Sikkim

Sept. 29^th, 2011

After crossing the border into Sikkim, the ancient Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas and a semi-autonomous state of India, it was a short ride before we reached the town of Jorethang. For me it was just a transit point, so when I was dropped off in town, I immediately asked around for the next jeep station. The town was in a deep valley, and therefore not as dramatically beautiful as Darjeeling, although it felt even more removed from the Bengali land of the south that I had left so recently. Culturally it was obviously different, although there was something else that I had a hard time putting my finger on. Something about the look of the buildings, perhaps the region’s history had affected the way it developed. Everything seemed just a little bit more…coherent.

This building does not express what I was just talking about.

The jeep station was something like a multi-level parking garage. This was unique, as were the actual jeep schedule sheets at the ticket booth (also unique). Vendors walked around selling tea, ice cream and veg momos. Momos, if you don’t know, are like a steamed wonton with a variety of potential fillings. This one had some sort of bland, shredded, boiled cabbage in it. I bought a plate, and luckily it came with a hot pepper sauce that saved it from complete boredom. Unfortunately I had just missed the last bus to Pelling, the town I was headed. They said there was one more jeep going to Geyzing (via a town called Legship) and from there I could get another jeep or taxi. That was good enough for me. As the crow flies, I could not have been more than 20 miles from Pelling. On a map it looked like it would not possibly take more than an hour. But if you look closely at the road on the map, you’ll notice that it is drawn as a messy little squiggle, showing that it would be a lit of ziggang and zagging as we escalated into the mountains.

The first leg, to Geyzing, took about two hours. The road had a lot of damage to it from the earthquake. I would later find out that a matter of a couple days earlier, the road was completely impassable. It was impressive, that with the resources available, and with the terrain, that the road was able to be restored within ten days of the earthquake. At one turn, I saw a shallow river simply flowing over the road. This was strange and almost frightening. It was on a hairpin turn on a steep face. The weirder part, though, was that I saw a couple of cars parked in the flowing water. I was confused at first, but then saw that the drivers were outside using the water to wash their cars off. I wouldn’t have wanted to linger where water was flowing freely and surely breaking down the asphalt underneath us.

Landslide/Road damage

The jeep lot in Geyzing was crowded and hectic for such a small town. We had ascended quite a ways, and there were some incredible views. The town looked quaint, and worth stopping in. Pelling, my desination was far more famous, and attracted a good number of tourists for its views of Khangchendzonga, the world’s third highest peak. If I wasn’t already behind schedule a day and on a limited time frame, I probably would have passed a day or two in the town. Unfnortunately, I did not have that luxury.

The jeep to Pelling took the better part of an hour, despite the fact that we moved about 7 km. I did some searching around town, and found one of my all-time greatest hotel deals. It took a bit of bargaining, but it was worth it. It was huge, fairly clean, had a huge bed with plenty of blankets, a bathroom, a TV, outlets (you have to pay extra to stay in hotels with outlets in Kolkata), but most of all was the view. I had huge windows that looked down over the valley below, and in the distance, if it was clear, I would hopefully have some mountain views. The town seemed to cater to Bengalis and south Indian tourists, so there was an abundance of south Indian restaurants priced a little too far out of my price range. I was lucky to find a basic little momo shop to get dinner before it was dark. They were bland, but again, the sauce made up for it, as did the setting. It was a little family run shop that seemed barely in use. They had to go find a chair for me to sit down at the lone wooden table. The grandparents giggled in the back, while the mother seemed too overwhelmed with her kids to carry out her chef duties. I languidly consumed my moms, as I watched the little town slowly pass by through the shops open front. It was perfect.

Pelling

Some people in town play a game that involves tossing coins into a little hole in the ground. Kind of like horseshoes, kind of like golf, kind of like Las Vegas.

There was not a lot to do in the town itself, but there was a lot to see in the area. It was worth taking strolls through town, though, as the views were spectacular and the people were friendly. In the morning, I woke early so I could get a glimpse of Khangchendzonga before it was obscured by clouds. At 6 AM my alarm went off. I sat up in bed, and there it was. Sweet. And then I laid back down and caught another hour or two of sleep.

Khangchendzonga from my window.

View of the valley and villages below.

The rest of my day was spent walking to some nearby religious and historical sites. The first was the ruins of Rabdentse, about three km from my hotel. It was a relaxing walk to the entrance of the ruins and it felt good to be in the fresh mountain air. The ruins are from the ancient capital of Sikkim from 1670 to 1814. The capital of the kingdom has actually changed several times over the last few centuries.

It is a twenty-minute walk from the entrance of the site to the actual ruins. On the way, I ran into a group of local tourists from Gangtok, the current capital of Sikkim. They were extremely friendly, and one of the men asked if I would like to join their tour, since they had hired a local guide. It seemed interesting to me that they had a local guide, since I have generally shunned guides in my travels. The group was a family, and the father, who was a young teacher, was excited to talk to a foreigner. The guide, who was also young and friendly, spoke good English, but was a little more reserved. When we got to the ruins, the father took the most enthusiasm in explaining the history of the ruins, although he generally repeated the same small bits of information over and over.

There he is on the right, giving me the rundown.

They had brought a picnic, and invited me to share their beer and samosas with them. They pulled out a bag of something I had only seen during my hour stay in Bhutan five years ago: HIT Super Strong Beer. It should have exclamation points in its name too. Anyway, there was plenty to go around, with the men drinking most of it, but the mother of the family taking occasional swigs as well. This is one thing that I find enjoyable about the Himalayan culture: a more liberal approach to alcohol. While in most of India, it is done in dark, dingy bars or on the sly out of an unmarked bottle, but rarely out in the open in a picnic setting at a historical landmark.

The father got more gregarious as he tip-toed into his beer. It seemed that he had probably been drinking before I had met him based on the way he was acting, as well as his inability to finish his large beer. When I pointed out that we had finished ours, and he was only halfway through, he got ambitious. Perhaps I take some blame in what followed. He put the bottle to his lips, tipped it upside down and began to chug relentlessly. About halfway through, panic began to develop in his eyes. He dropped the bottle and lunged toward a nearby ledge over the ruins. He was on his knees, leaning over the ledge and heaving away all of his samosas and beer. Right onto the ancient capital of the kingdom of Sikkim. Classy.

They had invited me to continue their tour with them and drive to a nearby monastery, but after the incident with the beer, they said they decided it was best just to head back to their hotel. On the walk back to their car, I mostly stuck next to the guide. He was talking about how disappointing it was that all the tourists that came from other parts of India didn’t treat the area well, and tossed their garbage everywhere. It was refreshing to hear him say this, because in most places it is just not something people think of. We ended up picking up garbage (some being littered right in front of us by our group of tourists) all the way back to the car. Perhaps it was due to a lack of population, but Sikkim did have considerably less garbage than other parts of India that I had seen.

After they left, I walked back towards Pelling, and stopped to see the Pemayangtse Gompa. Built in 1765, it is one of Sikkim’s oldest gompas, or Buddhist monasteries. As I walked up the steep hill toward its hilltop perch, I noticed some bamboo scaffolding hugging the three-story high walls. There were several men on the scaffolding, repairing the building. Apparently it had been damaged in the recent earthquake and there were cracks in the brick walls. Part of me just wanted to watch the workers repair the building, but after taking a couple pictures of them, I felt that my presence was making them uncomfortable.

Unfortunately for me and the reader, I was not able to take pictures inside the monastery. So now I have to go through the trouble of describing the complex religious imagery going on inside. And really, who am I fooling that I can understand all that I saw, let alone explain it all several months later? I’ll tell you this much: There were lots of colors, many artistic expressions of different incarnations of Buddha, shelves upon shelves of ancient hand-written scriptures. It was pretty empty at this time of day, but there was somebody there to show me around briefly. In one of the rooms, I could hear some musicians playing what I could assume to be some sort of devotional music. Basic, repetitive, but with an enchanting element to it. I wanted to stick around and just sit and enjoy the peacefulness or examine the ornate art that covered the walls, but I felt that my guide would get impatient with me or that I would simply be intruding by being present as some ceremony was about to take place. Outside was also quiet and empty, but had a courtyard lined with housing for the monks. The view was more than enviable.

As the sun started to dip below the nearby mountains, I felt that it would get cold soon, so I started walking the couple of km back to town. By the time I got back, I was feeling a tinge of nausea. I had been hungry, but as the nausea increased, it went away. I got to my room and got in bed, doing my best to sit up and enjoy the view that I was lucky to have. I developed a fever, and started to get freezing cold. Then the diarrhea started. I was sick all night and all through the next day. It was the sickest I had been since I Morocco, almost a year earlier. I was surprised that of all places, I had gotten sick in the seemingly clean Himalayan areas. This was far a far cry from the sweaty bacteria incubator of Kolkata, where I not only have never been sick, but threw caution to the wind by eating street food and drinking tap water. I couldn’t really understand what was happening to me, but I was just glad that I had my laptop and a few movies on it to keep my mind off my stomach. I spent a shameless amount of time the next day just watching movies between sprints to the bathroom bouts of alternating sweats and freezes. All I consumed all day were some packaged “tiffin” cakes and a bottle of Pepsi. Today, the thought of that meal makes me nauseous, but at the time, it was the only thing in town that I thought wouldn’t kill me. By the evening, it felt that the sickness was passing. A simple 24-hour bug. I was only disappointed that I hadn’t gotten to explore more of the surrounding villages or gone on a hike. All in all though, for how free I feel with what foods I eat and what waters I drink when traveling, the very occasional day of sickness is worth it to me. Too often I see people being so careful with what they eat, but they will get sick anyway. It is part of traveling, so it is almost unavoidable. I would later find out, too, that the sickness that I had was most likely caused by a parasite I caught from swimming in the Niger River in Mali, and not even from food poisoning or contaminated water in India. Still, as disappointing as it was to be sick, I think it came at a perfect time. Being sick in the mountains of Sikkim, I am sure, beats being sick in sweltering, crowded, Kolkata any day. I feel very fortunate for always having stayed healthy in that city.