom blacked out we finally obtained an image of John's
lavatory bowl on the TV monitor in the other room.....success!!
The resulting mass of wires was undoubtedly lethal but we were there to do a 
job and electrocution was just a risk we were willing to take!
Emerging from the New Elgin in the early afternoon we were disturbed to see
that the crystal clear mountain air had been replaced by significant cloud.
Not the wispy cirrus of earlier in the day, but substantial cumulus.
Mission Impossible no. 2:- find someone with an Internet connection and 
download some satellite images.
Fortunately, in a downstairs room in the hotel there resided a 188 MHz
Pentium + HP Deskjet printer & modem. With help from a local student,
John, Hazel, Brian & Myself eventually secured some satellite photos of
Asia and (the tricky bit) produced hard copies.
The images were horrifying. A cyclone was obscuring the entire Eastern side
of India and was moving Northwest (or so we thought), ie if it was moving
more North than West we were stuffed.
Fortunately it was still only Sunday the 15th and peak night was two days 
away....we might be lucky if the storm moved Westward toward central India.
On the assumption that it would clear, John had developed a rapport with a
local (distinctly Tibetan-looking) architect who offered us the grounds of a 
derelict house which he was re-building, from which to observe. He also
offered us a TV monitor and helpers to prepare the site.
The site was excellent and not dissimilar to Denis Buczynski's Conder Brow
vista, with a suberb Eastern view looking over a deep valley and a pitch black
sky. It was also only half a mile from the hotel.
On the Sunday evening, John and I were told that we would be met by the 
architect's night-watchman and others at the site and let into the building
so we could connect up Andrew Elliott's intensifier.
We duly turned up at the house door and a TV set was sitting there, 
unguarded (!) in front of the front door.......but there was no-one to let us 
in.
After a while we realised we were being watched by a small youth from the 
pathway above us and we ascended towards him, with the TV monitor; was he one
of the architect's helpers? Within seconds of speaking to him he beckoned us 
to follow him, took the (quite bulky) TV off us and proceeded to walk briskly 
back up the hill into the market square. John and I followed, breathless (we
were at 7000 feet) as he surged into the market square (where a concert was 
now taking place) and headed straight for a cafe next-door to the Architect's
apartment. Plonking the TV down on the counter he then, without a word of
explanation, started serving behind the bar, with John and myself apparently
forgotten. Several times we tried to interrupt him as he dashed between
counter, customers and the Architect's building. Each time he nodded furiously
but we were non the wiser as to his purpose. We assumed he was trying to find
the man with the keys to our observation site, but to this day we have no 
idea!
I've had a few bizarre dreams in my time, but standing in Darjeeling
watching a teenage youth as he rushed in and out of buildings and back to the
Cafe, constantly nodding in our direction but saying nothing is as Surreal as
it gets. As I said to John at the time, "How am I going to write this one up
for TA"?
As if this was'nt weird enough, suddenly out of the darkness emerged John
Rogers, the Jupiter Section Director. He was in the Hotel next to us 
(The Windermere) and was heading into the Himalayas to view the Leonids).
After exchanging news with John R. we had had enough. I strode into the cafe,
picked the TV off the counter and we lugged it back to the hotel. I have no
doubt that I could have taken the Cash Register off the counter too and 
no-one would have argued!!
It should be pointed out that walking through the streets of Darjeeling at 
night is not easy. The streets are pitch black and many manhole covers
are missing and not covered by any form of warning!! In addition, a 
black, iron, groin-height pole, angled at 45 degrees was to be found sticking 
out of the ground in the main street. This could bring tears to your eyes,
whether carrying a TV Monitor or not.
Sunday night proved cloudy and drizzly, but at least we all had a good night's
sleep.

Monday 16th in Darjeeling
--------------------------

Monday dawned and John had downloaded more satellite images and phoned the Met
office. The news was the worst possible....the cyclone was heading towards us.
The decision was made to return to Delhi a day early, ie Tuesday 17th, and use
Explorer's agents in Delhi to drive us to a dark site SW of Delhi where 
there was no cloud and we would be clear of the Delhi smog. 
But we still had Monday night to contend with and John was keen to get some
results from Darjeeling on that night. 
On Monday afternoon John finally acquired the keys to the derelict observing 
site while I went off on a tour of a tea plantation and the Tibetan refugee
self help centre!
After Monday's evening meal John and I gave a brief summary of how to observe 
meteors to the small band of travellers who wanted to observe from the site.
I then joined John at the site and we set the image intensifier up inside
the derelict building.
Some decent gaps in the cloud arrived, but they were few and far between.
Hoewever, there were certainly a lot of meteors about and this was the day
before the peak. Observers outside the building saw a bright fireball after
midnight, but the weather closed in and by 3am the rain was torrential.
By this time I was back in bed, fast asleep.
On the way back from the observing site with the intensifier, John and I were 
accosted by a group of Darjeeling schoolgirls asking us loads of questions 
about meteors. John explained we had travelled 5,000 miles to get away from
cloud but we were still clouded out. A translation of the Tibetan cackle
that resulted would probably be "LOOOOSERS!"


Tuesday 17th-----the gruelling return to Delhi and the Delhi-Jaipur road
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday dawned with, perhaps, the greatest potential disaster of the trip.
John entered my room just before breakfast with the news that he had mislaid
his passport. In a country as bureaucratically minded as India it is far
better to commit suicide than face the infinite mountain of paperwork
associated with losing a passport, especially if passing through Bagdogra
airport.
While John re-searched his luggage (we had less than an hour until we had to 
leave for Bagdogra for the 2.30pm flight) I retraced our steps back to the
observing site, looking for John's passport. On my return the Explorers agent
in India (Delhi-Dolly!) greeted me with the news that John had found his 
passport and the words "he will indeed not now have to commit suicide".
So, it was back down the mountain to Bagdogra Airport; more bureaucracy, 
rubber stamps, X-Ray inspection, hand inspection, battery confiscation, etc..
They say the British invented bureaucracy; the Indians made it into a science.
At this point I had a dead-cert idea for a classic Christmas Sit-Com....... 
"Victor Meldrew visits India".
We finally arrived at Delhi airport at 5pm on Tuesday afternoon (11.30 GMT) 
some eight hours before Comet plane crossing and were whisked by our agents 
onto a coach heading SW into the Delhi countryside.
We were then down to five observers:- Myself, John, Hazel (suffering
from a chronic cold), Simon and Julian. (Brian had stayed in Darjeeling
to co-ordinate arrangements there).
In addition there were three agents on the bus and plenty of food and drink.
We still might salvage something from the trip!
I hesitate to describe the Delhi-Jaipur road at night...it just sounds too
unbelievable......
Picture a road as wide as a typical British dual carraigeway, but with no
road markings or street lights. It is permanently enshrouded in smog and 
woodsmoke and diesel fumes and everyone is overtaking everyone else.
Few vehicles have lights or even reflectors and it is night!
The traditional warning that you are overtaking is to use your horn, as few 
vehicles have any mirrors.
Then imagine 100kms of this journey being necessary (a three hour journey),
because the Delhi smog extends nearly 100kms from Delhi!
By 8pm local time we arrived at a rural residence and our Indian agents managed
to negotiate with the locals to direct us to the best local site.
John thought the local lunatic asylum was nearby; we would then be amongst 
like-minded people....however we decided to follow the locals advice.
We eventually arrived at a large, but primitive dwelling in the village where
the locals were singing the praises of the Hindu Monkey God, just as there was
a knock on the door and John Mason's face appeared.
From this point on we were all treated as Gods!

The Critical Night's Observations....Nov 17th/18th
-----------------------------------------------------
In the hours before the radiant rose John and I frantically tried to get
the image intensifier operating, surrounded by a dozen or more locals and
their children.
One of our guides told us that an old man working in the fields had seen many
shooting stars near dawn the night before....increasingly it appeared that
the peak, or a bright peak, had occurred a day early.
The occupants of the rural biblical dwelling produced two TV sets for us, but 
neither would tune to channel 36. A party of locals were then dispatched to
the local rural TV rental shop and, remarkably, a large, new, colour TV then 
appeared!! The TV shop owner also arrived and managed to program the TV to
the VCR frequency. Unfortunately the Intensifier CCD Camera picture would not
stop rolling, until John spotted a 220/240v switch on the camera plug.
This cured the problem....rural mains in India is not much higher than 200V.
So, with video running and plane-crossing approaching, we got into position
on the roof of the stable block.
Skies were dark, but very hazy...the Zenithal limiting mag was not much better
than 5. In the ensuing 6 hours from 1820 UT (17th) to 00:20 UT (18th) the five 
of us saw 160 meteors. Most were Leonids, but there were also Taurids and 
sporadics. With the radiant at the zenith and approaching astronomical dawn
we were seeing roughly 40 Leonids per hour.
I soon realised how poor my faint constellation knowledge was when compared
to John's....questions like "so where exactly does Lynx start and end" were
common during the night.
The meteors were disappointingly faint though....almost nothing brighter
than Sirius.
We had salvaged something, but the effort had been phenomenal and the reward
slight. Nevertheless there cannot have been many other dedicated meteor
watches taking place at that longitude and storms had affected Thailand and
Japan, where other groups had gone.
In hindsight it's probably easiest to come to terms with if I think of it as 
as a practice run for 1999!
As dawn broke we headed back, close to death, to Delhi and the formerly
named Vasant Vihar hotel where we had started out from on the 13th/14th and
I had stayed during the 1995 India Eclipse trip.
Retiring to my room, I was ecstatic to see a bath with a plug in it....oh joy,
oh ecstacy......I would'nt have to jam the heel of my foot in the plughole
this time.
After a steaming hot bath in brown Delhi water I keeled over on the bed and 
slept like a log, briefly waking to phone Nick James to exchange news and 
sleeping through most of the Wednesday.
Apparently, there had been a lot of bright bolides a day early on Tuesday 
morning from the UK.....if I'd stayed in Britain and looked out a day before
the critical time I could have saved myself a journey.....AARGHHHHH!!!

Return to civilisation, Thursday 19th............
----------------------------------------------------
On the Wednesday the nightmare ended and we left India, via Abu Dhabi,
for Heathrow. The carton of orange juice tasted distinctly unpleasant on
the Gulf Air flight out of Delhi. However, this was soon resolved, when Simon
spotted it was manufactured in Bhopal, scene of the Union Carbide 
methylisocyanate gas leak of December '84, which killed 3350 people.....it's
always nice to put one's mind at rest with the facts.
The current plan is to head for Mt Sinai in Egypt for '99.
However, it looks like predictions for peak activity longitudes need further
thought.
I still live in hope that I will see a meteor storm one day............
When all's said and done, a trip to India really makes one appreciate the
civilisation and cleanliness we enjoy in Britain....it's good to get back!

Martin Mobberley