Drama at Glenburn!

 

 

March and April have been somewhat of a blur of people, excitement, drama and hilarity, and neither of us can quite believe it is nearly May. Having waved off the last of my family (who seem to be coming in droves to see us at Glenburn!), and with only five guests in the hotel and storm clouds looming, there is an oddly quiet atmosphere here at Glenburn.  It is quite a welcome relief however after a rather hectic and at times dramatic few weeks.

The biggest drama we have had recently was during my dear sister’s visit. Jade and her husband Avi left yesterday after their somewhat extended visit to Glenburn. They arrived off a 24 hour train from Varanasi full of energy and excitement and both a picture of health (especially Jade who had just finished her Yoga teacher training), but within 12 hours, things had changed. Whilst we all got dressed up and ready for dinner, Avi said he wasn’t feeling well and told us he was going to bed.

Not giving him much thought we were all enjoying ourselves until halfway through our dessert we heard a shouting. Will and I immediately thought it was a drunk local who had somehow got into the hotel so we rushed out to try and usher him away. It quickly became apparent however that the shouting was coming from Jade and Avi’s room, where we found Avi lying on the floor having what appeared to us to be a seizure…

As luck had it we had four doctors in the hotel whom I rather frantically summoned away from their desserts.  One doctor was a cancer surgeon, another a dermatologist, another an eye surgeon and one a plastic surgeon, and unfortunately the last thing Avi needed was a facelift or a skin graft. Eventually however, despite some rather conflicting diagnoses’, it was decided that Avi was suffering from dehydration due to diarrhea, and a very high temperature, the combination of which, had caused his body to go into spasm (something quite common apparently?!). Unbelievably all it took to bring him out of his seizure was some deep breaths and a few sips of water and in no time he was laughing and sitting up in bed…albeit still with a very high fever.

Meanwhile our new intern Kate who had only been here a few days, had remained at the dining table attempting to maintain some civilised conversation in between the shouting and general mayhem (worsened by me frantically running in and out of the room in panic mode). We all agreed that somehow the evening had turned into a scene from a Murder Mystery…’Avi in the pink room under unknown circumstance…!’

Anyway, after a rather sleepless and feverish night for Avi, the next day Jade and I decided we should take him to Darjeeling hospital; an experience we shall never forget. On arrival we were ushered into the ‘Emergency Room’ which was in fact just a corridor outside the staff room which had one chair in it (we gave Avi the privilege of sitting).

After huge amounts of discussion, Avi was checked over with instruments that looked like they were from Florence Nightingales time, and we were eventually summoned to the ‘Blood Testing Center’. This was a separate building around the corner which was in need of a thorough clean, a lick of paint and also a door…(I actually refused to go in and hovered around outside).

 

Despite all of this, the doctor herself was very professional and intelligent and we were soon reassured that Avi did not have Malaria or Dengue Fever, and instead just needed to rest and re hydrate.  We returned to the idyll of Glenburn as quickly as we could and decided that for any other medical emergencies we would be attending the private hospital in Darjeeling.

After a few days things returned to normal. Jade adopted the role of resident yoga teacher, the weather began to warm up so we started to have ‘al fresco’ dining in the evenings,  and the hotel returned to a place of calm.

 

This was until the earthquake and the forest fire.

By this time my Grandmother and her friend had arrived and we were all having tea and cake on the veranda admiring the beautiful dusk light.
Suddenly however, we saw a rising strip of fire spreading through the tea fields towards the hotel.

There was huge commotion as all the staff ran down to try and calm the fire and the tea estate manager drove in at about 100mph in his truck in an attempt to save his tea bushes. Meanwhile, as we all stood rather hopelessly in anticipation watching over the raging fire, the ground began to shake beneath us in what was quite obviously an earthquake.  A family of four guests came running up asking whether they had drank too much or if it really was an earthquake, and Will and I did our best to stay very calm and pretend we were used to them here…!

Luckily no damage came from the quake, and the fire was eventually put out without too much harm done to the tea bushes. The dinner conversation that night was very excitable, and once again Glenburn had become a place of drama!

Since then, life at Glenburn has returned to normal, and things seem to be running smoothly again.

There have however been a couple of incidents this week that suggest Will and I might be a little overtired.

The other day we had been instructed that a new guest arriving was allergic to feather pillows, and so Will instructed the housekeeping girls to make sure there were no feather pillows in the room. Unfortunately they had completely misunderstood him, and on checking the room we found that every pillow in sight was a feather one. Will assured me that he had spoken very clearly with minimal stuttering…but alas, the room was now inhabitable for the lady with the feather allergy.

I myself also had rather an embarrassing moment when greeting a guest yesterday. We shook hands and he introduced himself as ‘David’ and (apparently) I immediately replied with; ‘lovely to meet you JOHN’. Nobody corrected me and so I continued to call him John all afternoon and even wrote ‘John’ on his place name at the table. It was at this point he came up to inform me I had completely misheard him. I was quite horrified at how I could have misheard ‘David’ for ‘John.’

Suffice to say I think our holiday to Thailand next week is coming at a good time, and we shall no doubt return energised, alert and ready to tackle the last few months of this season!