June 1-10, 2013: Namchi, Kalimpong, Lava, and back to Darjeeling

The sky was cloudy in Gangtok on the morning of the 1st, through there was no rain.  I couldn't see the valley below or the hills beyond.  Shortly before 11 I left on a share jeep headed to Namchi, about 50 miles to the southwest, in South Sikkim.  We drove down the main highway to Singtam, a drop of almost 4000 feet with good views of the river that comes down from the valley west of Gangtok.  The journey was much more pleasant than the hot, dusty trip I had taken to Gangtok about ten days earlier.  There was less traffic and it was much cooler, with some rain on the way.  From Singtam we left the main highway, crossed the Teesta and traveled northwest about half way on the road I had taken from Ravangla.  Reaching the village of Turku at about 4000 feet, we turned off on another road that headed generally southwest through beautiful green mountains.  The sky was full of clouds, but the views were fine.  At about 5500 feet we reached a massive tea estate and climbed up through it until about 6500 feet.  We reached over 7000 feet and the village of Damthang before heading south to Namchi.  On the way down to Namchi, at about 5000 feet elevation, I had good views of it on its saddle with Solophuk Hill with a giant statue of Shiva further south.

It took about three hours to get to Namchi, where I checked into a hotel on its modern pedestrian mall, maybe two or three city blocks long.  The mall contains two big trees, one with an small aquarium built around it.  To the north you can look up and see another giant statue, this one of the Guru Rimpoche, high above the town  After lunch I took a taxi up to the Shiva Complex to the south, a little over three miles from the city center and about 800 feet higher.  Then sun was out and the views were great in all directions.  I could see the town below and the giant statue of Guru Rimpoche, in Sikkim called Samdruptse, high above the town to the north.  Another hill, called Tendong, sacred to Lepchas, is just behind the hill with Samdruptse on it.  The sky was relatively clear and the views to the west, south, and east were also excellent.  You could see for miles, including up the Rangit Valley.  I could see the road I had taken up the Rangit from Jorethang towards Pelling on my first day in Sikkim three weeks earlier. 

The Shiva Complex was finished in 2011 and, besides a statue of Shiva (which I read, in different accounts, is either 87 or 110 feet high), has replicas of the Hindu temples at Badrinath, Dwarka, Puri and Rameswaram.  It was all pretty cheesy, not to mention slippery on the polished, wet granite surfaces where you aren't allowed to wear shoes.  But the views were great.  I was on the top for about an hour and a half, from about 3 to 4:30, and then walked back to town, with great views along the way.  Looking up the Rangit Valley, I could make out Geyzing on the third ridge to the west of the river,  Some snow streaked peaks appeared far to the north.  I got back to the mall and my hotel just before dark.

The next morning was cloudy and before 9 I took a taxi up to the Samdruptse statue, more than 2000 feet above town and over four miles by road.  I spent about three hours up there looking around and enjoying the views, including of Namchi and the Shiva statue far below, when the clouds allowed.  It was much cloudier than the previous afternoon.  The statue of Samdruptse, or the Guru Rimpoche, the monk who introduced Buddhism to Tibet and much of the Himalayas in the 8th century, is either 135 or 149 feet high and predates the Shiva statue.  It was dedicated by the Dalai Lama, in the late '90's I think.  In the prayer hall under the statue painters were retouching the Buddhist paintings on the ceilings.  In another area there was a series of old photographs of Sikkim from the 1800's and even the 1960's that were quite interesting.   Eventually, though, the place was full of noisy Indians.

I walked back to Namchi, first along the road through forest with, eventually, hazy views to the west.  More than halfway down I took a dirt road to Ngadak Monastery.  A huge new prayer hall is being built and it was interesting to see it under construction, with painters at work and partly finished statues lying on the prayer hall floor.  Other prayer halls are on the site.  In front of one of the halls women were boiling a big pot of hardened butter for the butter lamps.  Nearby is a dzong, a sort of fortress, made of stone and dating from 1717.  It has carved wooden doors, windows and lintels, some with faded paint.  It apparently was converted into a monastery hall in the 19th century.  Unfortunately, it is locked up, but I did peer into it through a doorway.  About 3:30 I started down the path towards town, passing chortens made of rock and many prayer flags.  The path was slippery in places and eventually became a series of stairs through town that led right down to the pedestrian mall.  It took me about 40 minutes to walk down those final 700 feet in elevation from the monastery to the mall.  I ate momos for a late lunch, bought a couple of newspapers and sat on a bench on the mall and read and people watched for the rest of the afternoon.  There didn't seem to be any other tourists in that pleasant town.

It was cloudy and had been raining the next morning as I walked up to another monastery about 300 feet above the town on a little hill on the way to the Shiva Complex.  I passed lots of uniformed school children along the way, the girls almost invariably with pigtails and uniformly colored ribbons.  As I walked up past the prayer flags on the final stretch, several dogs started barking vociferously, and three little monklets did their best to shoo them away.  One used kung fu type kicks, though he never did hit a dog.  They showed me around an empty prayer hall and posed for photos.  In the main hall about 35 monks were chanting, 30 or so of them little kids and the other five or so teenagers or young adults.  A chubby guy led the group.  The chants were accompanied by a drum the like of which I had never before heard in a Buddhist monastery.  It was shaped a little like a cowbell (I guess these monks have a fever for cowbells), but large and made of wood with a slit in it.  The sound was a little African or Afro-Caribbean.  The chanting was also frequently augmented by two monks blowing those long horns, two with clarinets, and two with shorter horns, plus big drums and cymbals.  I walked around and took photos and was greeted by lots of smiles.  In most Sikkim monasteries signs prohibit photos, perhaps because of the inundation of Indian tourists, but these guys didn't seem to mind at all, probably because their monastery is off the Indian tourist track.  I noticed a table full of offerings, including Lay's and Uncle Chipps potato chips, Kellogg's Chocos (a bagged breakfast cereal), apples, bananas, and cookies.  The paintings on the walls depicted quite a few buddhas and their protectors engaged in sexual intercourse (not with each other, but with females). 

Other monks came in and served the chanting monks bowls of some sort of tea or soup just before they took about a twenty minute break about 10.  One monk brought me a cup of tea and during the break a few others came over to talk and pose for photos.  They were quite a friendly bunch.  When they sat down again and recommenced chanting, one brought me a rug to sit on, so I did so and watched from there until they finished before 11:30.  A couple of the young boy monks were cleaning as the chanting went out.  Two of them were assiduously wiping the tile floor with wet rags.  Towards the end, one monk dispensed a spoonful of sugary water into the palms of everyone, including me, which was drunk.  A basket of the offerings was taken around, with monks selecting pieces of fruit or bags of chips or cookies.  One monk brought me three little bags of cookies plus a very small and very red apple, perhaps two inches in diameter, with a label containing a bar code and the words "Red Delicious" and "USA."  Finally, a flaky dark sugar and cashew compound was brought around.  I took some more photos of the friendly monks after the chanting ended.

I wandered around a bit as some of the little boys let out their energy after so many hours sitting and chanting.  Several were running around and three were throwing rocks at a target.  I walked back to the town center and noticed many of trunks and branches of the pine trees on the way were covered with ferns. 

After a lunch of momos I left Namchi at 2 on a jeep bound for Kalimpong, about 30 miles to the southeast in West Bengal.  We traveled south under cloudy skies with hazy views down a series of long switchbacks, dropping about 3000 feet, that led to the Rangit River, here Sikkim's southern border with West Bengal.  We followed the Rangit, though high above it, to the east and its confluence with the Teesta, Sikkim's lowest point at about 1300 feet, I think.  The mountains rose steeply on the West Bengal side of the Rangit.  We went up the Teesta a couple of miles and then crossed it into West Bengal.  We went down the Teesta on the other side past its confluence with the Rangit for maybe three miles in total and then began the steep, almost ten mile long ascent up the mountainside to the east to Kalimpong at 4100 feet.  Kalimpong was an important trading center with Tibet, a gateway to the Jelep La pass northeast of Gangtok.  It's a relatively big city.  One of my guidebooks says it has 43,000 people.  It is spread out along a ridge, with higher elevations at either end.  Arriving in that busy town about 5, I walked to a hotel where the owner advised me to take a room away from his noisy Indian guests.  At 4100 feet, Kalimpong felt relatively warm, as it is the lowest place I've stayed here in the hills.  It rained at night.

About 9 the next morning I walked up the town's streets to a monastery, the Tharpa Choling Gompa, about 300 feet higher than my hotel.  This is a Gelukpa, or Yellow Hat, monastery and had photos of the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama who died in the late 1980's, and the three abbots of the monastery, including the most recent, a little boy believed to be a reincarnation of the previous two.  He is pictured being hugged by the Dalai Lama. On the altars were also very realistic sculptures of the two previous abbots and of two teachers of the Dalai Lama.  Quite a few tantric sex scenes were pictured on the walls, with penises shown entering vaginas.  This monastery previously honored a deity proscribed by the Dalai Lama and I've read the monks have hidden his images.  I asked a monk about this but, not surprisingly, he was not very forthcoming and of course did not tell me where the images are hidden.  The brochure he gave me did mention the controversy.

In a side room off the porch of the main hall about five older monks were chanting, accompanied by cymbals, drums and bells.  Several butter sculptures were at the front of the room on a table.  I watched as a younger monk reverently removed them one by one and took them away behind the monks' quarters.  The session in that small room ended about 11:30 and I went inside.  The black painted walls contained images of fearsome protectors, skulls, and hanging, eviscerated bodies of animals and humans, similar to the Malakala room in the old monastery in Rumtek.  I walked around and watched several monks practicing making very detailed designs out of pink colored sand.  They do this by taping the sand out of a metal tube with a sort of flat knife.  It was very interesting to watch.

From the monastery I continued up the ridge another 400 feet or so in elevation to reach the Doctor Graham's Homes, started in 1900 as a school for the children of tea workers and now a prestigious school with 1300 pupils.  His statue stands in front, dedicated on the centenary of the school and paid for by the "OGBs [old Graham boys, I'm guessing] of Kalimpong" and one guy described as a GB from 1933 to 1948.  Uniformed students were studying on the grass as I walked past the old school buildings up to the 1925 slate gray stone church, quite a large one with a bell tower and stained glass windows, but all locked up.  The girls wore red sweaters and the boys blue jackets and all had on neckties.  I sat up by the church for a while, admiring the views and the flowers, and then walked by a couple of old houses used by the school for housing before walking back through the main school buildings.  The students had all returned to their classes and were very quiet.  I was told exams were being held.

From there I walked back the way I had come and then took a different route that led me to a handmade paper factory, where the guy in charge gave me a very interesting tour.  The thick paper is made completely of natural materials, a bark of a tree, and is impervious to insects.  Monasteries use the paper for their sutras.  By this time in the afternoon, most of the work had been done and they were hanging the wet sheets of paper up to dry on metal backings.  As I walked up and down that ridge I did have good views of the town and Deolo Hill, at around 5600 feet, at the northern end.  There are views of Kanchenjunga from that hill, but not with the clouds that hovered over Kalimpong all the time I was there.  I had a late lunch about 3 or 3:30 and then walked further south past the town center to a colonial era hotel made of stone, with wooden balconies and porches and a small lawn in front.  Beautiful flowers bloomed all around.  From there I headed to the flower filled grounds of another lovely hotel and then on to St. Teresa, a 1929 Swiss Jesuit church that was closed.  On the way there and back to the town center I had some views of the Teesta down in its valley.  It again rained at night.

The next morning I walked to nearby Thongsa Gompa in the rain.  It is said to have been established in 1692 by the Bhutanese, who controlled the area at the time, though it was rebuilt in the 19th century after the Nepalis had rampaged through the area.  About 35 monks were chanting inside when I arrived soon after 9.  The murals looked new and were colorful and interesting, as usual.  Upstairs there were more murals and a monk offering prayers for devotees who brought offerings.  A devotee would roll three dice onto a little plate and the monk then added them up.  (I once saw him use his fingers to count.)  The devotee threw the dice several times, perhaps waiting for a good result.  I was later told by another monk that this was to forecast the future.  After the dice rolling the monk, while chanting, poured some liquid, probably just water, from what looked like a brandy bottle into a metal chalice.  Partly filled bottles of Coca-cola and Contessa XXX rum stood right alongside.  He then dropped a few grains of rice into the chalice.

About 11, after the rain had stopped, I walked to the town's weekly Wednesday market and looked around.  It centered on a steep, narrow lane, with all sorts of stuff on sale, including big white mushrooms and curly fern tops.  The people were interesting, too.  I eventually made my way to two sheds at the bottom where meat was on sale.  I spotted a big guy hoisting a big leg of a cow or water buffalo, and he motioned me in to watch him cut it up with a big cleaver.  He wanted his photo taken and I obliged.  The other shed seemed to be for pork.  I saw a pig's head being cut up with a very sharp knife.  Big chunks of what I think must have been pig shoulders had just been cut up and the meat was still twitching.  First time I've ever seen that, I think. I heard a pig squeal in the background, but I don't think he was meeting his doom just then.

I walked back up through the market and had lunch before heading to the Lepcha Museum in a room in the headquarters of the local Lepcha society.  Lepchas are the original inhabitants of the area, but now much in a minority.  As I was waiting for a guy to open the museum, a distinguished looking man in a suit and a traditional Lepcha hat came in and talked to me.  He pointed out the picture of the last Lepcha king, dating from the 18th century, on the wall.  Two other photos were of his grandfather and father.  He said the Lepchas did not come from near the Burmese border but had always been in the Himalayas, from eastern Sikkim to western Bhutan.

The guy who operated the museum, his personal collection, was an 85 year old man who had won several national awards for his efforts on behalf of Lepcha culture.  He showed me around and played several of the old instruments he had on display, including several kinds of flutes and stringed instruments similar to guitars and violins.  It was all very interesting and I liked the music.  He certainly seemed to enjoy playing.  He also had several photos of him as a young man.

From there I walked up to the former summer home of a maharaja now converted into a small hotel.  The steep road continued up to the Durpin Monastery, a Gelukpa monastery dating from 1976 on the high hill on the south end of Kalimpong's ridge, maybe 700 feet above the center of town.  By now it was late in the afternoon, so I engaged a taxi to take me up there, passing a golf course (which must have great views when the weather is good) and a large military area on the way.  I realized that if I walked down I would arrive after dark, so I asked the taxi to wait.  That didn't give me much time to look around, but I did check out the monks chanting, with the usual horns, clarinets, cymbals and drums for emphasis, in the main hall and on the second floor the impressive three dimensional mandalas and a big statue of the 11 headed, 1000 armed boddhisattva Avalokiteshvara.  The Dalai Lama is his reincarnation.  It again rained at night.

The next morning, under cloudy skies, I walked again up to the handmade paper manufacturing factory.  I wanted to see some of the processes that I hadn't been able to see before, in particular the way the pulp floating in a big wooden basin clings to a bamboo screen when it is dipped into the water and fuses into a soggy piece of paper.  The sky seemed to opening up a bit, though the views from the ridge where the factory was located were still not great.

I again had momos for lunch and at 1:30 left Kalimpong in the rain in a share jeep heading further east to the little village of Lava, 20 miles away.  We hit fog at about 6000 feet, but soon rose above it and had good views of the extremely wet and green forest.  The trees trunks were covered with moss and ferns grew everywhere, a beautiful forest.  We rose to about 7300 feet, and then came down to Lava at about 7000 feet, arriving about 3.  I checked into a small hotel and then walked about the town with the hotel owner.  He told me there were 450 households in town, but that must have included households in outlying areas.  The town was also full of little hotels and Indian tourists, a bad sign.  We walked down the town's steep main street (in fact, just about its only street) to the very modern Kagyu Monastery, set on a little hill at the bottom of the town.  The clouds were parting and there were some good views of the forest clad mountains from the top of the monastery.  We went into a very modern prayer hall where monks were chanting, accompanied by horns, clarinets, drums and cymbals, and listened to them for a while.  We walked back to the hotel by the highway, much less steep than the town's main street.  I then did the circuit by myself until night fell.  It was foggy by the time I got back to the hotel at about 7.  The Indians in my hotel, particularly the ones in the room next to mine, were very noisy that night. The ones in the room next door, two couples in a room with one bed, talked loudly till after midnight. 

It was very foggy, with a drippy rain, the next morning.  There are supposed to be some interesting and beautiful walks in the area, but with the bad weather and the noisy Indians I decided to leave.  It was still very foggy when I left at 10:30 in a small van heading back to Kalimpong.  We got there about 12 and I had more good views of the spectacular mossy forest on the way once we got out of the fog.

I had another momo lunch in Kalimpong and then left on a 1:30 jeep bound for Darjeeling, about 35 miles away by road to the west.  We left in sunshine, though there were still plenty of clouds in the sky.  From Kalimpong we took the steep road down to the Teesta, followed it downriver for about a mile before crossing it, at about 1200 feet elevation, and then went upriver just a short way before leaving the river and heading up a ridge to the west.  The little used road is narrow and steep, with great views.  I could see the Teesta for a short while as we rose, and later I could see a bit of the Rangit to the north, with the hills of Sikkim beyond.  In fact, as the crow flies we were only a few miles from Sikkim, across the deep valley of the Rangit River.  We passed through tea estates and beautiful forests, and as we neared Darjeeling through several little villages.  Unfortunately, clouds began to obstruct the views as we reached over 5000 feet elevation and after reaching 6000 feet there was fog, obstructing all views.  A light rain began just before we reached Ghoom at 7400 feet, but it stopped on the way down to Darjeeling, 600 feet lower.  We arrived about 4.  There was quite a traffic jam in Darjeeling.  I made the steep, 300 foot climb from the jeep stand to the hotel where I had stayed before.  I got a room a floor higher, with even better views.  I watched as the ridge to the east cleared.  This was the way we had come.  I had been hoping for views of Darjeeling from there.  I watched as the clouds swirled in and out before going out to dinner.

The next morning I was happy to go back to the little restaurant where I ate almost every breakfast when I was here previously.  They serve a wonderful breakfast of scrambled eggs, fried tomatoes, crunchy hash browns, and thick buttered slices of brown bread with Tibetan cheese, one of the best breakfasts I've had anywhere.  At first I was the only customer, before two others showed up.  The place, catering to westerners and not Indians, was packed every morning when I was here before, a month earlier.  There seem to be few westerners here now, but still lots of Indians.  I spent a large part of the day in an internet cafe, with walks around town.  It was cloudy all day, with some rain.  It rained very hard at night and on the way back to my hotel after dinner my trouser legs got soaked.  The little lanes were streaming with water.

The next day was cloudy and foggy, with some rain.  I did take a walk around town, stopping at St. Andrew's Church, dating from the 1800's, where a funeral service was going on for a woman named Louise Dunne, who died at 99 years of age, about three months short of her 100th birthday.  The church had been closed every other time I walked by.  After the service I walked through the church and read the wall plaques, including one for General Lloyd, the man who founded Darjeeling and died in 1865.  About 6 the clouds opened up a bit and there were good views to the north and northeast.  I walked to a viewpoint and enjoyed the views.  I could see the hills of Sikkim in the distance.  Towards nightfall clouds returned, filled the valley below, and hid the green hills.

The next morning was again very foggy.  I had planned to leave Darjeeling for Mirik, another hill town to the southwest, but was delayed as I waited for a travel agent to get me a train ticket to Calcutta.  I was happy to get it as I dreaded again taking buses over that slow, bumpy route.  I had thought about traveling across eastern Nepal to Kathmandu from Darjeeling and flying to Bangkok from there, but with all the rain and so much to see in Nepal, I decided to put that off until another time and instead return to Calcutta for a flight to Bangkok and then Saipan.  A newspaper I buy periodically has a weather map, now showing the line of the advance of the monsoon, and the line advanced over Calcutta a day or two ago.

The fog lifted in the afternoon and I walked around some.  In mid afternoon there were again good views north and northeast and I even saw some blue sky high above.  In the late afternoon I walked again to the old Planters' Club just above the Mall and looked around.  I had hoped there might be views to the west, but thick clouds hid everything.

May 26-31, 2013: Rumtek and North Sikkim

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. 

May 19-25, 2013: Ravangla and Gangtok

I heard birds chirping as I awoke about 5:30 on the morning of the 19th in Tashiding.  The sun was out and I got up about 6.  I missed the direct share jeep to Ravangla, so about 7:30 left in a jeep bound for Legship on the Rangit River.  From Tashiding we descended about 2000 feet to the Rangit, crossed it over a one lane bridge, and traveled along the river downstream past its junction with the Rathong, just below Tashiding Monastery's conical hill to the north.  Because of a dam just below the river confluence, the water is a muddy brown instead of the usual whitewater.  The scenery on the way down was beautiful, with green forests and agricultural terraces and good views of the rivers below.  The road, however, was in bad shape and we finally crossed the Rangit again and arrived in Legship just over the river almost an hour after leaving Tashiding, only about 10 miles away.  I immediately got in a jeep bound for Ravangla, about 15 miles east.  The trip took us an hour on a good road, rising almost 5000 feet, with more beautiful scenery along the way as we rose higher and higher above the river.

We reached Ravangla about 9:30 and it was much cooler.  One of my guidebooks gives its elevation as 6800 feet and my altimeter showed it just 200 feet lower.  I checked into a hotel on the town's main traffic junction and had breakfast outdoors in the sun with a view of the weekly street market on the town's main street.  After breakfast I walked up the hill to the new Sakyamuni Complex with an 148 foot high statue of Buddha, dedicated by the Dalai Lama two months previously.  The statue is impressive, as is the space ship shaped conference hall next to it.  The views to the west were hazy, but I could see Tashiding Monastery on its hill below and, further, the ridge containing Pemayangtse, Rabdenstse and Pelling.  Few tourists were visiting the complex, perhaps because it cost 50 rupees to enter.  I went into the hall beneath the statue, containing very interesting murals on Buddha's life.  There are also relics donated by monasteries all over the Buddhist world (and a monastery in southern California), along with certificates of authenticity and photos of the donating abbots handing over the goods.

Clouds appeared, cooling things down considerably.  I walked to the nearby old and new monastery halls, with some interesting statues inside.  They were deserted, though some young monks were playing cricket nearby.  I wandered around as it became chilly and finally walked down about 3:30 for a late lunch or early dinner.  The town's popular little restaurant was out of almost everything, so I settled for beef momos, not as good as the chicken ones.  Just northeast of Ravangla is forest covered Maenam Hill, over 10,000 feet high and usually wrapped in clouds.  Ravangla is located on a pass ("la" means "pass") between the Rangit and Teesta watersheds.  (The Rangit is the major river of West Sikkim while the Teesta is the major river of East Sikkim.  The Rangit flows into the Teesta on the southern Sikkim border and the Teesta eventually flows into the Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh.)  In the late afternoon I watched the fog drift into town coming up the valley to the southeast and then drift out again down the valley, and then come back, covering and then revealing the features of the valley and the mountains above.  At night it rained hard.

The next morning was cloudy and foggy.  About 9 I started walking to a Bon monastery a little more than three miles down the road I come on to Ravangla.   Misty rain fell at first, giving no views down the valley to the west or back to Ravangla.  The last half mile or so or the hour and a half walk to the monastery (a descent of about 900 feet) passed through a beautiful mossy forest.  I spent an hour or so looking around the small monastery.  Bon is the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet, though now it has acquired most of the practices and iconography of Buddhism.  However, where Buddhists do certain rituals in a clockwise direction, the Bon do them in a counter-clockwise direction.  While on the ground floor of the very small prayer hall, I heard voices making noises like "hak, hak, hak" (with a long "a") on the upper story.  I went up to investigate and three monks in a small room were doing yoga breathing exercises, gathering very deep breaths and then expelling them in several short bursts.  I watched for a while and then came down and sat in the courtyard in the just appearing sun.  The three monks from upstairs eventually came down and one asked me if I would like a cup of tea.  He told me he is a Lepcha, from North Sikkim.  Lepchas are said to be small and shy, but he was big and relatively gregarious.   He told me that there were 35 monks at the monastery.

The walk back to Ravangla took about an hour and a half under sunny skies, though there were still clouds.  I had hazy views of Tashiding and the ridge with Pemayangste beyond.  Nearing Ravangla I could see the giant Buddha.  I had chicken momos for lunch, spent some time in an internet cafe, and watched the fog coming up the valley to the southeast in the late afternoon.  The summit of Maenam Hill was clear, and then covered by the incoming clouds.  After dinner the valley was clear.  I could spot lights.  By bedtime, however, it was raining heavily.

It was still raining heavily the next morning when I got up about 6:30.  It stopped about an hour later and I had breakfast.  As the sky cleared the clouds in the valley to the south east were again putting on quite a show.  About 11:30 I left on a share jeep bound for Gangtok, Sikkim's capital, about 40 miles east.  As we left the fog was just reappearing in Ravangla, but we had sun for the trip to Gangtok.  We proceeded down the valley to the southeast, curving along the sides of hills as we followed side valleys to the streams that had created them.  The views were again wonderful and we eventually had views of the Teesta, sluggish and muddy because of hydroelectric projects.  We descended more than 5000 feet and about an hour and a quarter after leaving Ravangla we crossed the Teesta, at about 1700 feet according to my altimeter, with a good view back to Ravangla high above not too far before we crossed the river.  At the unattracive town of Singtam just below where we crossed we met the main highway leading up to Gangtok.  I was glad to begin ascending as it was hot and humid along the river.  It took us a little more than an hour, rising almost 4000 feet, to take that congested road up to Gangtok, 17 miles away, with a lot of ugly roadside development along the way.

Gangtok is located on the west side of a ridge, with deep valleys on either side of the ridge and mountains beyond.  It is a beautiful location, about 5500 feet above sea level.  That is what my altimeter showed at the jeep stand, but the city rises about 500 feet higher to the top of the ridge and a considerable distance down the ridge.  I've seen its population given as 30,000 and 55,000.  I would suspect it is at least the latter.  Sikkim itself has only somewhat more than 600,000 people, and I've read that in the mid 19th century, before the mass arrival of Nepalis, the British estimated that there were only 5,000 to 8,000 people in Sikkim.

The jeep stand is on the highway, and I decided to go to a hotel near the top of the ridge, which entailed a steep climb of  maybe 300 feet, first along a steep road, then stairs, then another steep road.  The climb was worth it, though, as the views from the hotel's top floor restaurant are spectacular.  I had a late lunch and enjoyed the views of the city below, the deep, green valley beyond, and then the cloud topped mountains beyond the valley.  The monastery at Rumtek is visible on a ridge to the southwest.  Kanchenjunga can be seen to the northwest if it is clear.  About 4 I walked down to the newly modernized pedestrian Mall in the center of town to look around and check out tours to North Sikkim, most of which you can go only on a tour.  The Mall thronged with Indian tourists and I saw few westerners.  I've talked to several Sikkimese who have told me they don't particularly like the Indian tourists, finding them demanding, rude and noisy.  There are thousands of them here this time of year, escaping the heat of the plains  One guy told me that with two Indians you have a fish market.  I asked, "Fish market?"  He replied, "Noisy."  I walked around, went into an internet cafe, and had momos at a Tibetan restaurant before making the steep walk up to my hotel.

The next morning clouds filled the valley below, hiding it and the mountains beyond.  About 9 I walked up to the former royal monastery at the top of the ridge, just five minutes or so from my hotel.  The abandoned former palace of the chogyal is just behind it, to the north.  The palace is closed to the public.  At the monastery, in an open sided building just before the main hall, about 40 monks, mostly kids, seated on cushions on the floor were singing over and over again a simple chant of about ten or fifteen syllables.  In the main hall an additional 50 or so monks, again mostly kids, with the older monks in the front rows and the younger arrayed behind, were sitting on cushions (except the elderly leader on a sort of throne) and chanting, frequently accompanied by bouts of horn blowing, drum beating, cymbal clashing, and bell rignging.  The monks were chanting from the pages of scriptures laid out on little tables in front of them, the pages about two and a half feet long and four or five inches wide and filled with Tibetan script.  Some other monks were bundling the scriptures up, stacking the pages in a pile about two or three inches high, wrapping them in two pieces of red cloth, and then tying them between two boards.  While the chanting continued I walked around the hall and looked at the murals, statues and other items of interest.  Nobody seemed to mind me. 

Coming out, I walked around the back and up some stairs to a monk in a small room at the back of the hall.  He, too, was chanting, all by himself, and occasionally punctuated his chants with drum beating, cymbal clashing, and bell ringing, all done by himself.  I watched him for a while, and looked at the interesting murals on the walls.  Unfortunately, no photos are allowed in the monastery hall.  About 9:30 the chanting and singing stopped, except for the one guy in his own little room, and the monks filed out.  Some of the little boy monks started horsing around with each other.  It must be hard for them to spend hours sitting and chanting.

A little south of the monastery the ridge steeply descends and there is a "ropeway," a funicular, that I took down about 600 feet.  Despite the clouds, the views were great on both sides and the ride was well worth the 70 rupees, less than $1.20, it costs for a round trip.  From the base I walked to a chorten built in 1946 on what was till then a haunted hill, and then to the nearby Institute of Tibetology, a wonderful museum with thangkas (wall hangings), statues, scriptures, and many other interesting things, including cups made the top parts of human skulls.  The explanations are excellent, too.  I spent almost two hours in that single room museum.  Lots of noisy Indians came and went, but no other westerners.  Nearby is a pretty little park with a statue of the last chogyal, born in 1923 and died in 1982.  In the early 1960's, I think just before he became chogyal in 1963, he married Hope Cook, an American whom I have almost always seen described as a New York socialite.  The  plaque described him as a great democrat and was dedicated by the Nepali who has been Sikkim's chief minister (head of the state government) for twenty years or so.  I took the ropeway, now crowded with Indians, back to the top, where a misty rain fell. 

About 2:30, after lunch, a good Tibetan noodle soup, at my hotel, I walked up to the road along the crest of the narrow top of the ridge, just north of the former palace and in fact leading up to its gates.  I walked north, with good views on either side and took some steep roads that lead up to Enchey Monastery, dating from the 1840's but rebuilt about a century ago.  It is about 500 feet above the ridge with the chogyal's palace, with great views down to Gangtok.  A long wall of prayer wheels, with lots of prayer flags above, led the final way to the main hall.  The statues and murals inside were very interesting.  One fierce looking red bodied protector figure was pictured standing with an erect phallus, with a naked woman standing beside him, ready to hop on.  Photos are prohibited, but I saw a monk, no less, take a photo of the red figure with his cell phone,  So I did, too, when no one else was in the hall but me.  There were other very interesting figures, women with third eyes on their foreheads, clenched next to more of these fierce looking protector figures.  The women were featured in profile, and with their third eye perpendicular to the other two, the face, with only one of the normal eyes and the perpendicular forehead eye visible, looked Picassoesque. 

In the late, cloudy afternoon I walked around and watched some of the little boy monks playing.  Eventually, I walked back and stopped at the Flower Exhibition Hall on the ridge, filled with spectacular flowers (and noisy Indians).  It contained incredible numbers of hydrangeas, not only the blue ones you usually see here growing wild along the roadsides, but the whole range from dark blue to bright pink.  Alstromeria (I think they are called) also grew in great numbers and many colors, and there were also gladiolas (I think) and many others.  Only a few orchids, though.  Besides the noisy Indians, the place was marred by loud hard rock music, very odd for a flower garden.  Nevertheless, I strolled around till it closed at 6 and then walked down to the Mall to check tour agencies to see if anyone was interested in a North Sikkim tour, have dinner, and use the internet,  On the steep walk back up to my hotel I could spot lights in the valley below.

The next morning I slept late, until 7:30.  The sky was cloudy and it had been raining.  After breakfast I made my way down to the jeep stand about 10 to go to Rumtek for the day, but after waiting an hour and a half and the jeep still not full and ready to go, I gave up and walked back up to my hotel.  I spent the afternoon up there in the restaurant and terrace outside, reading and enjoying  the great views.  The sun had come out and the afternoon was beautiful, though it clouded up late.  I watched the clouds drift into and fill the valley far below before sunset.  After dark, though, the clouds had dissipated and you see lots of lights in the valley and the hills beyond.

I was up the next morning before 6 and around 6:30 walked under cloudy skies to the jeep stand for North Sikkim, about 20 minutes away.  The jeep for Phodong, where I wanted to go, had left, but I could buy a seat on a jeep headed to Mangan and get off at Phodong, so I did so.  We left between 7 and 7:30 on the two hour journey to Phodong, about 25 miles away by road, but well less than half that, I think, as the crow flies.  From Gangtok we climbed about 500 feet over about four miles to the pass to the north and then went down the other side, crawling along a very bad road that followed the contours of hills into little side valleys, where we crossed rapidly flowing streams and several waterfalls.  The scenery was beautiful as the weather changed from wet and cloudy to sunny.  I had a seat in the back, but, fortunately, next to a window on the side with the best views.  I enjoyed the bumpy ride as we went up and down, but generally did not descend or ascend much, until we reached the very little town of Phodong, about the same elevation as Gangtok, on a little ridge with agricultural terraces below.  From there I could look across the deep valley to the pass we had crossed just above Gangtok on the other side.

From Phodong I walked back along the road towards Gangtok for about 15 minutes and then up a steep road, climbing 300 feet, for another 20 minutes to reaching Phodong Monastery, dating from 1740.  Monks old and young were wandering around outside as I went inside to look around.  Coming out, I wandered around and heard the bell of one of those large barrel prayer wheels in a small hall some ways behind the main hall.  I went inside and about ten middle aged and older women were sitting on the floor.  They began to sing just as I entered and all had small prayers wheels, except for one womanwho was operating the large one.  I listened until they finished, when one asked me where I was from.  She spoke good English and told me they were all Bhutia. 

I walked up the road another mile or so, ascending another 450 feet, to smaller Labrang Monastery, dating from 1884.  As I got close, I heard horns and drums above me.  Reaching the small, scaffold covered monastery under a now cloudy sky, I found the monks getting ready for their midday meal.  A long carpet had been rolled out in the little open space before the monastery and the monks, about 25 of them, were beginning to sit down on it.  Again, they were ranged in age from one end to the other, with about ten little kids at one end.  One appeared to be a girl, with long hair, while all the others has shaved heads.  Besides the kids, there appeared to be about five to ten teenagers and only five or so adults, including one gray haired man at one end.  From some buildings to the side of the prayer hall, a man not in monks' robes appeared pushing a large wooden box on wheels, which was filled with rice.  He was accompanied by two teenage monks with metal pails.  He reached the oldest monk and went down the line dishing large portions of rice into their bowls, topped off with a bit of cabbage dished out by one of the guys with a pail.  The other guy with a pail supplied a vegetable soup into bowls for each monk.  Nobody started till all were served and they said a little prayer.  Then they ate quite rapidly while two or three hungry dogs watched.  I noticed two of monks, a little kid and a young adult, ate with their left hands.  Finishing, they said another short prayer, though a few of the very young monks rushed off during the prayer to wash their plates and bowls at a nearby water pump.  The young monks did the washing up of plates and bowls as the monks dispersed after lunch.  Two boy monks rolled up the long carpets and then swept up the spilled rice and other detritus of lunch towards the grass while the dogs ate some of what was left.  I walked into the prayer hall and into an building open on one side and set up for the monks.  I guess they are using it while the main hall is under repair.  Four of the teenage monks came up as I was taking photos.  They were shy but friendly, posed for a group photo, and seemed to enjoy my showing them my photos.

Soon two monks, a chubby kid and a teenager, went to a little platform looking out over the valley to the south.  Each blew a conch shell several times as the other monks gathered and sat on cushions in the open sided building, with the gray haired one on a sort of throne closest to the altar.  They began to chant, with frequent horn blowing, drum beating and cymbal clashing, as I watched from the steps.  The head guy occasionally rang a little bell.

I started down before 12:30.  I would have liked to stay and listen to them, but I had been warned I should be on the main road in the early afternoon to catch a share jeep back to Gangtok.  On the way down, I stopped for a brief look at the scant ruins of Tumlong, Sikkim's third capital, located here after the 1780 war with Nepal.  I got down to the road before 1 and to Phodong shortly after.  There were no jeeps, but I was told one would come from Mangan.  One did, but didn't stop.  The sun had come out again and I sat on the curb in Phodong for about an hour and a half, getting up when a car would pass.  I was getting worried about getting back and asked a guy, who said he didn't think there would be any more share jeeps but that I could ask passing cars to take me to Gangtok.  A jeep just then came by and stopped as I signaled.  The guy I had been talking to apparently explained my predicament and the driver agreed to take me.  I thankfully climbed into the back seat occupied by two women, with another in front.  They were all teachers from the local school heading to Gangtok for the weekend.  Shortly thereafter we picked up another couple of women, a wizened and apparently very old woman and what may have been her granddaughter.  I enjoyed the almost two hour ride back to Gangtok.  Again I had a window seat on the side of the jeep with the best views.  We arrived in Gangtok before 5 and I had a bowl of Tibetan noodle soup as soon as I got back to the hotel.  I had eaten nothing but cookies and peanuts all day.

The next day was a big holiday, the full moon of the fourth month in the Buddhist calendar, celebrated as the day Buddha was born, achieved enlightenment, and died (or reached parinirvana).  About 6:30, in a light rain or drippy fog, I walked up to the royal monastery.  It was very foggy up there.  At first I sat on a cushion in back of the monks singing the same chant I had heard on my earlier visit.  A monk brought me a paper cup of tea and offered me some cookies.  Another gave me a little slip of paper with the words being sung.  I sat and listened to the somewhat mesmerizing singing for 20 or 30 minutes.  There were a few others sitting with me at the back, all of them Sikkimese.

I decided to head into the main prayer hall to hear the chanting, bell ringing, drum beating, horn playing and cymbal clashing.  Initially, I stood near one corner next to two monks seated on cushions with long horns, maybe four feet long, resting in front of them, the far ends on little wooden supports.  All the rest of the monks, maybe 40 of them, sat on cushions in rows on either side of a table in the center of the hall loaded with offerings, principally bananas in front and bags of cookies and other snacks behind the bananas.  A monk came over and asked me to go to the other corner of the monastery, where there were cushions to sit on.  I did and sat there watching everything until it ended about 8:30.  Many people came and went, bringing offerings lain on the table in the center.  Many of the women and girls were in beautiful traditional clothes, and a very few men and boys were, too.  They all prostrated three times as they entered, though usually not the full body on the ground prostration, but the one on your knees with your head touching the floor.  The stack of offerings in the center grew higher and higher, occasionally tended by the monks.

A young monk in glasses and wearing a high peaked red hat with ear muffs appeared every once in a while in front of the assemblage waving a staff with colored streamers and burning incense sticks at one end.  A large amount of butter sculptures were amassed just behind the offerings on a sort of altar.  Some of the pilgrims were making the rounds and placing new bills of currency before each monks, usually ten rupee bills but sometimes twenties.  A couple of times I saw a pilgrim asked a monk if he or she could get change, and then place a hundred rupee note in front of the monk and take back ten or twenty rupee notes to give to other monks.  At the end of the chanting, I noticed the monks folding up their bills and placing them inside their robes.

I walked around outside.  The fog had lifted but the sky was still cloudy.  Pilgrims were still coming into the main hall with offerings and then circumambulating the hall three times before heading elsewhere.  The gate to the lane that runs along the old palace was open, so I walked along it to just opposite the modest palace.  Down below the ridge, on the east side at a school, students and others were preparing to start a march.  I walked back and forth between the palace area and the monastery, as many people, many in beautiful traditional clothes, came and went.  I seemed to be the only westerner around.

About 9:30, after an hour break, the monks went back to doing what they had been doing all morning as the sun came out.  Shortly thereafter I saw the march begin and walked down from the monastery to watch it pass by just south and then west of it.  Marchers held banners and some yellow capped monks blew horns.  A palanquin with figures was carried by a few of them.  Most of the marchers were uniformed school children, both boys and girls, many of them carrying scriptures bound between two boards.  I followed the procession to my hotel and noticed that bystanders were lowering their heads to have the scriptures briefly places on top of their heads as a blessings.  Several of the school kids asked if they could do so with me, so I was blessed several times.  People were very friendly and again many were in beautiful traditional clothing.  At my hotel two monks stood blowing horns.  Or I guess I should say Tibetan clarinets.  Besides the horns, long ones and shorter ones, the monks use a sort of clarinet with seven holes, the holes usually separated by little bits of red coral and turquoise.

The procession headed down into town, and I was tempted to continue following it, but it was now 10:30 and I was hungry.  I ate breakfast at the hotel, enjoying the views and able to watch bits of the procession in town below.  Afterward, I got up to the ridge again just as the procession was returning to the school.  I wandered along the ridge, passing the palace again on the way to the monastery and watching all the people.  In front of the palace a man shouted, "Long live the King!"  At the monastery I found a place in the shade and watched the pilgrims circumambulating the main hall until about 1:30.  I spent the rest of the sunny afternoon in the hotel restaurant and on the terrace, enjoying the views and talking with the proprietor.  At night it was still clear, with lights visible in the valley below and the hills beyond. 

May 11-18, 2013: West Sikkim - Pelling, Khecheopalri, Yuksom and Tashiding

I left Darjeeling by share jeep soon after 10 on the foggy morning of the 11th, heading down the narrow road north to the border of Sikkim.  The trip to Jorethang just across the border is less than 15 miles, but took an hour.  The road was pretty good near the top, but deteriorated near the bottom as we dropped more than 5000 feet to the river that is the border, a beautiful trip with great views passing through thick forest, with lots of bamboo among the trees, and later small farmsteads and large tea plantations.  We went through one small town on the way.  At the border my Sikkim permit (issued for free in Darjeeling) was checked.  Sikkim was independent, or semi-independent as a protectorate of India (and before that, Britain), until 1975 when it was annexed by India and made a state.  It borders on Tibet and the Chinese didn't recognize the annexation until 2005.

It was warm in Jorethang, at about 1500 feet elevation.  At 1:30 I left on a share jeep heading north to Pelling, about 30 miles away.  The first 15 miles were along the Rangit River to the small town of Legship, a trip of about an hour as we climbed only about 700 feet in elevation.  From Legship it took another half hour to make a very steep, zigzagging climb of about 3000 feet over 10 miles to Geyzing (also spelled Keyzing and even Gyalshing, and probably several other ways).  I had great views of the Rangit Valley as we climbed, and later views towards the south.  The forest was again full of bamboo among the trees.  After a 15 minute wait in Geyzing we drove the final five miles or so to Pelling through forest as we first rose and then descended a bit, hitting fog on the way and arriving between 3:30 and 4.  Pelling is on a ridge, with views of Kanchenjunga when clear.  A sign at the entrance to the town said 6250 feet elevation while another one in town said 2150 meters (about 7000 feet).  One of my guidebooks says 2085 meters (about 6800 feet), while my altimeter, set in Darjeeling, read about 6400.  I suppose they all could be right, as Pelling runs along a road zigzagging down the side of the ridge.  I checked into a hotel near the top and looked around.  Fog obscured all the views.  It was foggy at night, too, followed by rain.  I had momos (Tibetan dumplings) for dinner and a hot bucket bath after dinner.  The night was cold but I slept warmly and well.

I woke up about 5:30 the next morning and checked the view.  Kanchenjunga was cloud covered.  I went back to bed and got up about 7.  I ate breakfast on the hotel terrace starting about 8 and Kanchenjunga was now partially clear, with good views as the drifting clouds revealed more and more of the snow covered ridge to the north.  The sun was out and it was very pleasant on the terrace.  The clouds eventually began to close in a bit, and by about 9:30 it was getting cloudier on the mountain, although it was still sunny in Pelling.

Before 10, after spending a good part of the morning at the hotel gazing at Kanchenjunga, I started walking up the ridge, along the road I had come the afternoon before, towards Pemayantse Monastery, less than a mile from Pellling at the top of the ridge, about 500 feet higher than Pelling.  On the way I could still catch glimpses of Kanchenjunga through the trees.  Pemayangste is said to be Sikkim's second oldest monastery, dating from the early 18th century.  It's located in a beautiful spot, with fantastic views.  Up to about noon I could still see a bit of Kanchenjunga to the north.  To the east and below are the ruins of Rabdentse, Sikkim's second capital.  Inside the monastery are impressive statues on the first and second floors, and on the third floor an amazing twelve foot high wooden representation of a heavenly palace, with seven levels and lots of figures.  Apparently, it took a monk five years to make.  Unfortunately, it is behind glass, but you still can see it fairly well.  The third floor was markedly warmer than the lower two with the sun beating on the metal roof.  The walls of the third floor seemed to be newly painted and very colorful.  Five sections were covered by large yellow pieces of fabric.  Eventually, I checked under them.  Each one covered a copulatory scene, one showing scrota.

I spent quite a bit of time in the monastery and walking around it.  There seemed to be only a few monks around.  Eventually, I found a path through the surrounding woods down to the road and walked down the road and then along a path to the Rabdentse ruins, dating from the late 17th century.  They seem to be restored heavily.  The capital was abandoned and moved further east after a 1780 war with Nepal.  Nepal annexed a large part of Sikkim, including Darjeeling, after the war, but the British made them give it back after their own war with Nepal in 1814-1816.  The views from the site are wonderful, though Kanchenjunga was now hidden by clouds.  I looked down the deep valleys to the north and east and tried to pick out some of the places I was headed to.  The sun was still out, but the air cool, and I spent quite a bit of time wandering around and enjoying the views.

I walked back to Pelling, arriving about 3:30, and about 4 headed to the Sanga Choeling Monastery on the opposite side of Pelling.  The sky was now cloudy and the walk took me about 45 minutes on a dirt road that climbed very steeply, more than 500 feet, at the end.  The views were great until I hit the fog.  The decrepit monastery is under restoration, with a dirty floor.  Nobody appeared to be around.  I looked around inside and on the dark top floor found a statue of a blue copulating Buddha with a white woman.  I hadn't seen that before.  Outside, the fog was blowing all around.  Several rock chortens (stupas) stood upon a rock platform next to the monastery.  Long, thin prayer flags on long poles lined the edge of the cliff.  The scene was quite beautiful in the swirling fog.  I stood on a rock platform on the edge of the cliff as the fog swirled up.  About 5:30 I started down through the fog and was back at my hotel after 6.  The town was again very foggy that night.

Kanchenjunga was hidden by clouds the next morning.  There were no share jeeps to the next place I wanted to go, so before 9 I left on a half day tour that would take me there.  Lots of Indian tourists come to Pelling, taking half day and full day tours by jeep of sites.  We descended steeply, more than 2000 feet, to the river at the bottom of the valley to the north, crossed to the other side, and stopped at a "rock garden" along the river for 20 minutes or so.  We then traveled along the river, rising above it but still descending along a road with great views to a waterfall at a hairpin turn in the road six miles from the town of Yuksom.  There must have been 20 or 30 jeeps parked, or trying to park, along that narrow road near the falls.  With maybe 8 or 10 people per jeep, there was a mass of people, all Indians but me (and me only for a short time) before that relatively minor waterfall.  Eventually, our jeep made its way through the mass of jeeps and headed back the way we had come for about five miles before taking a road that headed up steeply (about 2000 feet) for six miles to Khecheopalri Lake.  It was noon when we arrived and parked among another mass of tourist jeeps.

I skipped the lake for the time being and strapped on my backpack for the steep climb up to a homestay on the hill above the lake.  It took me half an hour to make more than 500 foot climb through beautiful thick forest along a rocky and then muddy path up to the top of the hill.  It was a sweaty climb.  I was glad to get to the top and check into a little room in a wooden building adjacent to the home of a man named Sonam.  He was away, but his wife checked me in.  There are 27 houses and a small gompa (monastery) in the little village, including three homestays, one run by Sonam's sister and one by his father.  He apparently doesn't speak to his father, who is 82 and is said to be a former cook for the Dalai Lama.  The people in the village were very nice.

The day was cloudy, but I could see Pellling on the ridge to the south.  I had a good lunch about 1 with three other tourists and sat talking with them through lunch and after as it rained.  About 4 the rain let up and I walked around the village.  Two little boys were playing cricket on a grassy space bordered by a semi-circle of tall prayer flags on poles, with a huge pig in a pen just beyond.  The pig got on his hind feet as I approached.  I think he or she was hoping I was bringing food.   I walked around the stone and wood houses and the corn and vegetable patches and the small monastery, and then took the steep path down to the lake, the way I had come at noon.  The path was slippery after the rain.  The lake was completely deserted but for me and a monk near a little monastery building.  All the Indian tourists had left.  Hundreds of colorful prayer flags fluttered along the jungle path to the lake and along the lake itself.  The lake is considered holy.  Any leaf that falls onto the surface of the lake is said to be immediately plucked off by birds.  I didn't see any birds doing this, but then again I didn't see any leaves on the surface of the lake.  I did spot a leech that had latched onto my foot. (I was wearing sandals.)  I pulled it off, but the anti-coagulant it emits when it attaches to you made the bite bleed quite a bit.  The bite is painless.

I made the steep walk back up to the homestay between 5:30 and 6, meeting Sonam just before we reached the top.  The clouds were breaking up and I caught a glimpse of Mount Pandim, over 22,000 feet high.  We had a delicious dinner in the kitchen, after having watched Sonam's wife cut up a chicken on the floor.  Dinner was chicken, dhal, and a spinach and potato dish.  We sat around and talked till late, drinking some milky white home made Sikkimese millet beer, called chang or tomba.  Sonam was interesting, but a little difficult to understand.  He is either a Lepcha or a Bhutia.  The Lepchas, originally from the Burmese border area, are the earliest people in Sikkim.  Bhutias are Tibetans that began arriving in the 17th century (I think).  Nowadays, they both are outnumbered by Nepalis, who began immigrating in the 18th century and are now something like 75% of the population.  They were the force in favor of Indian intervention and the deposition of the Choygal (king) in 1975.  Now they dominate Sikkim politically.  I went to bed about 10:30 and slept warmly.

I was up about 6 the next morning.  The sun was out and felt warm.  Pelling was visible to the south, as was a bit of Pandim, at least for a while.  After a very good breakfast, I walked around the village again.  About 9 I put on my shoes for the first time in months and began a walk to a meditation cave on a hill high above the village and the lake.  From the village I first descended along the ridge and then ascended through beautiful forest with lots of ferns and great views.  The sky was mostly cloudy by about 10, but there was some sun.  Eventually, I reached a couple of farmhouses on a little knob on the ridge above corn fields.  Hanging on the porch of one of the wooden houses were ears of corn, red, black, yellow, and multi-colored.  From there I descended a bit to a little saddle where a big tree had been felled.. (Sonam told me you can cut down two trees a year but have to get permission for the specific tree before doing so.)  Two men were using axes to cut the tree up, a task that could take weeks.

From there the path became quite steep as it ascended through beautiful thick jungle to the top of the hill and the meditation cave.  Through the trees I had good views of the lake below, now recognizably in the shape of a footprint.  The path was wet and covered with leaves and soon I realized that there were leeches along the path.  I stopped, found a rocky spot, and pulled more than ten off my shoes before they could penetrate to my feet.  I continued along the path, battling leeches all the way.  I would have to stop and check for leeches every few minutes, hurrying through the leaf litter on the path to rocks where I could check my shoes.  At one point I took off my shoes and socks to check if any had made it through.  One had.  I pulled it off, but the blood left a red blot on my white sock.  Eventually, I lost the path in the deep leaf litter.  I searched around, but eventually the leeches, the bugs, and my lack of luck finding the path made me decide to head back the way I had come.  I was glad to get out of the leech zone.  I checked my feet again and only the one had gotten through.  I  must have pulled well more than 50 off my shoes, though. 

I returned to the village about 1 and had a delicious lunch.  I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, doing some reading and talking with the other tourists, and watching the friendly village children.  At one point, hours after I had returned, I tucked in my shirt and noticed a bloodstain.  Two leeches had been attached to my side just above my waist.  They had drunk their fill and were now gone, leaving two bite marks on my side and bloodstains on my shirt, underpants and trousers.  Sonam said they had come from trees, rather than the path.  It rained about 5, but was clearing at nightfall, when a sliver of a moon could be spotted.  I had a hot water bucket bath in the simple little bathroom, which felt very good after no bath the night before.

It rained long and hard overnight.  When I got up the next morning between 6:30 and 7 we were fogged in.  The fog lifted and it cleared up some, but there was no sun.  Soon after 9 I left to walk to my next destination, the small town of Yuksom, visible from Khecheopalri.  Sonam gave me a bamboo pole to help and found me a porter, a teenager from the village, to carry my backpack at a cost of 400 rupees, about $3.50.  Yuksom is 17 miles away by road, but less than 6 by trail.  We made the steep descent to the lake in about 20 minutes, walked along the road just a bit, and then took another steep path down.  The path went through forest and farms and was in places dirt, or rocks, or cement, or even stairs.   After the rain, it was very slippery in places, especially the rocks with moss all over them.  I slipped three times and fell two of those times, once landing hard on my left arm.  But all was well.  I had some beautiful views over the very green countryside under a cloudy sky.

A particularly steep and slippery portion of the trail preceded a rickety suspension bridge over a stream, and after the bridge the trail was better.  We passed a house with prayer flags all around it and soon could see the road near the waterfall where I had stopped on the way to Lake Khecheopalri.  We reached that road after about two and a half hours and a drop of more than 2000 feet.  A road marker indicated 8 kilometers, or five miles, to Yuksom.  We walked a short distance along the road, crossing the fast flowing Rathong River, flowing southeast to join the Rangit, by bridge and then soon after leaving the road by a set of stairs that turned into a steep trail up to Yuksom.  We passed houses and farm plots and eventually had good views of the hill above the lake where we had started.  Along the path, and along roads all over Sikkim, grow blue flowered hydrangeas, and there are fuschias here and there, though not in the numbers of the hydrangeas.  The sky became darker and there were a few drops of rain as we climbed.  After a climb of over an hour, ascending something like 1400 feet, we reached the road again just below Yuksom and arrived in town just after 1 p.m. after a hike of about four hours.  I checked into a comfortable hotel room and said goodbye to my porter, who was immediately heading back to the village from where we had set out.

I ate lunch, tomato soup and thick Tibetan bread and about 3 set out to explore the town.  A sign I saw as we entered the town said it is 1850 meters (about 6070 feet) in elevation, while one of my guidebooks says 1780 meters (about 5840 feet).  Again, both could be correct as there is a considerable rise from the lowest part of town to the highest.  My altimeter registered about 5750 on arrival at my hotel.  It had shown Lake Khecheopalri at 5900 and the village above the lake at 6450.

I walked through town along its long,curving central street and reached the Norbugang Park at the top end, about 200 feet higher than my hotel.  Here, under trees draped with prayer flags, is a stone made throne with a white chorten (stupa) in front.  A particularly large pine stands just behind the throne.  The throne looks restored.  It was here in 1641 or 1642 or sometime around then that three lamas arrived, one from the west, one from the south, and one from Tibet to the north, and summoned a man from the east who arrived and was crowned by the lamas as Sikkim's first Chogyal, or king.  The chorten is supposed to contain soil from all over Sikkim and there is an indentation in a rock in front of the throne that is supposed to be the footprint of the lama from Tibet.  The high seat of the four seat throne was for this lama, with the Chogyal to his right and the other two lamas to his left.

I walked north of the wooded throne area to a grassy meadow looking north up the valley of the Rathong leading to Kanchenjunga, with huge, forest covered mountains on each side of the narrow river canyon.  Clouds filled the canyon.  I walked back to the throne area, very nice with all the big trees and prayer flags, and stopped by a little monastery building with a very large revolving drum prayer wheel.  Before 5 I started to walk back down and it was soon raining.  I passed the little lake, Kathog Lake, whose water was used to consecrate the first Chogyal.  People in town were very friendly.  After dinner I got ready for a bucket bath and when taking off my shoes and socks discovered a quite bloody sock and two leech bites near my ankle.  The leeches had long gone.  I must have picked them up on the trail from Khecheopalri. I should have checked when I arrived in Yuksom.

When I awoke the next morning I heard monks chanting from a nearby monastery. When I finally got up I walked over to the monastery.  There were only maybe a half dozen, including two little boys and an old man.  A younger man was chanting into a microphone, with speakers wrapped in plastic outside the small monastery.  A group of about 15 Tibetan women, some with prayer wheels, sat along the walls.  The chanting was occasionally punctuated with cymbals, drums and horns.  I watched and listened for quite a while and spent maybe an hour at the monastery.  The two little monks came out and ,after one fetched some embers from behind the monastery, they piled up several pine boughs and set them on fire.  It took a while for the boughs to catch fire.  The little boys would kneel down and blow onto the embers.  I noticed that a censor on the rail of the monastery porch also had green pine needles in it.  The women  left during a break in the chanting and some of them did chores around the monastery,  One was preparing food over an open fire behind the monastery.  I saw and smelled tomatoes being fried.  I walked back and had breakfast outside, as the sun had come out.

After breakfast I walked to another monastery, new and seemingly deserted, on a slight hill in town.  From there I walked to the little lake just beyond and then along the road to where the trekking trail starts for multi-day treks up towards Kanchenjunga.  I talked with a French guy who was just getting back after eight days.  He took along his six year old and his three year old and said they did fine.  He, however, suffered from altitude sickness.

I came back for lunch about 2.  The sky clouded up in the afternoon and I walked to a ridge just south of town called Tashi Tenka, the former grounds of Sikkim's first royal palace.  Farmhouses lined the stone path to the site.  It sprinkled a bit, but the views from Tashi Tenka were superb, pretty much a 360 degree view of the surrounding area.  To the south I could spot Pelling on its ridge, with Pemayangste Monastery and Rabdentse to the left, higher on the ridge.  To the east I could see the road to Tashiding, my next destination, through green hills of terraces and forest.  To the west is the Khecheopalri area and the route I had taken from there.  I couldn't see the lake, hidden in a bowl, but I could see the hill above the lake where I had stayed.  To the north is the narrow Rathong Valley, the route to Kanchenjunga, filled with clouds and with high hills on both sides.  Close to town and towering over it to the east is a forest covered hill with a monastery, Dubdi Monastery, on it.  About 4:30, while I was on the ridge, it began to rain hard and I found shelter in a little structure with a Nepali guy who lives on the ridge.  We discussed different kinds of bamboo while we waited out the brief rain, and then he went to cut grass for his cow and I walked back to my hotel.  It began to rain heavily again just as I got back. 

The next morning was cloudy and drizzly.  I went to breakfast about 9 and after walked back up to Tashi Tenka to enjoy the great views from the former palace area.  On the way back I stopped at a house with flowers all along it walls, which the woman living there proudly showed me.  She had fuschias, some sort of colorful lilies, and lots of other flowers I couldn't identify.

About 10:30 I started the steep walk up to Dubdi Monastery on a stone path covered with moss.  A light rain was falling.  The route was slippery, but beautiful, with magnificent forest and great views down to Yuksom.  Bushes with big white trumpet lilies grew along the path near its beginning.  The climb to the monastery is almost 800 feet above the town in less than a mile.  I passed a couple of monks coming down.  I walked slowly with lots of stops for the views and photographs and took about an hour to get there.  The rain stopped on the way up. The monastery itself is disappointing as it is covered with scaffolding.  It is in bad shape, with crumbling wall paintings.  A sign said it is the oldest in Sikkim, dating from 1701.

I looked around and then continued further up the ridge, ascending about 200 feet, through a spectacular forest of moss covered trees.  I encountered leeches again and found that one had attached itself to my foot.  It had already left, leaving a bloodstain on my sock.  I probably picked it up on the climb up from Yuksom to the monastery.  I found the path to to a village said to be 40 minutes away and started along that, but the light rain which had reappeared now became heavier and I decided to head back.  The rain had pretty much stopped by the time I again reached the monastery.  About a third of the way down the stony, mossy path from the monastery, I encountered a muddy road and decided to take that back to Yuksom.  It took a lot longer than the path, but was much less slippery.  It wound its way along the hillside, with great views and lots of birds chirping.  It arrives at Yuksom near the trekking trail north.  On the northern outskirts of the town I passed several houses and a couple of pig sties.  In one I watched a big sow feeding her six very energetic piglets.  She eventually got tired of them pulling at her and stood up and shook them off.  I got back to town about 3 and had a late lunch and then sat talking to a couple of other tourists for the rest of the afternoon.  By the time night fell it was cold and foggy.

The next morning was relatively clear.  From my hotel window about 6 or 6:30 I could see a snow covered peak far up the Rathong Valley to the north, but it soon was covered by clouds.  The sun was out so I walked up to Tashi Tenka to see the magnificent views in the sunshine.  I think, though, the views are more impressive shrouded with clouds.  I had a long breakfast, at first in the sun, though it clouded up by about 9.  I wandered around town and made my way back up to the coronation site at the top of the town before coming down for lunch.

About 2 I left on a share jeep bound for Tashiding, less than 12 miles away to the southeast.  It took us about an hour to cover those 12 miles, on a windy, badly paved road, but with great views of the terraced and forested hills and deep valleys.  Sikkim is a small state, only about 70 miles from north to south and 40 miles from east to west, but the hills and deep valleys make trips much longer than they seem on the map.  We dropped about 1200 feet, passed an impressive waterfall right along the road, ascended and then descended again into Tashiding, on a little saddle between a long, high ridge to the north and a conical hill to the south.  I got a room in a very basic, wooden hotel, for all of 200 rupees (less than $4) and about 3:30 began the steep climb up to the monastery atop the conical hill just south of town.  One of my guidebooks says Tashiding lies at 1490 meters (about 4900 feet) elevation.  My altimeter showed about 4400.

From the town I walked down to the base of the conical hill and then climbed up the steep stone path to the top, ascending 800 feet.  The stony path had little moss, though, at this lower elevation.  It passed houses and farm plots and forest.  Boys were playing cricket on one part near several houses.  My altimeter registered 5000 feet when I reached the top, where there are five or six nice monastery buildings.  Dating from 1717, this is supposed to be Sikkim's holiest monastery.  The Guru Rimpoche, who introduced Buddhism to Tibet centuries ago, is supposed to have stayed in a cave here.  The Dalai Lama was here a few years ago. 

In the first building a fairly large group of people, mostly women, were prostrating to chanting and bell ringing.  Under a cloudy sky I walked around the muddy grounds.  All but the first building were locked up.  Workers were busy at one spot, maybe putting up a new building, near the four story main hall.  Towards the back, on the southern end of the hill, is a group of several chorten, all painted white but one, which is painted gold.  They are said to contain the relics of lamas and chogyals.  A couple of workers had been whitewashing some of them, splattering paint all over.  Mani walls, with painted figures and "Om Mani Padme Om" written in Tibetan on them, led to the chortens and surrounded them.  At the very southern end, high above the confluence of the Rathong and Rangit thousands of feet below, are lines and lines of colorful prayer flags. 

The sky was cloudy and getting dark.  A couple of monks and several other people were circumambulating the chortens.  Not wanting to walk back in the dark, I stayed as long as I dared and then started down and after about 45 minutes (compared to an hour going up) reached town just before dark.  I had dinner in a small wooden restaurant along the town's one street.  At night it was clear and I could see the lights of Ravangla, my next destination, on a ridge up much higher to the east.