High tea in Gangtok

Mr Prabhan in one of his greenhouses with orchid.


We had been invited to see someone who knew aunt Grace at 4pm. He doesn't want us to publish any names apparently, but he was private secretary to the late Chogyal (King), as his father was to the previous king, and his father to the one before that. He told me he went to school in Darjeeling before going to Bishopcotton school in Simla and then university in England. To say his English is impeccable is an understatement. He had also invited a friend of his who also knew Grace - Mr Pradhan was the Chief Secretary of Sikkim, probably the 2nd most powerful office in the land. They were greatly interested in the photos we had, could name a number of people in them, and we had much to talk about over pastries, sandwiches (with crusts removed of course), cream cakes and muffins and several cups of the finest tea. Mr Pradhan said he initiated a local tea estate which he said has the 2nd best tea in India (the best being somewhere near Darjeeling). This was enjoyed in a lovely old house that appeared to be of British colonial design and construction. Beautiful timber lined walls, wide timber floorboards, very old photos of Sikkim royalty on the walls. He also had a rare old photo of the Englishman Charles Bell with the 13th Dalai Lama, the King of Sikkim, and numerous other high lamas from Tibet.
Mr Pradhan gave us a copy of a newspaper clipping from New Zealand where he met up with Grace in 1990 while investigating orchids - he is first and foremost a horticulturalist with a special interest in cultivating from Sikkim's 540 native orchids. This morning we went over the valley to the Rumtek monastery, the seat of the Karmapa, head of the Kagyu lineage. The 17th Karmapa has not yet been to his monastery here, due I think to political reasons after he escaped from Tibet in recent years. The monastery is a replica of his old seat at Tsurphu in Tibet, and the room housing the relics of the last Karmapa is very powerfully peaceful, armed guards with Kalashnikovs and Uzi machineguns notwithstanding.
We could not delay too long as we had a lunch invitation with Mr Pradhan half way back to Gangtok. He has a magnificent terraced garden about 2000 feet below Gangtok making it a bit more suitable for his thousands of orchids. I lost count of the hothouses, shadehouses, and propagating sheds. They also specialise in grafting as many varieties of citrus (there must have been hundreds of rootstocks alone) as they can obtain from around the world to find suitable species to begin commercial citrus industry in Sikkim. He has an open permit to import anything he desires. We had a sumptuous home cooked meal, and Mrs Pradhan identified several women in our photos after lunch. Cathy is now at the school working on their computer for the presentation on Thursday. Although the temp here is a delightful 24 or so, it is 42 at Varanasi rising to 45 on Friday and getting hotter. That is our destination next week - gasp! But we plan to go to north Sikkim in a few days which will take us to high altitude and cold weather.