Category: Travel

Lankan Reams – Day 1 – Anuradhapura

The Negombo beach, which had seemed an undifferentiated black mass at 11 pm – the night before, was actually quite a decent one. Unfortunately, we couldn’t spend a lot of time here, since we had a long journey to what is called the Cultural Triangle. But I still had time to fully and delightfully digest the fact that Muttaappam and Fish Curry was considered part of a legit breakfast in Lanka, at least if we went by the hotel spread, which even otherwise, was quite awesome, with Pittu (Puttu), and string hoppers (Idiappam)

We started out and saw several kids in uniforms, which was surprising on a Sunday. Turned out it was for Sunday school and apparently, the Lankans call Negombo ‘Little Rome’. We passed a place that sounded just like home – Kochchikade. The skies were absolutely postcard, and they reminded me of the Twitter background. 🙂 There was a lot of construction happening on the roads we passed.

This seemed to be the second most common kind of elephant here, the first of course, being EGB. After Puttalam, which had a bustling Sunday market, we tested out a unique fruit called wood apple. Knock it on the floor to open it, and we get a sour, tangy, rarely sweet and honestly horrible taste. But many people make a living selling this – apparently the juice is very tasty. Though I encountered it later, the fruit had left a bitter taste in my mouth, and I didn’t dare try the juice.

Finally after about 3.5 hours, we reached Anuradhapura, and took a full pass for the cultural triangle, costing SL Rs.2825 per head, after the 50% discount for SAARCy countries. On hindsight, it might be better to figure out the individual costs of the places you plan to visit, since most of the biggies (Sigiriya, Tooth Relic Temple, for instance) are not covered. The tickets were bought in the Museum, where a self appointed guide, showed us, among other things, the ‘pee pee’ and ‘poo poo’ systems used by early Buddhist monks. At the end of it all, I felt quite sad for the old woman, jabbering away about a past that few seemed to be interested in.

Anuradhapura, sacred city and ancient capital, where if you threw the proverbial stone, you’d hit a stupa, and that stone was a freaking relic, mind you! So we saw the Sri Maha Bodhi tree, the oldest angiosperm, which was also the scene of an LTTE massacre about 25 years back. Ruvanveli Mahaseya, white and bright, and very click friendly.

We then decided to get ourselves us some lunch. The Anuradhapura Resthouse was busy with some VIP, and we finally reached The Grand, which gave us pork, chicken, along with the Lankan version of meals, a vanilla flavoured banana shake, and a distant view of Mihintale, which would be later in the day.

After lunch, we zipped through Thuparamaya Dagoba, Jetavanaramaya – made of over 90 million bricks, Abhayagiri Dagoba, the Moonstone (where another family watched us closely), and the Twin Ponds. The stupas were slowly causing a stupor and we decided to move on to Mihintale.

This was only about half an hour away, and is absolutely the place to go to if you’re afraid of heights. In fact, it is a good initiation ceremony for Sigiriya. The climb to Aradana Gala, where the novice invited the gods to come down and listen to the sermon of Mihinda, consists mostly of steps built into the rock face in ancient times, and is at such a height that you can believe the gods are at shouting distance. Spectacular view, which is difficult to capture when you’re praying to the above gods to let you hang on longer!!

We started off to Habarana, which was our halt for the night. Chaaya Village proved to be the most awesome resort in our vacation. A special thanks to our tour guys who offered to upgrade us to this place when they got a good discount. Even the pics at their own site don’t do them full justice. There’s an excellent story about Habarana itself, all of which you can catch here.

The other thing you can catch later is Day 3. In case you missed Day 0, its here.

September 13, 2010
Lankan Reams – Day 0 – SriLankan Airlines and Negombo

..and now its tradition to have my vacations flagged off by a Partha Jha wordplay. 🙂 He didn’t disappoint this time either, and rewarded my cryptic goodbye with this.

The road trip to our offsite airport wasn’t really adventurous, despite our driver’s best slow moving efforts. He wished us a happy journey though, that was a nice touch. In spite of the mildly irritating form factor, migration proved to be a simple business.

The SriLankan Airlines thankfully provided more avenues for cheap fun. If Air Deccan had a poor cousin, this one would be it. They did serve a ‘standard’ meal, and we use the word ‘standard’ loosely here, and I scared D by hinting that the mounds of potato would give us a loosie in the sky, or worse, during the vacation.

But I’m being mean, sorry, they weren’t really bad, though the craft did need some upholstery maintenance. I felt bad for the staff, and could understand their sad expression, which was mostly thanks to a raucous beer crowd, whose in-flight entertainment consisted of shooting pictures of themselves with free Carlsberg, with many retakes, all freshly canned. It also gave us a free nostalgia trip – buses to and from Kerala. There was this other guy in front of us with a hoodie – he kept looking up, I think he was apprehensive of leaks, couldn’t really blame him.

We arrived safely, mostly because D doesn’t let me speak during flights. Wait a second, I now realise she mostly doesn’t let me speak. Hmm. Currency change was a breeze, because we had been warned by our tour organiser that the newly symbolic Rupee would be difficult to convert, and so we’d carried $.

Meanwhile, our guide was waiting for us, and I identified parts of my name from several others. He took us to the parking lot, which had a retro feel to it. For instance, ours was a full fledged Toyota which could seat about a dozen people, and reminded me of the ‘kidnap’ cars Amjad Khan used in 80s Bollywood.

On the way to Negombo, where we were to stay the night, it was like a surreal India – Hutch saying ‘Hi’ alongside a Samsung Corby, and an Airtel fighting for attention. That reminded me of the Uniconnect card I got, thanks to booking through Cleartrip. Sorry Cleartrip, we both did what was expected of us, no controversy here. 😉

The Camelot Beach Hotel at Negombo was neat enough, and though we sensed a fish smell near the reception, the long corridor was free of it. The room was quite good, and once we had cracked the plug point secrets, all was well. Meanwhile, instead of a television, we had a radio with good old fashioned knobs, and we rocked ourselves to sleep listening to the roar of the sea and “I’m gonna live forever“.

More pics here, and coming soon Part 2 🙂

September 12, 2010
Sikkim Day 7 – Up & Away

One more monastery before we left. We bade farewell to Mintokling and left for Enchey monastery, located within the town. It followed the same pattern as the other two we’d visited, the only exception being a lot of sleeping beings we found – a foreigner, a few dogs. The monk in charge was pretty rude when we almost stepped into an area inside the sanctum, we weren’t supposed to. We didn’t bother to point out that they should ideally cordon off that area, since there was no way to put a sign. Buddha really wouldn’t have minded.

As we reached the limits of Gangtok, I wished I could take a snap of the CCD outlet with arguably the best view among its kind. We left for the 4 hour drive to Bagdogra, and there was a sense of finality as we passed familiar places and checked them off, like a countdown. – Ranipool, Singtham, Rangpo, and then into West Bengal – Malli, Teesta, Rambi, Sivok, and finally Siliguri. We stopped at the newly opened mall for lunch, actually still under construction, but with a restaurant, a multiplex and a few shops operational. We thought we’d try the food court, but the elevator wasn’t working and climbing up 4 floors (still under varying degrees of construction) didn’t really appeal. The loos worked, but were also victims of rigorous testing by the construction workers. Prakash, our driver from the first 2 days, claimed that the legendary Pawan Chamling owned the mall.

The sudden shift from all the cold mountains to the stifling plains was very depressing, especially as we passed shanties and huge mounds of garbage as we continued from Siliguri to Bagdogra, in typical city traffic, where we shift to cm/hr measurements.

We’d been sent a message the previous day, asking us to report 2 hours in advance owing to congestion. They were right, the baggage check queue almost went out of the airport. Bagdogra airport was a revelation as far as standards went. International check in times, aside, this was one of those heritage airports, from the time IA/AI planes ruled the Indian skies. Utterly ill equipped, the staff seemed to be always paying homage to that era. Their security checks were indeed pertinent – one visit to this place and you’ll be very tempted to you-know-what-mentioning-which-could-get-me-into-trouble. The railway station ambiance was topped with a bunch of women, exceeding their baggage quota by 216 kgs (!!) and then shifting bags to cabin baggage/ putting them back like veg shopping. We sat waiting, and I got bored enough to check my mail. The place was so crowded that I stored this in my drafts “‘Opening a secure connection. Content cannot be seen by anyone else’ does not include the guy looking over your shoulder.”

We finally took off, about 20 minutes late. Our plans to make a quick dash to the Howrah Bridge from Kolkata airport were dashed, as the taxi operators weren’t sure of getting us back in time. So we sat in the CCD outside, and drank in the airport sights at dusk, quite an ironical finale to a vacation, as though helping us make the transition to routine.

Sikkim proved a decent trip – for me, vacations are in the mind, and a different setting can only help. Despite a few niggles, there’s no reason to follow the advice of one of the drivers ahead of us, on the way from Gurudongmar.

The single biggest thing for me was regaining the motivation to continue that book, for whatever it’s worth. But for now, we seem to have developed a 3M fatigue – momos, mountains, monasteries, so maybe its time for a break from that. Like I told Mo, we were carrying the Leh baggage, and it will always be a difficult gold standard to measure up to. But having said that, there was a coincidence that seemed to me like the Joker character introduction in Batman Begins. The first chapter of the book I was reading was set in Tibet, at the exact same place mentioned in the first bottle of water I got during the journey.

Maybe, someday………….. 🙂

PS. For those interested, we customised a tour with Yak & Yeti

April 29, 2010
Sikkim Day 6 – Sikkim Pop and Zero Point Someone

The room did have a nice view from the window, but it was better from the balcony. The only snag was reaching the balcony, as the door refused to budge. I remembered my erm, MBA education days when I jumped out through the window (we did that during a few lectures) and opened the door from outside. It was worth it, as always. 🙂

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqT3gUvxs-s

We left the hotel by 7, after a hurried breakfast, to see the famous rhododendrons in Yumthang, and to visit Zero Point, where all roads apparently ended. Yumthang was only about 25 kms away, and as we climbed further towards Yumesamdong, the flowers changed their color from purple to red to a pale pink. Apparently there are about 10 different versions. The driver made us listen to Sikkim pop, and even a Nepali song, the latter reminding me of early 90s Bollywood.

We finally arrived at Zero point well over a couple of hours later. It turned out to be the Himalayan version of Kumbh Mela, with potential participants of music reality shows belting out everything from Shammi Kapoor to SRK hits, and generally going crazy at what perhaps was their first encounter with snow. Alcohol is freely available, thankfully so is coffee, though it stays hot for less than a couple of minutes.

The driver said that there was a proposal to build a road from here to Gurudongmar, but the Lachen guys stopped it with a petition. Tibet is less than 50 kms away. We returned, and stopped at Yumthang for what appeared to be the driver’s brunch, and watched while people irritated a yak and almost got gored in return. We made a brief stop at the hotel, and after a quick lunch, started our trip back to Gangtok. The driver estimated a 5 hour journey, which actually turned out to be 6. We also saw this interestingly named place on the way back to Chungthang. Sometimes life does seem like a

We passed the tourist points we’d halted at earlier, but thanks to the rains, they had absolutely no crowds. The driver, to our irritation insisted on following another driver, who was painfully slow. He also educated us on the pitfalls of shared cabs, as each passenger had his own tastes and harassed the drivers on where to stop, and not stop. At Naga falls, he seemed to give up on his companion, and told his passengers that he had seen their driver drinking. If we weren’t in a hurry, I’d have loved to stay and watch.

We hurried because though the rope way seemed a lost cause, we thought we’d roam around Gangtok a bit more and maybe drop in a Lal Bazaar again. The driver, though, was glued to his mobile, after having been out of a network for the last couple of days (the network is practically non existent long before Chungthang) I think he let all his near and dear ones know we hadn’t done him any harm, though the chances in those last few kilometres to Gangtok were pretty high. A Buddhist with a liking for Hit beer, our driver.

We finally reached Gangtok at 7.30, and after getting dropped back at Mintokling, decided to check out the last place in our list, for dinner. Arthur’s, on Tibet Road, another place recommended online, almost opposite Cafe Live & Loud, turned out to be a near replica of Allen’s Kitchen, but a few rungs lower in terms of character. While we waited for the food, we heard the owner tell a friend of his who had arrived just then, that if she’d come a few minutes earlier, he might have left immediately, because there was a large group of South Indians. Meanwhile, we leafed through magazines and found one with Charukesi’s Sikkim article, as the owner came over and asked us where we were from. 🙂

The chilly pork was quite good, as was the Chicken Thupka. The article too. Prices are very reasonable. We decided to pay another visit to Baker’s Café, found it closed, and went to our backup option – Cacao. It had only one other group, and we sat watching the street on our last night in Gangtok. Peaceful.

April 28, 2010
Sikkim Day 5 – Amitabh Falls and Feats at 17100 ft

This was the big day, the day we would visit the lake at 17100 feet – Gurudongmar. The driver said that the earlier we started, the better. Our versions of ‘early’ obviously didn’t match, and we left, with me still in REM mode, at about 5 AM. For the record, that’s practically the day before, not early morning.

But the views of the sunrise, as we moved past heavily wooded mountains was worth the early start. We stopped at Thangu for breakfast – eaten in a tiny ‘hotel’, as we warmed ourselves next to the stove. Breakfast consisted of Maggi noodles with loads of chilies. Thangu also serves as the first loo break. I use the word ‘loo’ very loosely here, it is a shack with a hole in the ground, hopefully with some moving water way down that will ensure that you don’t get to know the intricate details of what the previous occupant had the day before. Thangu also has a military camp, and a tourist guest house, where, the driver said later, he had picked up a trio of Dutch cyclists a few days back. (they cycled till there from Chungthang!!)

The next stop was at Gaigong, where the military guys checked our papers, and warned our driver to refrain from using his army fatigues style jacket. They didn’t notice my umbrella. Immediately after Gaigong, we noticed some yaks having their breakfast.We moved on, and gave a lift to the yak owners. We dropped them off a while later, at a place which offered no shelter from rain or sun. The driver said he pitied them, because they were refugees from Tibet, who hadn’t even seen Gangtok. They survived on yak milk, and provisions the army sometimes gave them.

The terrain was barren, but breathtakingly beautiful, literally. The driver advised us to munch on popcorn we’d purchased at Thangu, as its smell apparently boosts the metabolism. Ok. We raced with another cab and had fun climbing the last 1000 feet.

I asked the driver where the name Gurudongmar came from and characteristically, he gave me his own bizarre explanations. I was tempted to give it right back to him with an equally bizarre ‘Guru -Dong – Mar’ version, based on ‘Tehelka’, the Bollywood film. (featuring Amrish Puri as Dong, and Dilip Dhawan – ‘Guru’ in Nukkad. Amrish Puri actually kills him after this song. Mar. Note that the film also deserves credit for the first use of the Avatar hairstyle in Bollywood)

Gurudongmar is quite a beautiful place, and has many stories associated with it, as I learned from the military camp at Gaigong later. Drinking the water from the lake is supposed to help women conceive. Also, one part of the lake, apparently marked by the Guru in question at the behest of locals who needed drinking water, remains unfrozen even in the coldest winters. The lake is at 17100 feet, and you tend to struggle for breath sometimes, but if you have erm, enough airs, you can take a walk around the lake, while watching most people participate in a puke fest. I was afraid for D, but she seemed strict about her retch workout timings.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCH9r08i4G0

The return journey was relatively uneventful, though we detoured a bit for the Chopta Valley view. Photography is prohibited in military areas, and the driver raced ahead when I asked for a single shot of the ‘café at 15000 ft. We got back to Lachen by 1.30, and after lunch, immediately set out for Lachung, 50 odd kms away. Bollywood refused to leave me as the stereo played a remix of ‘Saat samundar paar’ from Vishwatma!! Awesome! The only tourist attraction was Bhimtala falls, according to the driver, who also said it was more popularly known as Amitabh Falls, because of its height.

We reached Lachung by 5.30, and settled ourselves in a room with a view, and I started reading “Chasing a monk’s shadow”. Dinner was significantly better though D refused to the chicken, after her nocturnal adventures of the previous two nights.

April 27, 2010