Travelling is my passion, and especially hills and mountains interest me a lot.
Last year I travelled to Sikkim. I along with two of my friends Suman and Amar decided to travel to Sikkim. While coming back we planned to attend one of our friend’s marriage at Silliguri West Bengal.
We planned to travel by air till Kolkata ,travel by train till Silliguri and finally travel by local transport to Gangtok. All of us were regular traveler who travelled through the Niligiris beautiful hills Munar, Waynard , Kochin, Kodaikanal, Ooty and lot of other places together as a part of larger group in our previous organization.
What a day as I am going to reveal when we reached to Airport sitting on the taxi. We were on time for check-in and reached the aircraft on time. We were very sure about our departure time until we heard the last announcement that the Aero Show was going on and we might have to wait for a couple of hours in the flight. A couple of hours we kept on buying sandwitch, cracking jokes. I was particularly interested in playing game on my newly bought i-Pod Touch and competing with the Suman for better score.Two guys behind us were utilizing those mundane hours for discussing aerodynamics. The discussion was so technical and boring in content that we were about to faint until we heard the life saving announcement that the flight was ready to take off.
Finally, we reached to Kolakata and then by train to Silliguri. It was 8 PM and we were looking for the transport to Gangtok. We landed up in an office where we got the information for any subsequent travel from Gangtok and also that we need to book in Advance for the trip.We booked for our trip to Yumthang valley from Gangtok. Then we took a jeep and travelled till Gangatok in approximately 5 hours. It was chilling cold in the night in the mid of February.We managed to get a hotel without booking in advance. We reached Gangtok before dawn. We took a nap in the morning after settling down in the hotel. Half asleep,we decided to visit viewpoints and monasteries nearby Gangtok in a chilling cold day. The serene and saluburious hills around Gangatok scores over any other man made inducement for joy and peace. The monasteries at hills provide an ideal place for meditation.
We started our most coveted dream of watching the Peaks of the Himalyas from next day. We got a big 10 seater jeep. We had booked 4 seats for 3 of us for a comfortable journey ahead. Our co-passengers were mostly newly married couples. The driver was a short, thin guy wearing big goggles. We came to know later he was very stubborn and a big fan of Akon's music. While we were busy watching the most beautiful scenery on the earth, he was busy changing the tracks of Akon's music album.
Enchanted by the serene beauty of the Himalayas valley and enticed by the free flowing green river by the side of the road, we decided to stop and make that moment ours by taking a couple of snaps. The green running water produced the soothing sound which could do wonders to the peace seeking souls. Enticed and appalled with the beauty, the time has really stopped there lost in the beauty of valley in the background music of Akon with title "You are beautiful".
We were crossing one peak after another yet far from the high peaks of the Himalayas. This is the first thing we noticed when compared with Nilgiris peaks. The Himalays peaks seem never ending target hills after hills. Finally, we witnessed the lush green trees laden with the Ice. As we reached near the Yumthang, we saw the thick ice sheets covering the protecting the peaks of mountain. The road was the spectator of human intervention to nature showing us circles and spirals with one side as high and other side the steep valley.
By the evening we reached the Lachung where we were supposed to camp in the night.It was one of the coldest night of my life accentuated by the winds.We managed to get some woods and prepared for bonfire.We also went for a walk for about 1 km in the night and glad to discover that there was a military camp nearby. We bought playing card from a military shop. While walking back, we stopped at a small shop where we joined a group of local people drinking in Dhaba. We also drank and enjoyed the blend of Whisky with couple of local anecdotes near the fire. Amazing drink at Hut Experience!!! Finally we returned to bed.
Day 2 we started for our last destination which was hardly 30 km away Yumthang valley.The valley was fully covered with ice intermittenly filled with beautiful Primula flowers shining in the sunlight. We stopped at the Indian Army Post ,took some coffee and proceeded for a small trekking over the ice and water. We were playing with the Ice balls beating and jumping over the ice. It was amazing.
All good things must come to an end. We started the return trip for Gangtok the same day. We had planned to attend my friends marriage next day morning. Unaware of the next coming fun,we thought we would reach the Gangtok in the evening and can leave for Silliguri the same night. The fun began when we were about to reach Gangatok .We were almost 40km away from Gangtok. By then we were familiar with our co-passengers sharing some of our interests with them. Then suddenly we heard some noise and the engine stopped in the midle of a jungle where we heard the noise of some wild animals. Some claimed its of bison while others feared noise of a tiger from far. Our driver was trying hard for correcting the fault in the Engine.Then we started asking help from other vehicles which we could see in that lonely place.We spent couple of hours there. Some vehicles came for our rescue but Alas! they could not help us. 3 of us were the most worried in the group as we had committed to attend out friends marriage. Finally we got network in one of the BSNL Phone we called our trip manager to send us a backup vehicle.We got it but it delayed our time to reach the Gangatok by almost 4 hours. We reached Gangatok at 11PM discovering that no vehicle was ready to go at this odd hour. And marriage was supposed to start at 10 AM in the morning. Ultimately we found a policeman coming for our rescue at the middle of MG Road in the Gangatok. He called several numbers from his phonebook until we found one jeep driver coming for our rescue. We were totally impressed by his seer honest work until we saw him taking a 500 Rs note while we were about to sit on the jeep. We left from Gangtok at 12 AM thinking that 5 hrs would be enough to reach the Silliguri town. When we were on highway we noticed that driver was drivign at 20km/hr speed. We asked hime so many times to drive fast but he continued to drive at 20km/hr. We were totally shocked to find out that he had not taken food for last 24 hrs and now he was feeling hungry in the middle of the night in the middle of a highway.Suddenly he started going in the streets taking left and right turns from the highway.You will not believe that he became so mad that he even tried asking for food at one house at 2 AM. We were totally afraid that we might we thought as thieves or decoits. We fought with him but by looking at his condition we were totally confused what to do. So finally we left everything to him as we had no other option then to fight which we avoided. Finally he got one shop open on the higway at 4AM and we contined a smoothe journey onwards at the speed of 30km/hrs. We took almost 8hrs for a normal 5 hours trips.
