Sikkim Day 1 – Uninstall Driver.. please

As my friend Partha Jha (who has made it a habit to get into my vacation posts) would agree, there are many ways to see kim. ‘Off for some GangTalk’, said my status message on 15th, and that’s where it would start. That’s also where we end the silly wordplay, almost. 🙂

Two flights took us over 2500 km from Bangalore, and landed us in Bagdogra in West Bengal, the nearest airport, about 120 kms from Gangtok, an estimated road journey of 4 hours, that began at 3.30 pm. At the airport, we noticed this father’s touching concern for his daughter’s health – never too early to start exercising..

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvgaaYZsi8g

We crossed Siliguri, and stopped at a roadside shop for some much needed nutrition. Sivok served us a decent chaat and chai. That’s the name of a place, by the way. 🙂

The climb began slowly as we uneventfully crossed Rambi (no Stallone jokes okay!) and Teesta. There was a minor roadblock at Malli, at the bazaar, but thankfully all was well in a few minutes. Darkening sky, mountains looming in the distance, the lights of the dam construction on the Teesta river, twisting roads, small roadside temples, perfect time for a small nap when suddenly the car stereo began playing ‘Ek Haseena thi’, from Karzzz. I asked D if she had anything in mind, and she told me not to drive her crazy at the beginning of a vacation.

The drive was quite a learning experience, as D and I now know ‘Kamini ki dastaan’ (the lyrics of the song above), and the Bachna ae Haseeno title track completely. There were a couple of others too, but for my own good, my brain seems to have cordoned off the area. We heard these about 5 times each, as they mimicked the looping mountain roads. Just when I was about to sing along and scar the driver for life, some primal instinct made him turn it off.

At Rangpo, where Sikkim began, the driver asked us to answer with a nearby town’s name if the cops asked us where we were from. When I asked him the reason, he said they were strict about not allowing in people from Nepal. D and I looked at each other to confirm our features and skin tone, and nodded to acknowledge the driver’s supreme intellect. We pretended to be asleep when we stopped at the border, in case we answered in Nepali accidentally.

To distract him from playing more music and havoc, we quizzed him on the various places in Gangtok we planned to visit, and he confidently gave us the respective distances from our hotel. It turned out later that the joke was on us – he was the one distracting us from his utter lack of knowledge of where the hotel in Gangtok was!! That meant that we took an extra hour to reach Mintokling, our campaign headquarters. Sometime during the journey, we were informed that due to heavy rains, our Day 2 plan of Nathula, and Tsongpo lake would not happen. Since we had one more day in Gangtok, we asked for the Day 2 and 3 plans to be interchanged.

Mintokling turned out to be an excellent place to stay, and we were thankful for its small restaurant. We ordered dinner, starting with momos and including a special Sikkim dish to go with the rotis. We confirmed that the dish had a gravy, and were met with an enthusiastic “yes, thick gravy“. The small detail that wasn’t mentioned was that the ‘thick gravy’ was enclosed in a super momo structure. A branch of peace was offered in the form of dal, and we left it at that.

The day ended on a high, as I found 2 Malayalam channels on the telly. It is somehow comforting to hear many people speak one’s language, when one has had an eventful day like the one above.