...some postscripts.

Forest Dept. sign at Lachung North Sikkim.


I wrote that the newspaper article was in Nepali...so it was, but we were also told at our favourite sweet shop haunt that there was an article in The Telegraph from Calcutta. They rummaged around and found it for us; then the hotel where we were staying also gave us a copy of the article. They were quite chuffed I think. Cathy rather enjoyed noticing people noticing her too. Even when we arrived at Kalimpong today the hotel owner recognised her from the newspaper photo, and as we have some old photos taken at Kalimpong, he has arranged for an old friend to come and visit us this evening.
Since there were so few people in the Jeep, the guide brought his wife along as she had never been up into north Sikkim. At the first tea stop on our way north she was keen to see the photos we had, and when she came to the autographed photo of Hillary and Tenzing after they had climbed Everest, she said, pointing to Tenzing, "He is my grandfather".
A few more road signs that entertained us on the hilly roads: "Don't gossip, let him drive." "If you drive like hell you will be there". The most frequent was "Inconvenience regretted please", but some waxed poetic. "Keep your nerves on sharp curves". "Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky". "There are no passengers on spaceship Earth, only crew"