- A Walk In The Clouds… My Sikkim Trip
- Land Sky and Beauty… Darjeeling and Kalimpong
This quote from my cousin near Tsango lake is a spectacular way to explain what we felt through out the trip. She said(to her mom) “Ma, I thought I would never touch the clouds but I even did that today…”
Words escape me as I try to sum up those feeling in words but one things for sure… This trip has been the most exciting 8 days of my life :) and I hv photos to prove it :P
Our journey started early Sunday(22nd May) morning… we had a morning flight to Kolkota and another flight a few hours later to Baghdogra. Its amazing how busy an airport is without regard to time… As we got through the tedious process(its no longer exciting considering I travelled in planes for the first time last year) of getting our luggage tagged and then checking in one thing was clear to me Kingfisher airhostess are really distracting :P. With all due respect to all the other airlines and all the pretty people on them… Vijay Mallya is great at what he does :P
Baghdogra Airport is in a very remote location very close to Sikkim. Next was a 4hr taxi ride to Gangtok. Most of this journey was along river Teesta… The river flowing in the vallies and crevasses of the great Himalayas is truly a sight for sore eyes.
A few hours later we were at our destination Gangtok, the Capital of the state of Sikkim. We reached around 6 pm and we thought we had enough time to freshen up and go to the local bazaar but interestingly things happen much earlier in these parts. The sun is up by 5 am (compared to the 6 am rise in Bangalore) and in the evening most of the shops are shut by 8 – 8:30 pm(a fete which is unthinkable in Bangalore). I took the time to get a few snaps of the hills from my window.
The next day we spent mostly sight seeing. This was the day we needed to get used to the chill of the hills and few places we visited helped us to warm up to the occasion :P. The visit to Rumtek Monastery was a experience I will probably never forget. The monastery is placed on top of a mountain and the walk from the gate to the Monastery is very tiring(considering our lifestyle in Bangalore we hardly get any exercise :P). Once we entered the Monastery this aura of calmness just runs us down… Its amazing how relaxed you feel inside one of those places maybe its how they build them or maybe its just that I encountered peace and quiet after such a long time :)
The monk above can be best described as A “Monk who never had a Ferrari to sell” :P The man was very kind and soft spoken. He was kind enough to let me take his picture and the calmness in his expression says it all :).
These flowers(below) at the Monastery were very intresting… The plant had flowers blossoming in different colors what is even more intresting is that the colors are from different ends of the spectrum :P. There was also a group of ppl building what I initially thought was one giant rocket :P I guess it was a long pole(similar to Dwaja Stumba’s we have in front of our temples)
We then visited a flower show… I was initially of the opinion that this should only take a few mins but the variety flowers we saw in the show was simply mind boggling. The time we had chosen for our trip was perfect as most flowers were blooming with all their glory :) This was a special treat for my mom(she simply adores flowers :) )
This flower reminded me of this entry in my friend’s journal
In the evening we walked through MG Marg, A street in which you could find all the shopping you will need :). This shop literally stood out from the rest. Its width was around twice my cubicle’s and the length was like 40-60 ft. Its intresting how different buildings are in these regions compared to home.
The next day we headed to lake Tsango. The lake is at an amazing height of 12400 ft above sea level. The drive to the lake saw us going though Indian Army camps… The lake is very close to the Chinese border and the whole area is covered by the military. We stopped at the Kyanglosla falls… A brilliant falls at such a height and the water was crystal clear, I doubt the water from our water filters are this pure.
We then went past lake Tsango to go to a memorial a few kms ahead. Our driver informed us that this memorial was of a soldier that had drowned and that they consider the place very holy. Once we reached the place… holy or not this place was beautiful. The clouds were all over us and it just kept drizzling. When you are inside a cloud its feezing, It was so cold I could actually feel the muscles in my face as the drops hit it. The air had a weighted feel to it and we could not see beyond a few feet ahead of us. After a while the clouds cleared and I took the opportunity to click a few pictures of the place.
The above picture is the only snow we saw in the trip. Since the time was practically the end of summer most of the snow was gone. I was not very disappointed considering last year I had spent a whole day in a snow field throwing snow balls at every one :P(That was the first time I had encountered snow ever :) )
Lake Tsango is considered to be very holy lake. The lake is fed by the melting snow and it is huge(considering where it is). There were yak rides around the lake but I decided to skip that. Yaks are one of the coolest animals I hv ever seen(pun not intended) they are huge almost twice or thrice the size of cows and as furry as furry can get. Considering their huge size and large horns they are very timid and docile. The man that owned the yak told us that he had spent Rs. 17K getting one and was charging us 10 bucks per picture of the animal.
The last evening in Gangtok was spent at the Ropeway. The huge structure is a good way to get a bird’s eye view of the beautiful city.
Considering this post has already become so long I shall post about the events in Darjeeling and Kalimpong in my next post :)
Till then here are some random pics from the visit to Gangtok: