Category: Asia

Sikkim has terrain as difficult to traverse as almost anywhere in the populated world: snowy passes and wild jungle-covered slopes plunging down to fast -flowing rivers.  Imagine it in the 17th C.  Then imagine the scene played out in a remote valley when one influential Buddhist Lama and his small retinue completely by coincidence run into another respected teacher from the same school in Tibet!   They probably went off in different directions, in different years, and here they are in Yuksom.  Then who should appear from the only place that neither of them has been in the last few months, but another bearded lama from Tibet!  This, they all agree, is a very special sign indeed.  The local chieftain is happy to host and flatter his unlikely guests as they confer and chant and beat drums into the night. Finally all is clear: there will be a Buddhist Kingdom, the chieftain will be the Chogyal, the first ruler, and it’s capital will be Yuksom.

Yuksom today probably looks as unlikely a capital for a kingdom as it did in 1642.  It’s a beautiful town, just not very imperial.  The little traffic that there is on it’s one street has to make way for the dzo (yak/cattle hyrbids).  Each of the three wise lamas established a monastery there, and over the course of several days in Yuksom we visit all of them.  There isn’t all that much to do, which is one of the pleasures of the place.  The town is the starting point for Sikkim’s best-known trek – hence the pack-dzos – but we are far less ambitious than that.  The closest we get to mountaineering is the hike up to Dubdi Gompa, one of the three monasteries. It’s a delightful climb up through orchid-draped forest, and once again, as in Pemayangtse (last blog), a friendly local dog – Buddy II – volunteers as our guide.  The main hall is locked when we arrive, but a monk calls the attendant on his cell phone and he lets us in.  Afterward we chat on a bench in the sun with the monk, who points out  a hill where the original monastary was.   It moved down here, the story goes, because of harassment by Yetis.

Gompa #2 is on a hill at the top of Yuksom’s main street, and #3 is a little further out of town at the spot where the first Chogyal’s coronation took place.  As per usual a new dog – Buddy III – shows us the way there.  We pass the small lake – draped with prayer flags – where the water for the ceremony was drawn from.  The “throne” itself – a stone bench – is outdoors under a massive cryptomeria pine.  With forests of prayer flags, moss-covered “mani” stones, some deserted temple buildings and Buddy III giving us “walkies”, it’s a wonderful afternoon.

It has turned rainy in Yuksom, which makes it easier to leave.  The only jeep out of here departs at 6:00 a.m. and follows a tortuous route through Tashiding and Legship to Jorethang.  Jorethang is on Sikkim’s southern border at only 600m and after the highlands it feels almost sultry.  It’s a brief blast, however, as we climb into the next jeep going to Darjeeling.  The distance is only 21 km, but it’s the back-door route to India’s best-known hill station, and the journey takes 2 1/2 hours and climbs 1700m.

The first impression of Darjeeling is disappointing: a clogged, cachophonic street where we are dropped, grotty, smelly butcher shops and a grey, soupy cloud enveloping everything.  There is no way to make sense of Darjeeling from a map, since “up” and “down” are the important directions, but with a vague lead we have  of a recommended hotel near the “T.V. Tower”, we head off “up” into the fog, and eventually stumble across the Tranquility.  For the first time this trip we need to wear everything we own, and Katheryn even puts socks on her hands.  Sometimes the cloud parts and reveals glimpses of the valley and Jorethang far below, but mostly it is like being on a set of Jack the Ripper.

Virtually every business in Darjeeling pronounces itself as part of Gorkhaland.  We are officially in W. Bengal, the capital being Calcutta, but that it as foreign to here to Ethiopia, and everybody knows it.  There is a lot of antagonism to a perceived Bengali imperiousness, and for thirty years there has been a simmering conflict to form a separate state.  Things were more violent in the ’80’s and ’90’s, but even now there are two protest marches that we come across, and the ransacking of a separatist’s house that could possibly ignite  strikes and stone throwing.

Over the course of a few days in Darjeeling we make the acquaintance of A.K. Lama, the head monk at Bhutia Busty Monastery, and he directs us to the Tibet Relief Center, where crafts and rugs are hand-made.  But apart from that and fading snatches of the once-glorious British Raj there isn’t much to keep us here and we head down the mountain to Kalimpong.  It is there we come across the best British anachronism yet: the Himalayan Hotel.

Kalimpong sits on the easiest access route between Tibet and India.  In 1904 the British wanted to consolidate their control over this strategic territory, loosely controlled by Tibet, so they sent Col. Francis Younghusband and a small band of soldiers to the border to instigate an “incident” which would give them the excuse to retaliate and annex it.  The problem that after flopping around in vain for some time and finding no opposition, Younghusband set off up the road to Lhasa.  His firepower routed Tibetan horse troops at Xigatse, and he created an international incident by matching into Lhasa unopposed. The translator on that adventure was David McDonald, who built himself a bungalow in Kalimpong which became The Himalayan.  Over the year this fusty sitting room of stone and Himalayan oak has hosted the great mountaineering expeditions of Mallory and Irwin, Hillary and Tenzin, and an almanac of personalities and explorers.   Add to that  Kebe and Fast, who speak in studied snooty tones and drink G&Ts below the signed photo of Alexandra David-Neel.

You know where to find more great photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/croquet

And be sure nor to miss Katheryn’s latest video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5fM9aeQoq8

The border crossing into India is another of those little outposts which you feel represents banishment for the official working there.  Mr. L.A. Wadhia fusses irritably with the

Katheryn crossing the border

“wrong”  answers on our forms (Port of Disembarkation?; flight number?):  he has the inner numbness of someone who has spent far too long taking what he knows to be ridiculous, seriously.

The stamp is officiously given,  and we are ushered by a hovering tout from there into a jeep (actually the Indian version: the Tata Sumo) going to the town of Siligiri, and then directly into another to Gangtok, Sikkim.  The good thing about traveling by jeep is that they fill up at the departure point, and don’t (usually) stop for additional riders until the destination.  The bad thing is the passengers are squeezed in tight, and except for the front seat have a limited view of the scenery.  We are, unfortunately, right in the back, and the scenery, as we ascend the valley of the Testa River, is amazing.

Sikkim is an Indian state tucked up between Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan – how  can you go wrong with that?  With China demanding expensive and restrictive conditions on travel to Tibet, and Bhutan imposing a $200/day/person fee on a visit there, Sikkim appears to be our only oppurtunity to explore the area.  A special permit is required to enter Sikkim, but we obtain that relatively hassle-free at the border at Rangpo, while our jeep waits.  From there the road slithers dramatically onward and upward.  Rays of sun dice through a lush jungle of tree ferns, giant bamboo and flowering broad-leaves, and the river is frothing white far below.  Gangtok should really be approached by horse-caravan slowly ascending the ancient stone-paved trade route; we are 100 years too late for that.  The constant low-gear jostling to overtake crawling diesel lorries around dusty washed-out hair-pin corners may diminish the romance, but the trip from Siligiri now only takes five hours.

One hundred years ago Sikkim was an independent Buddhist kingdom ruled by a dynasty called the Chogyals.  The British had duplicitously lopped off territory including Darjeeling from their southern flank, but the Chogyals held their own against pressure from China, and the Raj, until Indira Gandhi’s India banished them in 1975 on the instigation of the now-majority Hindu population.  We are sitting in the garden of a hill-top monastery while a monk tells us this history. He is ethnically a Bhutia, who along with the Lepchas migrated from Tibet and brought Buddhism with them.  There still is, he says, a lot of resentment against India over the banishment of the Chogyal, who is now in Bhutan, and tension between the Bhuddist and Hindu populations occassionally flares into violence.  Like many of the “Tibetans” we talk to, he makes a face when we ask if he has travelled in the rest of India, and waves his hand as if getting rid of a bad smell.

And it really feels – especially with the permit formalities at the border – that we are in a different country.  Gangtok, we concur, is the most pleasant Indian state capital that we know.  For one thing it is spread along a steep ridge at 1700 m, and from our balcony we have a clear view of the presence that dominates this entire state: Khangchendzonga, at 8,208 m the third highest mountain in the world.  Gangtok also has that most blessed and rare feature in a country over-run with vehicles and bullied by drivers with an incessant hand on the horn – a long pedestrian mall at the center of town.  But even better, the people are without exception sophisticated, kind, friendly and charming, and it doesn’t take long before we are in love.  Many Bengali tourists come up here from the plains for a cool-weather vacation, and where there are Bengali tourists there is great food.  Every masala dosa, every hot tandori roti taken with a view out across the valley – after the basic fare in Nepal – is a rapture.  It takes four days before Katheryn is able to walk the steep streets without wincing from her back injury, but we are happy to just rest up here after what seems like a lot of hard travel.

The view is great from Gangtok, but the place to go for the real vista is Pelling, 110 km away, which means 6 hours by jeep.  One again it’s a mad spaghetti road through jungle and mountain, but the highlight has to be the rest-stop in Ravangla, where a group of kids run after us shouting “Auntie, Uncle, wait!”, and press bouquets of marigolds on us.

We get a room in Pelling where we don’t even have to roll out of bed for a sensational view.  The morning coffee on the balcony is perhaps the most spectacular we have ever had.  As if that wasn’t enough, a 1.5 km stroll away is Pemayangtse Gompa, one of Sikkim’s oldest monasteries, built in 1705.  The “Perfect Sublime Lotus” Gompa is probably as close as we will come to Tibet for now, so Marguerite, this one is for you.  There is no photography allowed inside the main gompa, but the walls are covered with 300-year-old paintings of deities, gurus and demons from the Nyingmapa branch of Tibetan Buddhism, and energetically-depicted statues of  Buddha and the Rimpoches are behind glass at the back.   The wooden floors are worn smooth under our bare feet and the smell of butter lamps and incense permeate the timbers.  By the thin light of the deeply-recessed windows we climb a creaky staircase to the upper level, where a deep drum interspersed clashing cymbals has been playing since we entered.  The drummer is in a room behind a curtain, so we sit on a ledge in an adjoining room and feel the vibrations pulse through the walls, the floor and ourselves.

The second capital of the Chogyals is now just a ruin that can be seen on the spur of a hill just below the monastery, and we make friends with a pretty dog in the grounds who seems to want to guide us there.  Much of the route is through a forest reserve, where massive climbing ferns 10 feet high cascade down to the path.  Only thick stone walls remain from the old capital, but with soaring views in all directions including, of course, Khanchangdzonga you understand why they built here.

All of India is on one time zone, and as far east as we are it gets dark early, around five o’clock.  And at 2100 m, in November, when it gets dark it gets cool.  We get dressed up for the evening in long johns and down jackets, and head out to our new-found favorite place for a tongba.  “Tongba” is a large pile of fermented millet served in a wooden tankard.  Hot water is poured on top, and the milky, slightly sour potion is sipped through a bamboo straw.  Tongba is found where ever Tibetans are throughout the Himalaya and it warms, rehydrates and gives a mild alcoholic buzz.  We find a delightful Tonga spot in Pelling, called the “Step Down” restaurant.  A dark stairway descends off the road into a room made out of rough planks with three rickety tables.  The only window has no glass, just a curtain of aging cloth.  The kitchen fills with locals and laughter and warm light, and our matron brings us the big wooden tankards with, possibly, the best tongba we have had yet.  The power fails and candles come out and I’ll happily take the Step Down any day.

For all of the latest videos, go to youtube and search for kebeandfast to see all the choices.

There are lots more great photos – and this time I’m not joking – by going to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/croquet