9th April, 2008

At 5.30 am the morning light of Gangtok awakened me. Our honeymoon at Gangtok was drawing a close, but our trip was still far from over. By 8.30 am the three of us were all dressed & raring to go. Yumthang the previous day had been kind of disappointing, so we were really wary of our coming days. While we feasted on a quite heavy breakfast, Ramesh arrived with a new plan. While I called up Baichung for the confirmation of this, I was informed that Pelling was chucked out from our itinerary & a place called Yuksam was inserted in its place. I hadn’t come across this place during my ground research before starting with this trip, so naturally I was kind of skeptical about the whole thing.

Finally a 10 am after bidding adieu to Kishen & Vinod (the proprietor & room boy respectively) of Pandim, we were on the road with our entire luggage stacked in the Scorpio this time. Panda had decided to reminiscing about her days of goonda gardi & entertaining the entire group. At 11 am we passed through the village of Singtam & in this process entered South Sikkim. As we were passing through all those hair pin curves, we had started playing the age old game of Antakshari (again courtesy Panda) & were belting out Hindi numbers in our rugged tunes.

At noon we made a small snap stop at the beautiful Temi Tea garden. After like playing for a while through the tea fields we decided to continue with our journey. At quarter to one, we stopped at another small hill village of Ravangla for lunch. Right after lunch our first pit stop was at the Yung Drung Kundrak Ling Bon Monastery in Kewzing. It was picture of serenity & spirituality. It was the only Bon monastery in the entire Sikkim. Once we alighted from the monastery we had a little snap timeout at the Rangit Dam.

While I & Vineet were snapping at the river, our playboy Ramesh was making hay all the while with the passing local belles. He sure turned out to be one smooth operator. As we crossed the Rangit river, we entered into the West Sikkim territory of Tashiding & our Scorpio was back to traversing through the hair pin curves. Panda was busy in waving at the local school kids (some didn’t wave back, but the major ones would flash back a huge smile along with their waving hands) & as for us we were just stunned & gaping the scenic marvel that was unfolding along the way.

Just before entering Yuksam, we happened to stop at the Phamrong Falls. This happened to be one huge mother of a waterfall & we had provisions of a stair all the way till the summit. The cigarette intake sure had fucked my stamina, but that didn’t prevent me from climbing those stairs (in fact I beat Panda & Vineet to the summit too). Atop after taking some time to catch some breath, we began to be amazed at the sight from there.

Once we were done with our timeout at Phamrong, we started our journey to Yuksam. At 4 pm we entered Yuksam – which happened to be the first capital of Sikkim. Well one thing which comes up your radar when you enter Yuksam is the fact that there ain’t any roads over here. But then once you get to see the place all that takes a backseat. The amazing view & the peaceful atmosphere over here just make you go completely gaga.

There were plenty of foreigners who were just sitting at the local restaurants & sipping beer & coffee – seems like Yuksam is also a place that is a favorite for trekkers. We checked into Hotel Demazong & met up with the proprietor Rob. By then we even heard some distressing news about a strike that had occurred in West Bengal. Since Kalimpong, which was our destination for the next day, happened to be in West Bengal we sure did have some worries. But for the present we decided to do some exploration of the village. But before we decided to walk through the village, we decided to get our tummies stuffed at one of the local eatery.

Once we were done hogging at Gupta’s restaurant (that happened to be one of the happening places in Yuksam) we walked off to a nearby lake. The Kathog Bla Tsho (Tsho it seems meant Lake in the local language) was a mystical lake & we were the only souls present at the lake when we entered it. After toying around there for a while, we headed for the Coronation Throne Norbugang, which was supposedly the birth place of Sikkim. Maybe it was the evening but the trees that surrounded the coronation monument sure were a lil creepy.

While I & Vineet were landscaping the surrounding areas, Panda had made company with the local children & was yapping on & on (the children in Sikkim sure were real independent). At around 6.30 pm we had to pry away Panda from the children & since it had already gone pitch dark we walked back to our room. Later that night we went over to Gupta’s once more for dinner. I was glugged in a couple of beers & then later we were joined by a sweet lady named Rebecca all the way from Atlanta, USA. Well we did carry on our debate over India (we were trying to tell her that Sikkim was still a part of India) way past the usual time in Yuksam (which closes down by 8 pm) & I was blushing every time she kept complimenting me for my Kerala looks (I swear she did). We said our goodbyes to Rebecca & proceeded back to our hotel. Before hitting the bed, we decided to do one more round of cards & as usual we thrashed Panda once again. Considering how the day had shaped up, I was quite sure tonight I could go easy with some nice sleep. Yuksam sure had bowled me all over.