of rivers and waterfalls... of quaint villages and beautiful people Sikkim Trip Part II...

They say when in Rome, be a Roman . Staying at an army mess did instill some kinda discipline in some of us... we were up and ready and we assembled at the dining hall in true fauji style for Breakfast ..and guess what despite getting up early , we cdnt manage leaving the mess early enough.What a mess I tell ya !!!!!!

We had an awesome dude for a driver called Dawa and his assistant Vishnu....Dawa stopped every now and then for us to take pictures and he had little funny stories to narrate .....

We stopped at the Tashi view point to catch the glimpse of Kanchenjunga .. as usual Kanchenjunga was playing hide and seek ..We managed a decent look and then we took off to Chungthang which was about 95 plus kms from Gangtok.





The drive was gorgeous ...Teesta had become our permanent companion ... gave us company all the way through ....she looked absolutely stunning...




Some of the highlights of the drive...

Our strange Hen-counter ... Every time we passed a little village , we would encounter hens who would time themselves to cross the road.... You run over a hen and u pay Rs 500 and guess what , you don't even get to keep, eat or admire them.. what a teaser I tell you !felt like a scam ...

We reached Chungthang by late afternoon after halting midway for lunch. Lunch wasn't very exciting. We had oil curry which had a few pieces of chicken and some daal- chawal.

At Chungthang, we stopped for chai and then carried on.The road then bifurcated into 2 - one going to Lachung and the other one to Lachen .. The names sounded like some Franco-Chinese cocktail..Ce'st Lachen Ce'st Lachung and Ce'st Lavie ! hehehe






We reached Lachen after sunset.. and the driver took us to a hotel which looked shady yeah like one of those patli gali types....We tried to talk ourselves into adjusting but yeh dil maaengey more took over .. We managed to coax the guys to take us to another hotel and as we walked through the narrow, dark, dingy, dilapidated galli, we were getting more and more convinced that it wasn't happening.





LACHEN STREET

We reached the second hotel which looked like one of the fairy tale buildings ... could almost visualise Rapunzel with long hair at the window . New building ... new beds .. new quilts .. wowzie .. what more cd one ask for??? We parked ourselves there.. Subu had bought some local beer called Danzberg and Hit . After the beer tasting ceremony, we went down for Dinner. Grub was decent and Lachen was frigging cold and thankfully I had retained my several layers of clothing..
Post dinner, we slept. Had an early morning drive to Gurudongmar. As usual we got out late and Dawa was pissed !! He gave us a piece of his mind.We were getting used to being labelled recalcitrant...

The drive to Gurudongmar was surreal.We passed a number of Army posts and also the Border Road Organisation (BRO)kept us entertained with their peppy innovative patriotic writings ...





We stopped en route at Thangu . A beautiful quaint village... We had steamed bread and jam with hot tea at this little shack .The people there were really sweet. We chitchatted for a bit and took off.



AT Thangu Village


We were kinda late and Dawa had a point. The road was rocky and quite deserted and it would be quite a situation if one got stranded in the middle of nowhere . There wasn't any sign of civilization let alone any flora or fauna !! Dessert-ed in the true sense !!
To our utter dismay and to add to the drama, the vehicle stopped ! Our man quickly got under the SUV and fixed it temporarily.

We resumed and made it finally.

Yes, this is what they call Heaven... The lake looked so still and calm .. hues of blues and green with certain portions frozen.
I was stunned by the beauty of the place .It was freezing there.. Damn we were 17100 ft above sea level...




I got myself a spot .. i lied down by the lake on the stones and just stared .. Speechless!!!!!!!!!!
We were forewarned by Dawa and we had deadlines to keep. But as usual we were late and this time the dude lost it and we felt like school kids who were being reprimanded by a teacher......hehehe

We went past the Chopta valley back to Thangu on our way to Lachen. One more halt at Thangu. We went back to the same shack ...more hot tea ..we also got a taste of the local fermented bamboo beer called Chang which is served in a traditional bamboo container and is to be consumed with a bamboo straw....they should rename it as straw- beer(y) . While some of us stayed put in the shack socialising with the locals, Subu decided to try out some gully cricket with the kids . Well, he wasn't allowed to go beyond bowling but he sure had a "ball" literally .. heheh .

We had a quick lunch at Lachen and then we were back on the road. Our next stop was Lachung which meant back to Chungthang and we had to take the other road at the fork.

We reached Lachung by late evening. We got ourselves shelter in a homestay.The place was construcetd of wood .. one kick and it would fall apart .. every time anyone moved , the squeak would scare the shit out of us. It was quite an adventure .


Dinner followed by Uno and it was sleep time. Woah What a day that was !