In Gangtok on the morning of the 26th I walked down to the jeep stand in the rain before 7 to take a day trip to the Rumtek Monastery across the valley. When I got there, there was no jeep. I was told there might be one in an hour. I walked to the Mall as the rain stopped and a heavy fog settled in, obscuring almost everything. I walked up and down the almost deserted Mall as the fog lifted and returned to the jeep stand about 8. A jeep to Rumtek was there, but there were no other passengers. I decided to give up and headed back to my hotel for breakfast. I checked out of the hotel and headed down to the jeep stand again and found a jeep getting ready to go to Rumtek. I got a seat in the back row and we left about 10:30 on the pretty journey across the valley. We descended about 2000 feet into the valley to Gangtok's west and then climbed up about the same amount, reaching Rumtek, less than 15 miles from Gangtok, just before noon. The parking area in front was crowded with the vehicles of Indian tourists.
Armed guards were in place at the gate, as Rumtek belongs to the Kagyu, or Black Hat, school of Tibetan Buddhism, founded in 1110, and there is an often violent dispute over the rightful reincarnation of the Karmapa, its head. The 16th Karmapa died in 1981 and the Dalai Lama has identified a young successor who fled Tibet in 2000 and now resides near Dharamsala. His picture was all over the monastery, with slogans advocating that India allow him to come to Sikkim. India won't let him, supposedly to mollify the Chinese. The other candidate lives in Kalimpong, near Darjeeling in West Bengal.
After registering with the guards, I went through the gate and checked into a Tibetan-run hotel below the monastery before walking up to look around. The monastery was built in the 1960's on land donated by Sikkim's Chogyal after the Karmapa fled Tibet at about the same time as the Dalai Lama. It is said to be a copy of the main Kagyu Monastery, located in Tsurphu, northwest of Lhasa. I stopped for a plate of momos at a little monk-run cafe before going through the metal detectors, past the armed guards, and into the courtyard of the main hall. I looked around the courtyard and the hall. Inside the hall were costumes used for a cham dance which had taken place only a few days before. I wish I would have known about it, as I would have tried to see it. A young monk started a conversation and it turned out he was from Tawang, on the Tibet border in the northeast Indian state of Arunchal Pradesh. In fact, he gave me a book about Tawang to read overnight.
Behind the main hall, further up the slope of the hill, is the Nalanda Institute and in a room of another building the chorten holding the remains of the 16th Karmapa. In the room with the chorten I noticed that the chubby, older monk sitting watch got hungry and helped himself to one of the bags of potato chips on the altar. There were good views of Gangtok from the monastery.
From the monastery I walked a bit more than a mile to the old monastery, on the other side of the ridge and facing to the west, with good views to the west despite, and it some ways because of, the clouds. It dates from the 1700's, but is restored. Inside a monk was emptying goblets of water that had been lined up on an altar and then drying them with the shawl of his red robe. The door to a back room was open and I went inside to see depictions on the walls of the fearsome Mahakala, protector of the Black Hats. I took a few photographs before the monk asked me not to.
I walked back to the main monastery, where perhaps 80 monks, in groups of ten or so, were debating, with one part of the group posing questions that the other part has to answer. The monks posing the questions clap their hands one way if the answer is correct and another way if the answer is incorrect. I watched for a half hour or more and a couple of young English guys eventually came up. They had just arrived and checked into the hotel and asked me what was going on and, later, asked if I was interested in a North Sikkim trip. After spending several days in Gangtok without finding anyone interested in going to North Sikkim (which you can only do on a tour), I had given up on the idea, so I was glad at last to find others who wanted to go.
We had a Tibetan dinner at the hotel and afterward walked up to the prayer hall in the Nalanda Institute to watch the evening prayers, though we arrived only ten minutes or so before they finished. There were well over 100 monks in the hall, and a Bhutanese monk we talked with afterward told us there were 200 monks in total at the monastery. He also gave us each a package of cookies from the offerings on the altar. We walked back to the hotel on a clear night with the lights of Gangtok spread all over the ridge to the northeast.
I was up soon after 5 the next morning and could see snow covered mountains above Gangtok's ridge. Gangtok itself was hidden by a bank of clouds. The sun was just rising over the mountains. I was delayed by the views and reached the Nalanda Institute just as the morning prayers were ending and the monks streaming out. I wandered around for an hour or so. The clouds swirled in, obliterating all views, and then swirled out again. Clouds still filled the valley before Gangtok, obscuring the city. The monks were friendly, as were the armed guards on duty. I couldn't find the monk who had lent me the book on Tawang, and so left it with another monk.
About 8:30 the three of us left on a share jeep back to Gangtok, arriving a little more than an hour later. We spent an hour or so deciding which agency we wanted to use for our North Sikkim tour and then booked one to leave the next morning. It cost us each 8500 rupees, a little less than $160, for four days and three nights. I had been quoted $110 a day if I had wanted to do it on my own. I spent most of the rest of the day in an internet cafe, with a few walks along the crowded Mall on a beautiful sunny day. There was rain at night, though.
I was up before 5 the next morning and was treated to a view of the snow streaked and snow covered mountains to the west. I opened the door to my hotel balcony and watched until about 7. The snow covered ones came and went as the clouds moved. I could pick out the two peaks just to the left of Kanchenjunga and see the snow covered lower slopes of Kanchenjunga, but the peak remained behind clouds. Other snow covered peaks appeared above the forested ridge to the west, and I could see one to the north.
About 9 the next morning we left in our jeep for our trip to the north. Besides me and the two English guys, Fred and Andy, just out of university, we had a driver named Ram and an obligatory guide named Pem. We made a stop at an observation spot on the pass four miles or so above Gangtok, but by then the snow covered peaks were behind clouds. We continued on the bumpy road I had taken a few days before to Phodong, stopping at a couple of impressive waterfalls along the road and at the Phodong Monastery. The sun was out and the views were great. We had a lunch stop a little past Phodong about 12:30 or 1, with good views to the west, the Teesta River below but unseen at that point.
After lunch we headed north along the Teesta to North Sikkim's main city, Mangan, at about 4600 feet. The Teesta here is dammed and brown and sluggish. From Mangan we continued north high above the Teesta through beautiful forest another 15 miles to Chungthang at about 5500 feet in a deep gorge at the confluence of two rivers, the Teesta and the Lachung. On our way up we must have seen well over a hundred jeeps crammed full of Indian tourists coming down. A dam is being built just below the confluence and it looks like it could flood the little town. We crossed the Teesta at Chungthang and headed further north, or a little northwest, up the narrow canyon of the Teesta through a dense, beautiful forest, now primarily pines. The river rushed rapidly below us. We hit fog at about 8000 feet and reached our destination, the small town of Lachen, a little less than 9000 feet in elevation, about 5:30 or 6. In a drippy rain we checked into a small hotel and had dinner. There was no hot water for a bucket bath, but I slept well, going to bed soon after 9. There must have been 20 or so mufti-storied hotels in town, though most Indian tourists go only up the valley of the Lachung River, northeast of Chungthang.
I was up the next morning about 4:30 and walked up to the monastery 300 feet or so above town in a drippy rain. The night before I had discovered that I had left my little umbrella in an internet cafe in Gangtok. Despite the rain and clouds, there were views of the town and the surrounding mountains. Ten or fifteen monks, wearing dark cloaks over their red robes, were sitting and chanting in the small prayer hall. I walked around and listened for ten or fifteen minutes until they finished and filed out. I noticed one table with several animal skulls, those of goats and sheep, plus a couple that looked like they might be monkeys. The monks closed up the prayer hall and I waited out the now heavier rain before starting down in a light rain, which eventually stopped. On the way down I watched a woman milking a cow. She lit a big pot of smoky incense first and placed it near the cow. Then she untied a calf in a shed and let it feed for a short while to get the milk flowing. The calf fed vigorously as the cow urinated and defecated. A man, her husband I guess, pulled the calf away and tied it up nearby while the woman sat down to milk. The calf tried to get back to her mother all the while, and after the milking was finished was allowed to do so.
About 7:30, after breakfast, we got in the jeep and headed further north up the canyon to the little settlement of Thangu, about 20 miles away. The scenery along the way was beautiful, but rain fell. We passed several army camps and saw many almost vertical rivers, really crosses between rivers and waterfalls, falling into the Teesta down the steep slopes of the mountains. Trees began to thin out at about 11,000 feet. From Thangu at about 12,700 feet we continued a further mile or two up to the Chopta Valley at about 13,200 feet. The rain had stopped and we got out of the jeep to enjoy the views of the winding Chopta River in its flat valley below. A yak herder was chasing a herd of maybe 40 yaks further up the valley. We had a brief view of the serrated peaks to the east before clouds swirled back in. We walked back to Thangu through the Chopta Valley, passing bushes full of wet rhododendrons. The grass along the river was spongy in places and there were some steep descents among rocks. The fog swirled in and it became quite cold. We halted for tea in Thangu. The road continues up the Teesta to a beautiful lake on the border with Tibet that is its source, but foreigners aren't allowed to go. The drive back down to Lachen, from about 11:30 to 1, was in a constant rain.
After lunch we started down to Chungthang about 2 and the rain eventually stopped on the way. From Chungthang we headed up the valley of the Lachung River and the rain started up again as soon as we started up the valley. It is a little over 12 miles from Chungthang to Lachung and we hit a landslide about half way. After about an hour wait in a heavy rain, a bulldozer cleared the blockage and we were able to pass, though a rock, which sounded a lot bigger than it must have been, hit our roof on the way. We reached Lachung about 5 and checked into a small hotel as the heavy rain continued. We sat in our room until a late dinner at 9. I was able to take a bucket bath with hot water and went to bed about 10:30. The rain had stopped but we had been told at dinner that the road was blocked both below and above town.
I got up about 6 the next morning and it was again raining. After breakfast I took a walk around town. I was able to buy a small umbrella and it rained off and on. Lachung, bigger than Lachen, is at about 8600 feet elevation and is strung out along the river. I walked down to the rocky shore of the fast moving river. Elderly women were digging up sand and piling it in heaps to be borne away by men with baskets on their backs. The people in Lachen and Lachung are Bhutia for the most part and have their own system of self government, with supposedly little interference by the state. Steep cliffs and mountains line the valley sides, with the clouds and fog often obscuring them that day. Many waterfalls cascaded down. Along the river and in fact all over town grew beautiful bell shaped flowers of pink, red, purple and white, with little spots inside. I think they might be called primula, or at least I've read that primula grow there. I walked over a Bailey Bridge festooned with prayer flags that crosses the river and then up to a monastery about a mile away, a climb of about 400 feet past houses often with small patches of almost ripe wheat right next to them.
We had planned to go further north that day, but the road above town was closed by a landslide and the road clearing efforts were concentrated at the landslide below town, where we had been detained the day before. (When we got back to Gangtok we found out that a big storm had hit the whole area, causing landslides to block roads to Pelling and Yuksom.) The rain did stop for a bit and Pem led us on a walk up through dense, wet, but beautiful forest to a waterfall. Leaches were out, but none got through to my feet. From there we walked down and then to a viewpoint, arriving just as clouds covered everything. The rain started up again and we walked back for lunch.
After lunch, as the rain continued, we walked to a little house in town where tomba is served. In a small room with a fireplace a woman heaped fermented millet into four wooden mugs, sprinkled a few grains of rice on each as on offering, and placed them before us. We poured hot water on the millet, waited a few minutes, and then drank the white, alcoholic chang through a wooden straw. Chang has a very pleasing taste hot. I don't like it much cold. You drink the chang until it is done, then pour more hot water on the millet to create more chang. Usually, you can do this about five times before the alcohol in the millet is all washed out. The millet then is fed to farm animals. It was pleasant sitting in there with the fire and the tomba and the rain outside. The family pottered around. Besides the woman who served us and her mother, a little girl wandered around. An old man, said to be 85, lay on a bench covered with blankets and wearing dark sunglasses. About 5 I left for about an hour's walk in the rain around town. We had another late and not very good dinner about 9:30 and went to bed about 10 as the rain continued.
Pem got us up about 5 the next morning and within 15 minutes we were in the jeep on our way up to Yumthang, the landslide having been cleared the previous afternoon. Rain fell as we ascended a zigzagging road, with good and bad stretches, including the rocky area where the landslide had been, up to the Yumthang Valley, about six miles away. The rain was fairly light and we had good views despite the rain and clouds. At one spot a torrent of water ran over the road. We all got out as Ram drove through it and then we had to find our way across the water, hopping from stone to stone and trying not to get our shoes wet.
At about 10,500 feet the valley floor flattens a bit, or at least is much less steep. Here begins a Rhododendron Sanctuary, full of rhododendron trees, though the peak of the blossoming had passed. We drove for about eight miles, ascending to almost 12,000 feet, through a beautiful forest. Many of the pine trees had bright new green growth at the tips of their boughs. They seemed almost as if they were lit up. A little more than an hour after we had left Lachung we reached a row of stalls at the end of the forest with a big meadow beyond. The river cuts through the meadow. We walked into the meadow and down to the river. Despite the clouds the views of the surrounding jagged, ice-streaked mountains were pretty good, though the lovely green meadow was littered with the garbage of Indian tourists. We were given only 20 minutes to look around, though we took about twice that. There is a path through the forest and it would have been nice to be able to take that. Bushes of yellow flowers were prominent and some of the trees still had rhododendrons on them.
Masses of Indian tourists were arriving as we started down about 7. I'm glad we got there before them. We saw no other western tourists on our four day trip. At the spot where we had got out of the jeep to cross the water there was now a massive traffic jam. A jeep was stuck, with one back tire wedged between rocks. It blocked all traffic. Despite the light rain, it was fun to watch them try to free it, with several unsuccessful attempts before the stuck jeep finally was released. We waited as perhaps 20 or 30 jeeps crossed, with another one again getting stuck, though only briefly. We made it across and continued down, soon coming across a car stuck in a watercourse across the road. Our driver helped free it and we reached Lachung for breakfast before 8:30.
We departed Lachung a little after 9 and, despite the rain, had fairly good views of the spectacular scenery as we descended. There were long scars of many landslides down the steep slopes of the canyon walls on the opposite side of the river. We crossed the major landslide area on the road, now clear, and I could spot a huge boulder a little way up the mountainside that will eventually come down. We reached Chungthang about 10 and spent a half hour there as our driver refueled and we talked to some sightseeing monks on the bridge over the Teesta. We continued down along the Teesta, mostly in the rain, until our lunch stop soon after 1. The final stretch was often foggy and usually rainy, but we did have some views. Jeeps full of Indians were heading up. From the pass above Gangtok we could make out the city wreathed in clouds. We arrived in the city about 4:30 in the fog and rain.
Armed guards were in place at the gate, as Rumtek belongs to the Kagyu, or Black Hat, school of Tibetan Buddhism, founded in 1110, and there is an often violent dispute over the rightful reincarnation of the Karmapa, its head. The 16th Karmapa died in 1981 and the Dalai Lama has identified a young successor who fled Tibet in 2000 and now resides near Dharamsala. His picture was all over the monastery, with slogans advocating that India allow him to come to Sikkim. India won't let him, supposedly to mollify the Chinese. The other candidate lives in Kalimpong, near Darjeeling in West Bengal.
After registering with the guards, I went through the gate and checked into a Tibetan-run hotel below the monastery before walking up to look around. The monastery was built in the 1960's on land donated by Sikkim's Chogyal after the Karmapa fled Tibet at about the same time as the Dalai Lama. It is said to be a copy of the main Kagyu Monastery, located in Tsurphu, northwest of Lhasa. I stopped for a plate of momos at a little monk-run cafe before going through the metal detectors, past the armed guards, and into the courtyard of the main hall. I looked around the courtyard and the hall. Inside the hall were costumes used for a cham dance which had taken place only a few days before. I wish I would have known about it, as I would have tried to see it. A young monk started a conversation and it turned out he was from Tawang, on the Tibet border in the northeast Indian state of Arunchal Pradesh. In fact, he gave me a book about Tawang to read overnight.
Behind the main hall, further up the slope of the hill, is the Nalanda Institute and in a room of another building the chorten holding the remains of the 16th Karmapa. In the room with the chorten I noticed that the chubby, older monk sitting watch got hungry and helped himself to one of the bags of potato chips on the altar. There were good views of Gangtok from the monastery.
From the monastery I walked a bit more than a mile to the old monastery, on the other side of the ridge and facing to the west, with good views to the west despite, and it some ways because of, the clouds. It dates from the 1700's, but is restored. Inside a monk was emptying goblets of water that had been lined up on an altar and then drying them with the shawl of his red robe. The door to a back room was open and I went inside to see depictions on the walls of the fearsome Mahakala, protector of the Black Hats. I took a few photographs before the monk asked me not to.
I walked back to the main monastery, where perhaps 80 monks, in groups of ten or so, were debating, with one part of the group posing questions that the other part has to answer. The monks posing the questions clap their hands one way if the answer is correct and another way if the answer is incorrect. I watched for a half hour or more and a couple of young English guys eventually came up. They had just arrived and checked into the hotel and asked me what was going on and, later, asked if I was interested in a North Sikkim trip. After spending several days in Gangtok without finding anyone interested in going to North Sikkim (which you can only do on a tour), I had given up on the idea, so I was glad at last to find others who wanted to go.
We had a Tibetan dinner at the hotel and afterward walked up to the prayer hall in the Nalanda Institute to watch the evening prayers, though we arrived only ten minutes or so before they finished. There were well over 100 monks in the hall, and a Bhutanese monk we talked with afterward told us there were 200 monks in total at the monastery. He also gave us each a package of cookies from the offerings on the altar. We walked back to the hotel on a clear night with the lights of Gangtok spread all over the ridge to the northeast.
I was up soon after 5 the next morning and could see snow covered mountains above Gangtok's ridge. Gangtok itself was hidden by a bank of clouds. The sun was just rising over the mountains. I was delayed by the views and reached the Nalanda Institute just as the morning prayers were ending and the monks streaming out. I wandered around for an hour or so. The clouds swirled in, obliterating all views, and then swirled out again. Clouds still filled the valley before Gangtok, obscuring the city. The monks were friendly, as were the armed guards on duty. I couldn't find the monk who had lent me the book on Tawang, and so left it with another monk.
About 8:30 the three of us left on a share jeep back to Gangtok, arriving a little more than an hour later. We spent an hour or so deciding which agency we wanted to use for our North Sikkim tour and then booked one to leave the next morning. It cost us each 8500 rupees, a little less than $160, for four days and three nights. I had been quoted $110 a day if I had wanted to do it on my own. I spent most of the rest of the day in an internet cafe, with a few walks along the crowded Mall on a beautiful sunny day. There was rain at night, though.
I was up before 5 the next morning and was treated to a view of the snow streaked and snow covered mountains to the west. I opened the door to my hotel balcony and watched until about 7. The snow covered ones came and went as the clouds moved. I could pick out the two peaks just to the left of Kanchenjunga and see the snow covered lower slopes of Kanchenjunga, but the peak remained behind clouds. Other snow covered peaks appeared above the forested ridge to the west, and I could see one to the north.
About 9 the next morning we left in our jeep for our trip to the north. Besides me and the two English guys, Fred and Andy, just out of university, we had a driver named Ram and an obligatory guide named Pem. We made a stop at an observation spot on the pass four miles or so above Gangtok, but by then the snow covered peaks were behind clouds. We continued on the bumpy road I had taken a few days before to Phodong, stopping at a couple of impressive waterfalls along the road and at the Phodong Monastery. The sun was out and the views were great. We had a lunch stop a little past Phodong about 12:30 or 1, with good views to the west, the Teesta River below but unseen at that point.
After lunch we headed north along the Teesta to North Sikkim's main city, Mangan, at about 4600 feet. The Teesta here is dammed and brown and sluggish. From Mangan we continued north high above the Teesta through beautiful forest another 15 miles to Chungthang at about 5500 feet in a deep gorge at the confluence of two rivers, the Teesta and the Lachung. On our way up we must have seen well over a hundred jeeps crammed full of Indian tourists coming down. A dam is being built just below the confluence and it looks like it could flood the little town. We crossed the Teesta at Chungthang and headed further north, or a little northwest, up the narrow canyon of the Teesta through a dense, beautiful forest, now primarily pines. The river rushed rapidly below us. We hit fog at about 8000 feet and reached our destination, the small town of Lachen, a little less than 9000 feet in elevation, about 5:30 or 6. In a drippy rain we checked into a small hotel and had dinner. There was no hot water for a bucket bath, but I slept well, going to bed soon after 9. There must have been 20 or so mufti-storied hotels in town, though most Indian tourists go only up the valley of the Lachung River, northeast of Chungthang.
I was up the next morning about 4:30 and walked up to the monastery 300 feet or so above town in a drippy rain. The night before I had discovered that I had left my little umbrella in an internet cafe in Gangtok. Despite the rain and clouds, there were views of the town and the surrounding mountains. Ten or fifteen monks, wearing dark cloaks over their red robes, were sitting and chanting in the small prayer hall. I walked around and listened for ten or fifteen minutes until they finished and filed out. I noticed one table with several animal skulls, those of goats and sheep, plus a couple that looked like they might be monkeys. The monks closed up the prayer hall and I waited out the now heavier rain before starting down in a light rain, which eventually stopped. On the way down I watched a woman milking a cow. She lit a big pot of smoky incense first and placed it near the cow. Then she untied a calf in a shed and let it feed for a short while to get the milk flowing. The calf fed vigorously as the cow urinated and defecated. A man, her husband I guess, pulled the calf away and tied it up nearby while the woman sat down to milk. The calf tried to get back to her mother all the while, and after the milking was finished was allowed to do so.
About 7:30, after breakfast, we got in the jeep and headed further north up the canyon to the little settlement of Thangu, about 20 miles away. The scenery along the way was beautiful, but rain fell. We passed several army camps and saw many almost vertical rivers, really crosses between rivers and waterfalls, falling into the Teesta down the steep slopes of the mountains. Trees began to thin out at about 11,000 feet. From Thangu at about 12,700 feet we continued a further mile or two up to the Chopta Valley at about 13,200 feet. The rain had stopped and we got out of the jeep to enjoy the views of the winding Chopta River in its flat valley below. A yak herder was chasing a herd of maybe 40 yaks further up the valley. We had a brief view of the serrated peaks to the east before clouds swirled back in. We walked back to Thangu through the Chopta Valley, passing bushes full of wet rhododendrons. The grass along the river was spongy in places and there were some steep descents among rocks. The fog swirled in and it became quite cold. We halted for tea in Thangu. The road continues up the Teesta to a beautiful lake on the border with Tibet that is its source, but foreigners aren't allowed to go. The drive back down to Lachen, from about 11:30 to 1, was in a constant rain.
After lunch we started down to Chungthang about 2 and the rain eventually stopped on the way. From Chungthang we headed up the valley of the Lachung River and the rain started up again as soon as we started up the valley. It is a little over 12 miles from Chungthang to Lachung and we hit a landslide about half way. After about an hour wait in a heavy rain, a bulldozer cleared the blockage and we were able to pass, though a rock, which sounded a lot bigger than it must have been, hit our roof on the way. We reached Lachung about 5 and checked into a small hotel as the heavy rain continued. We sat in our room until a late dinner at 9. I was able to take a bucket bath with hot water and went to bed about 10:30. The rain had stopped but we had been told at dinner that the road was blocked both below and above town.
I got up about 6 the next morning and it was again raining. After breakfast I took a walk around town. I was able to buy a small umbrella and it rained off and on. Lachung, bigger than Lachen, is at about 8600 feet elevation and is strung out along the river. I walked down to the rocky shore of the fast moving river. Elderly women were digging up sand and piling it in heaps to be borne away by men with baskets on their backs. The people in Lachen and Lachung are Bhutia for the most part and have their own system of self government, with supposedly little interference by the state. Steep cliffs and mountains line the valley sides, with the clouds and fog often obscuring them that day. Many waterfalls cascaded down. Along the river and in fact all over town grew beautiful bell shaped flowers of pink, red, purple and white, with little spots inside. I think they might be called primula, or at least I've read that primula grow there. I walked over a Bailey Bridge festooned with prayer flags that crosses the river and then up to a monastery about a mile away, a climb of about 400 feet past houses often with small patches of almost ripe wheat right next to them.
We had planned to go further north that day, but the road above town was closed by a landslide and the road clearing efforts were concentrated at the landslide below town, where we had been detained the day before. (When we got back to Gangtok we found out that a big storm had hit the whole area, causing landslides to block roads to Pelling and Yuksom.) The rain did stop for a bit and Pem led us on a walk up through dense, wet, but beautiful forest to a waterfall. Leaches were out, but none got through to my feet. From there we walked down and then to a viewpoint, arriving just as clouds covered everything. The rain started up again and we walked back for lunch.
After lunch, as the rain continued, we walked to a little house in town where tomba is served. In a small room with a fireplace a woman heaped fermented millet into four wooden mugs, sprinkled a few grains of rice on each as on offering, and placed them before us. We poured hot water on the millet, waited a few minutes, and then drank the white, alcoholic chang through a wooden straw. Chang has a very pleasing taste hot. I don't like it much cold. You drink the chang until it is done, then pour more hot water on the millet to create more chang. Usually, you can do this about five times before the alcohol in the millet is all washed out. The millet then is fed to farm animals. It was pleasant sitting in there with the fire and the tomba and the rain outside. The family pottered around. Besides the woman who served us and her mother, a little girl wandered around. An old man, said to be 85, lay on a bench covered with blankets and wearing dark sunglasses. About 5 I left for about an hour's walk in the rain around town. We had another late and not very good dinner about 9:30 and went to bed about 10 as the rain continued.
Pem got us up about 5 the next morning and within 15 minutes we were in the jeep on our way up to Yumthang, the landslide having been cleared the previous afternoon. Rain fell as we ascended a zigzagging road, with good and bad stretches, including the rocky area where the landslide had been, up to the Yumthang Valley, about six miles away. The rain was fairly light and we had good views despite the rain and clouds. At one spot a torrent of water ran over the road. We all got out as Ram drove through it and then we had to find our way across the water, hopping from stone to stone and trying not to get our shoes wet.
At about 10,500 feet the valley floor flattens a bit, or at least is much less steep. Here begins a Rhododendron Sanctuary, full of rhododendron trees, though the peak of the blossoming had passed. We drove for about eight miles, ascending to almost 12,000 feet, through a beautiful forest. Many of the pine trees had bright new green growth at the tips of their boughs. They seemed almost as if they were lit up. A little more than an hour after we had left Lachung we reached a row of stalls at the end of the forest with a big meadow beyond. The river cuts through the meadow. We walked into the meadow and down to the river. Despite the clouds the views of the surrounding jagged, ice-streaked mountains were pretty good, though the lovely green meadow was littered with the garbage of Indian tourists. We were given only 20 minutes to look around, though we took about twice that. There is a path through the forest and it would have been nice to be able to take that. Bushes of yellow flowers were prominent and some of the trees still had rhododendrons on them.
Masses of Indian tourists were arriving as we started down about 7. I'm glad we got there before them. We saw no other western tourists on our four day trip. At the spot where we had got out of the jeep to cross the water there was now a massive traffic jam. A jeep was stuck, with one back tire wedged between rocks. It blocked all traffic. Despite the light rain, it was fun to watch them try to free it, with several unsuccessful attempts before the stuck jeep finally was released. We waited as perhaps 20 or 30 jeeps crossed, with another one again getting stuck, though only briefly. We made it across and continued down, soon coming across a car stuck in a watercourse across the road. Our driver helped free it and we reached Lachung for breakfast before 8:30.
We departed Lachung a little after 9 and, despite the rain, had fairly good views of the spectacular scenery as we descended. There were long scars of many landslides down the steep slopes of the canyon walls on the opposite side of the river. We crossed the major landslide area on the road, now clear, and I could spot a huge boulder a little way up the mountainside that will eventually come down. We reached Chungthang about 10 and spent a half hour there as our driver refueled and we talked to some sightseeing monks on the bridge over the Teesta. We continued down along the Teesta, mostly in the rain, until our lunch stop soon after 1. The final stretch was often foggy and usually rainy, but we did have some views. Jeeps full of Indians were heading up. From the pass above Gangtok we could make out the city wreathed in clouds. We arrived in the city about 4:30 in the fog and rain.
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