Sikkim Trip

13 -14 Oct 2006


I reached the railway station exactly two hours before the departure of the train. After much waiting and confusion I met Deepak and we reached the platform. Finally we climbed in the train at 13:30 hrs.

The train left the platform exactly at 14:00 hrs. We enter the train and open our digicam-manuals. Both of us had bought cameras a week before and we needed much help with these.

By the time we reached half way I had read my manual at least 3 times. Now I knew I could not read it more. Deepak was still engrossed with his copy. I decided to move around but did not find any suitable company.

People in our cabin included a very fat gentleman who was listening to some devotional music and sleeping at the same time. He kept swining in his sleep from one side to another. It was pretty funny soome times.

There were a mother and her son travelling with us. The son was in his mid-twenties. I dare not guess the age of the mother. Later on me and Deepak decided on a game of cards. Later on that guy also joined us. We kept playing till early morning and slept around three.

We continued with the game of cards and then around 12 noon our halt came for New JalPaiGuri station. We had hoped to reach Gangtok within 4-5 hours max since the distance between the two towns was around 120 kms. Before we could look for a taxi Deepak happened to spot a tourist agent in front of the railways station. It seemed ver shady I asked Deepak not to go, however Deepak insisted that we at least get a rough idea about the rates, I said ok and I went to call Akshat who was in Calcutta at the time and was to join us at Gangtok. I came back at the travel agent and he quoted us a very high sume of money for entire trip, needless to say the sum was so high that we could not afford it and had to refuse the offer.

Mid way crisis

Meanwhile the main zipper of Deepak's bag gave in and we had a luggage problem at our hands. We found a temporary soultion for that using a few safety pins. Meanwhile I looked for a taxi and found a shared cab. Deepak hesitated but I(my mistake) made him take it.
I asked the driver of the taxi if he had a spare tire. Some other bystanders laughed. I repeated my question and the Vijay our driver said that he did keep one.

Well my questioning did prove to be well found and midway, one of the the tyres developed a puncture and needed to be changed. While changing the tire Vijay ripped his pants. We stopped at a local dhaba to eat and the view was amzing at the place and a small drizzle started which soon stopped.


The view from the place where we had lunch
We had lunch and started for Gangtok. The next stop was a some village near Darjeeling where our driver had to sup. We got down and took a few pics. All in all we reached gangtok in about seven hours, after which we were tired as hell.
In the cab we met two guys from calcutta who had an uncle who owned a motel in gangtok. We decided to stick with them and board the lodgings. They helped us get a room, which was very dingy but it was very late and we decided to stick on.
Akshat at the time was on-board his flight to Baghdogra. He reached around 11:45 in night and after much confusion was able to locate our motel. Meanwhile Deepak had luckily negotiated for a very profitable deal with the hotel owner for our entire trip for North Sikkim.

Plan was to go to La-Chen (day 1) and GuruDongmar(day 2) -> La-Chung (Day 2), Point Zero -> (2nd night and day 3) Rabum (overnight)-> Gangtok (day 4).

However this gave us a very tight schedule in Gangtok and I wished to see all the main monastries around Gangtok. The first day had been hectic and the fellowship needed rest.