Downtime in Darjeeling: My somewhat successful attempt at a weekend.

“The whole point of the week is the weekend.”

– Angela Montenegro, Bones

Not even fifteen minutes into our taxi ride to Darjeeling, my pen decides to die.

Maybe it’s the sudden change in altitude – Darjeeling is 6,730 feet above sea level after all, quite a change from where we started in Siliguri.

Or maybe it’s the state of the roads, how we keep nearing the edge and the only thing between us and completely vertical cliff faces are the tiniest little stones that have been set upright in the pavement. Terrifying, really.

Either way, I’m mid-sentence through jotting down what someone said – “I think we’re…” – when my pen makes like a squid and lets out a fantastic stream of ink all over my fingers before calling it quits.

I think we’re what? I think we’re about to head over the edge? I think we’re about to collide with another taxi as it attempts to pass us on a road really only suitable for one way of traffic?

Alas, all I’ve got to go off is I think we’re… followed by a nice trio of blue fingerprints.

On any other day, I’d be scrambling for a back-up pen, resorting to a pencil or even eyeliner if it came to that. I mean, this is Darjeeling we’re talking about – an old British hill station, tucked away in the eastern Himalayas, where my absolute favorite type of tea just happens to hail from.

But this is on day seven of what has been a particularly full-on week. I’d spent the last six days working for The Adventurists on their autumn Rickshaw Run, wearing about ten different media hats to help blog, photograph, film, tweet, post on Facebook and generally do whatever else necessary to tell the world about the run’s launch in Shillong.

And in a week’s time, I’ll turn around and do it all again in Jaisalmer, where sixty-seven teams are due to cross the finish line (assuming they make it, of course).

It isn’t until my pen takes its final breath that I realize maybe it’s trying to tell me something:

Take a day off. Have a weekend. Stop working.

It’s the tricky part of loving your job, and something I haven’t quite mastered yet: learning to cut it off – “it” being your computer or your camera or your mind or whatever it is you’re always on – and allowing yourself to just be in the moment, without worrying about what you’re going to do with that moment later on.

So as our taxi winds up ever more narrow roads, taking us higher and higher until it feels like we’re in the clouds themselves, I close my notebook, put the cap back on my pen (may it rest in peace), and sit in silence by the window.

The notebook doesn’t come out again that day. With my new friends from the Rickshaw Run – Sam, Geoff, and Jason – I give myself a day off in Darjeeling, have fun despite the rain, warm up in Beni’s Café with south Indian coffee and sticky sweet gulab jamun, shop for tea, and eat way too many steamed momos that night for dinner.

On our descent the next morning, I’m determined to take the notes I missed yesterday. With a different pen in hand, I open my notebook and start writing: “Fuchsia plants bloom everywhere, dark pink as well as purple and white. Prayer flags hang damp and limp, next to…”

Darn if the pen doesn’t die.

Next to what? Next to tiered-roof pagodas shrouded in fog? Next to thick bunches of power lines looped across the valley?

Apparently, my weekend isn’t over yet.

Just what those prayer flags were hanging next to, I guess we’ll never know.