Ups and downs in the Himalaya
Trip Start
Oct 27, 2004
1
19
35
Trip End
Aug 17, 2005
Darjeeling and Sikkim,
India
Friday, February 4, 2005
After a few days of acclimatisation we decided to make the venture to the Singalila ridge, which is a 5 day-ish trek through the foothills of the Himalaya on the Nepal/India border. Having been advised to take a guide by the local government, we promptly set off with a French bloke we met in the pub! Tufiq proved invaluable for providing bread and cheese, along with some typical Gallic humour. Not much use as far as finding our way in the snow however
Darjeeling dawn
! The trail itself turned out to be a small cart track with big red arrows every 100 yards or so that pointed in the direction we should be walking. Once again it turns out that the advice of local authorities has more to do with nepotism and money extracting than the safety and convenience of the traveler. If we had taken a guide for 300Rs a day, I'm not exactly what he could have told us..."Errm, head for the big red arrow and stick to the road". As it turns out, at the point which the trail became difficult and for us impassible, a guide would have been useless. Having returned to civilisation we met up with a couple who had, for the latter part of the trek, taken up the services of a guide who, for the best part of 12 hours had them wandering aimlessly in the snow and mist looking for a path that he apparently wasn't all that familiar with!
The trek itself was a fantastic, if at times very difficult and painful, experience. We were glad that all three of us were keen walkers and had all done our fair share of uphill trudging in our time. The final payoff also seemed to be disproportionately good compared to the effort. Waking up in Sandakpu (3650M), after a day that had a total of around 700M descent and around 1400M ascent packed into 21KM and a night that hit at least -7C, we were greeted by the most incredible views imaginable. The entire Kanchendzonga range, along with Everest, Makalu and Lhotse, were clearly and perfectly visible. Watching the latter part of sunrise (it was far too cold to get up before 6!) hit these 5-mile-high peaks was a true spectacular.
The descent from Sandakhpu was similarly beautiful as we passed through the upper-alpine, alpine, temperate and sub-tropical all in one day
gangtok
! This was after having been well and truly lost in the upper-alpine (read Baltic/freezing one's nuts off) zone, trudging through two foot of snow and ducking through pine boughs for an hour following footprints that led us back to where they started! Arriving in the village of Ghdoom was like coming home to paradise. Deep green valleys, punctuated by crystal-clear rivers and bamboo villages surrounded our beautiful lodgings where a bed for the night cost 50p and a hearty meal of bread and momos (Tibetan dumplings) followed by roasting hot masala chai (spicy tea) cost about 60p!After this we undertook the journey to Sikkim "the last Shangri-la", or, "the most bureaucratic area on God's earth"! Although undoubtedly beautiful, this state seems to be entirely inaccessible to all but the military and the well-off. To travel even 30 miles north from the border requires the accompaniment of a recognized travel authority who will charge $45 a day for the inconvenience! This is fuelled by an entirely rational fear of the Chinese, whose policy of Asian dominance is not only threatening to India and devastating to the Tibetans but also a real concern to anyone in the world who hopes for peace in our times. Still, we think that we should be able to catch a glimpse of the elusive and concealed beauty of this mystifying area as we take on the monastic trek. More info to come....
Green and purple hills, my arse!
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The burocracy of Sikkim is wonderfully Indian. Permit to get in; permit to go anywhere much beyond the capital, Gangtok; permit to be extended after 15 days; jeeps only running at about 5.30am to get anywhere and very idiosyncractic shop keepers (for example the Internet cafe which didn't have any computers or Internet access!) Our hotel was lovely though. A true travellers haunt which served good food and cheap beers however the day after we arrived it promptly closed for three days to celebrate "Losar" - the Tibetan New Year. Not to worry, the family did invite us to join them for New Year's breakfast and we got given traditional Tibetan "Chango" - fermented rice beer with fruit in it which felt a little like drinking your own sick. We also got to try the delicious(!) salt butter tea (yes, it's tea made with salt and yak butter) which although wasn't like drinking sick wasn't particularly pleasant.
We took a trip to Tsomgo Lake (3720M) which ended up being a bit of a farce. After about 5 hours in a jeep to get up through the snow drifts which were being cleared off the roads by teams of workers (men, women and youngsters) by hand, we reached the lake
Jeep ride through Sikkim
. It was a total white-out, the cloud rolls in anywhere between 7am and midday round these parts so they had already settled well over everything obscuring the view of the borders of Nepal, India and Butan. We could see some snow that we were asured was a lake but, to be honest, after 5 hours of driving through the stuff one patch of snow came to look much like the all the rest. We did see some yaks though which was nice, had some good momos then, after about 25 mins max. it was back into the jeep to drive for another good few hours to return to Gangtok. Our next trip to Yumtang valley was a lot better though and we got to stay in a beautiful converted Gompa for our guest-house. The valley was breathtaking with its glacier poking over the ridge and the river below flowing through massive snow patches. Seeing all this beautiful mountain scenery only made our decison about whether or not to go to Nepal all the harder. Do you or don't you in this type of situation? On recieving a pretty intense email from Rod and Nina (who we met back in Rajistan) however, about their experiences trying to get out of the country, we made up our minds not to go. The situation is really too volitile to risk it and the I think the whole idea of Nepal being a bit of a chill out after the madeness of India has gone out the window. So off we popped to the travel agents and bought 2 tickets from Calcutta to Bangkok - simple. I love this travllers freedom.
