Ravangla and Borong 'Ghost' Hot Springs

We had an early start to catch a jeep to Ravangla as the only one available was in the morning. We made it there in two hours, and given the fact that we were hungry after the journey not having had any breakfast, we decided to grab something from a hotel. The masala tea and the momos Janet ordered were the worse she had ever had... the momos must have been left overs from the day before (hopefully!!!). After this we went to look for transport to Borong hotsprings... which we found immediately. The only catch... we did not know at what time the jeep would leave... given this circumstance we threw our backpacks on the floor and waited patiently until after a couple of hours someone pointed us the jeep which was going to take us to Borong. As time went by the jeep was looking more like a trailer with the amount of food they were putting in it. Janet's bad feeling had been concerning her since the day before and seeing this jeep was no consolation. She felt worse when she had a look at the driver... his eyes were evil. We left the jeep stand at around 12:30 and set off very slowly... slowly given all the weight as well as the driver stopping every couple of minutes to flirt with any girl. The road left much to be desired but at least the driver was driving carefully. Eventually the jeep came to a stop and when we asked where the hot springs where they told us that they were closed because it was low season... it was incredible how not one person gave us this important piece of information... we would have really taken it into consideration. What was worse though was that the driver was going to just drop us there... in the middle of nowhere!!! Thanks to a local girl we managed to convince him to take us back... though we were not sure on what was going to happen. The driver was insisting that he was not going to Ravangla and that we could sleep there for the night and return the morning after....for the price of Rs1000 a night!!! Sofia overheard him saying that the room actually cost Rs800 but he would get Rs200 commission on it... the bastard. We continued telling him that we wanted to get back to Ravangla. Another man came on the jeep and he started talking to Sofia in a mix of English and Nepalese... he told us that the driver was going back to Ravangla, but curiously enough, when the driver came back, this same man told him that Sofia could speak Nepalese and switched to speaking Sikkimese... just telling us that the driver was not going back to Ravangla. We were starting to get a little bit frustrated, even much so when he stopped again for a girl to talk to us. She said he was asking Rs800 to take us back when we had only paid Rs40 each to come one way... after some negotiations we concluded for Rs400... it was either that or being left in the middle of nowhere. Along the road he was stopping to talk to other drivers and telling them we were fools as he was going back to Ravangla anyway and we were paying him. All this he was saying in Nepali but Sofia could understand him. Bottom of the story we arrived safely in Ravangla and paid him the money, after which we learnt that he had to come back to Ravangla anyway (as we had obviously suspected) but as soon as we got there we were surrounded by fifteen man making sure we were going to pay. We eventually went back to Gangtok we reported him and hopefully some action will be taken (apparently from what we had heard, in Sikkim the tourism office takes these matters very seriously) . Back in Ravangla we went looking for a room and settled for the cheapest we could found, sharing between three. The owners were really nice as was the room. We purchased our tickets to Gangtok for the following day and had a delicious Chinese meal and nice hot shower before collapsing in bed.