The journey to north Sikkim.

Kitchen at the house of the Tibetans where we stayed at Lachung.







We have a few photos, some labelled and some not, that we ascertained were taken in north Sikkim. We set off in steady rain which brought the temperature down and turned much of the road into slushy slippery mud (with precipitous drops - it would be a very long way down before the first bounce) but the old Mahindra (a Jeep copy) got through. One of the named photos was of Mangan Bazaar but the town of Mangan was a concrete jungle and unrecognisable although one of the people we spoke to knew that the photo had been taken in the "old bazaar" which we located on the way back and was by-passed by the new road. It had hardly changed at all, even with the same old buildings rusting away. One of them had 1903 written on it, although the photos were taken on a trip in 1950 and, we guess, in a Jeep (since ladies in the photo were wearing dresses). The next stop was 60 or so kms on at Changtung and a famous rock sacred to both Buddhists and Sikhs. The bare rock of the photo now has trees around it, a fence with Tibetan style prayer wheels, and a Sikh flagpole plonked in the middle with a Sikh temple adjacent. They reckoned their founder, Guru Nanak, had been there but local Buddhists aren't too happy about that. That photo had changed the most. Our destination for the day was Lachung about 125kms from Gangtok and took 7 hours - a lot of it on slippery gravel or mud in first gear. Although the Border Roads Organistaion had spent a lot of money on signs telling how wonderful they are, precious little had actually been done to the road which was no more than a rough track for a lot of the way. Some of the signs were quite entertaining, such as "No Harry, Be Happy" or "If Married Divorce Speed". We really liked Lachung and stayed with a Bhutia (Tibetan) family who fed us well and gave us their home brewed beer. In Tibet chang is made from barley but Sikkimese make it from millet. A bamboo flask about 4in wide and 8in deep is filled with fermented millet then filled with warm water the brew is drunk from a thin bamboo straw; when the flask is empty it is refilled with water - usually at least 6 times. It had a very pleasant taste and relatively mild effect.
Grace had taken a photo in Lachung which is still much the same, and although the local women were interested in the photo of a local chowkidar (guard), no-one in the town knew him. The town was surrounded by enormous snow covered massifs, which we saw little of due to mist and cloud. Next morning we headed further up the road for about an hour and a half to Yamtung where Grace had gone to the hot springs. We passed through forest of Silver Fir and rhododendron, past glaciers, grazing yak, and occasional fields of purple primula, multi coloured azalias and rhododendrons. Thick mist swirled in and stark old firs dissappeared into it. Snow covered the ground under the rhododenrons which were variously red, purple and pink, some with small leaves, others large. We reached the forest bungalow at Yatung which hadn't changed since the British built it in the exact style of buildings around lighthouses. After a short walk in bitingly cold wind, we went to the hot pools and enjoyed a hot bath with a few people including the forest officer we had spoken to that morning. We were back at friendly Lachung for lunch and chilled out for the wet afternoon, before more good food and chang. It was raining still as we left this morning, rained most of the way down and was rainingn as we arrived in Gangtok. We are assured this is most unseasonal. Tomorrow we head to Kalimpong for the last of Grace's photos. Incidentally, I mentioned the press at the school the other day. We we were shown Cathy's photo in the local paper, but it is all in Nepali so we don't have a clue what they said!