May 10 | Got a sneak peek into the hippie culture from the flower-child of the late 60s

The trip was now drawing to an end and Kalimpong would pretty much be our last destination after which we will be on our way back. But who said one has to sulk on the last day of the trip, it’s in fact a day to enjoy even more because this day has the onus of reminding us what a great trip this has been and the day managed to do a super job of it.

The day started with some basic shopping and getting the luggage carrier repaired. We had our last breakfast at Baker’s Cafe and picked a few essentials for the trip and left from Gangtok at about 12:30PM.

The initial 27kms of the total distance from Gangtok to Kalimpong were pretty much retracing our way from Yuksom, so we reminisced our ride up. Gangtok was where we stayed the longest and i would personally think had the best time; be it the day trip to Tsomgo or our drive with Luckhpa to the highest point we have been on this trip, the memories have been etched in our minds and will stay there, hopefully for the rest of our lives. Sikkim had made a lasting impression on our minds. After having been to four states during the course of this trip, it was only today while exiting Sikkim that we actually felt bad and wished we had some more time here. We thought to ourselves how if we had a few more days, we could’ve done the trip to Gurdongmar Lake as well, but all these were thoughts and nothing could be altered, so the ride kept on.

After reaching Singtam, the roads except the last 18kms were plains and ran along the River Teesta. It’s during this ride that we could see a few different shades of river; violent like an ocean in the grip of a storm and calm as a lake in the mountains. With the river running along, the ride seemed like a breeze, we seemed to be flowing with the river and within no time, we were already at the foot of the hill that we had to go up to reach Kalimpong. Once up the hill, we checked a few places and there seemed to be enough options, but our impression of a Tourist Lodge hadn’t changed, so we went looking for one, after some effort we did find not one but two Tourist Lodges, but both were fully occupied, so we kept scouting for more places and came across this lane that went a little inside and pointed towards the ‘Park’. The hotel was nice, but we wanted to once check this small place we had seen just at the entrance of the lane. This is when we came across Hotel Cloud9 and on checking the rooms, decided to take the room even though they weren’t as comfortable as the ones at the Park. And i must admit it was a brilliant decision.

Binod Thamang, the owner of Cloud9 is among the few left from the hippie culture. He’s the erstwhile flower-child of the late 60s who grooved to the tunes of Beatles, high on spirits about changing the world and believing in a definition of utopia which could be achieved by just making things simple. Unfortunately the culture died but left behind a man who still reminisces the golden days. The difference is, now Binod runs Cloud9 and transports himself back to those beautiful days every time he finds someone who he could share his stories with. We got lucky and had Binod talking to us for hours about how he was a performer himself and has had so many others perform at his small hotel. He admits his lack of modesty and tells us, “i must admit, i’m one of the coolest guys in Kalimpong when it comes to the music scene” and frankly with the likes of Lou Majao jamming at his hotel, it does make Cloud9 the hot-spot for music lovers. More about the chat ahead, but before that, we had to step out to see whatever little we could of Kalimpong.

Being a small town, the place pretty much dies at 7:30PM and we managed to reach the market only at 7PM, so a little bit of looking around and the place was out and done with. But i much admit, there’s a lot to shop at Kalimpong especially apparel. We knew that there is a monastery at one end of town and from our experience at Mirik, the monastery tends to stay open even late in the night, so we decided to pay a visit. We could only see the structure but the stupas are now surrounded by a whole lot of people and an electric tower! We asked the cab to hang on there and start coming down from the monastery after ten minutes which is when we wanted to walk down the slopes. At one point, we could see over the cliff the town of Kalimpong below us, with the typical quintessential night light scene, but something brilliant happened here. First, the lights above our head went off, we thought it must be a regular power cut in the area we were, but a few moments later, another phase darkened and a portion of the city was darkened, then another and finally the last phase which dowsed the entire town in darkness but seeing it all go one phase at a time was like watching a Hollywood flick. The darkness was scary but soothing and just than our driver came and dropped us back to the hotel. Just as we entered, Binod announced, a little irritated that the dinner is ready and will be served, so we should just park ourselves directly at the table. We did not want to upset him and also it was dark so we didn’t see any point going to the room. We sat there to enjoy the very brilliant Bhutanese dinner. While we were waiting, Binod called his contacts to try and revive the electricity but was told that this is a big block and that it’ll stay dark for at least another hour. Binod still requested and hung up.

Binod has a clear rule, while he’s managing the hotel, he would drink only in the perimeter of the reception area, which means he had his glass with a large peg of Vodka with just water lying on the reception table from which he’ll sip at regular intervals. Half way down our meal, he came to chat and called for some special sauce that is his preparation; by the way, Binod is also an expert chef and supervises his restaurant personally. The sauce was yum and pungent, Binod seemed to enjoy the fact that we liked the sauce. He then asked us, how can young boys like us just have dinner and crash so early, he offered us a drink and said it was on the house with the caveat that only the first drink is on the house, if any follow will be charged. By now Binod was really warming up to us. We tried telling him that we need to leave early tomorrow morning, but he insisted so we gave in. When the drink was at the end, Sushant and i decided we should order another else it’ll look like we just had the free drinks and left. Our drinks ran parallel to Binod’s dinner and that’s when he told us about his hay days as a flower-child. After that, the evening seemed to fly with Binod getting his guitar and singing classic Beatles and Dylan for us till about 2AM! We hardly realized that the electricity had come back but the lights remained switched off and the candle light created the perfect ambience.

In the end, we settled the bill and Binod confessed that he’s not much of a morning person but will try his best to be up when we leave, we knew he won’t :)

Morals: Go by your gut while choosing a place to stay, sometimes the smallest of places can offer the best experiences. Budget sometime to shop at Kalimpong, especially for apparel. Don’t miss making a trip to the monastery at the top of the mountain. If at Kalimpong, make sure you visit Cloud9, at the least for on meal.

May 9 | Witnessed the best color contrasts ever

While our friendly travel agent had fixed Zero Point as the additional stretch that most tourists do not take up but during the journey Luckhpa spoke more enthusiastically about another similar place, Khatua. Last evening he wanted us to decide where we want to head. Even after knowing that we did not have the requisite passes for Khatua, Luckhpa said he’ll risk it and take us through if we wanted to. When we asked him for his opinion on which place we should go to, he was non-committal and we could not make up our mind last evening. So we decided to meet in the morning at 6AM and decide, but the debauchery from last night left us very tired and sleepy, so we managed to get out at about 6:45AM. At that time, we decided to leave without breakfast and first head to Yumthang.

Yumthang (3612mtrs) is where Sikkim’s Rhododendron festival happened a few weeks earlier. Rhododendron are bell-shaped flowers that bloom in thirty six colors! In the month of April, the entire valley is covered in these flowers, making it the second ‘Valley of Flowers’ after the one in the north. But unfortunately by the time we had got there (May), it wasn’t in bloom instead only a few places we could see the flowers. Nonetheless, they were beautiful. We saw them in Red, Lilac, Pink, Yellow and a few other colors. Yumthang had come highly recommended by locals and we had greater expectations, but we were kind of disappointed because all we saw were a hundredth of the flowers and a few snow capped peaks. By now, the expectations off Zero-Point had dipped, but we progressed.

Sleepy headed, initially our head kept bobbing on the sides because of the lack of sleep. But slowly the place started to reveal itself and i started getting busy with my camera. Its now that i realized that in my inebriated state last night, i had forgotten to charge my camera battery and i could not stop cursing myself. So i made an effort to conserve battery and not randomly keep clicking. By now we had started to assume that any place we go to, there’ll always be fog to play spoil sport and we should not expect anything very different from this either. We were in for some beautiful surprise. As we kept progressing further from Yumthang, the skies became clearer; and not just clear, but bluer as well. For me personally, this was one of the deepest shades blue that i have seen the skies in and there was too much around that was adding to the contrast.

On most maps, this stretch of the road is marked as a trekking path and not for vehicles which should give you an idea of why many don’t go this far but for us, this may have been one of the high point of our trip. On the way, we had the trench of the valley in blood red soil, the base of the hills in various shades of greens, water in the streams making their own way taking the color of whatever they passed over, mammoth rocks in shades of blacks and blues, dews hanging from the tip of the conifer trees shimmering in the sun like decorations on a Christmas tree, intermittent dense bushes of Rhododendrons adding pastel shades, snow capped mountains reminding us what pure white looks like and finally the deep blue skies filling gaps left in the top and over the horizon making it the most beautiful drive i’ve ever had. By now, we had forgotten that we were sleepy and were only lost in trying to keep our eyes as wide open as we could so that we could watch more of this beautiful surrounding.

Once we reached Zero Point (4624 mtrs) also called Yumesamdeng all we could see was a vast stretch of playground hidden between high mountains with patches of snow left from the last fall. Luckhpa suggested we just go take a walk around while he waits, in his mind this was a place for anyone to spend at max an hour. Even we didn’t see much more than a few tourists flocking towards the patches of snow and a few stalls, so we just started walking. For starters, we were not taking the same road towards the snow patch because there was just too much of a crowd, which is when we reached the thin stream, the sight of which made the air look cleaner. From a walk along the stream it moved to crossing the stream to going a few steps over the mountain to several breaks over which we were hardly spoke but just kept looking at the mountains around and the changing colors of the sky. We did not realize but we had climbed atleast an additional 150mtrs, infact Sushant climbed higher while i was busy panting and taking pictures. And that’s when we were the highest above sea-level over the entire trip, about 4770mtrs above sea-level, more than half way up Mount Everest! (Smaller pleasures of life :))

The walk down was tougher but we managed and it was now that we compared where we were on the mountain, to the sheer size of the mountain looking at it from the foot, we did climb quite a bit. Once we got back, Luckhpa smiled and said, “i knew you both are not the regular tourists, you’ll must’ve gone up the mountain” He had this smile that in a sweet way complained about how late we had gotten but yet how sure he was that we had fun. After the niceties, he got back to reality and told us that, there is a hot spring on the way and if we’d like to go there; but when we did not show interest he said, we didn’t miss anything because it’s apparently a concrete tank where the warm water is transferred artificially and with hundreds of people taking a dip, the place stinks. Heading back straight to the hotel, we had a quick bite and left for Gangtok.

It was a tough drive back because it got dark very soon and started pouring heavily. With the rain also came our closest friend on this trip, the fog, which brought the visibility to a mere 5mtrs or lesser. Even with the headlights we could hardly see anything, we even got our flash lights out, but it did not help much. Eventually, the journey did end and Luckhpa dropped us at the hotel. When we tried tipping him, he refused! When was the last time you heard someone refuse a tip? But with some serious coaxing, he did take it but it was a real heartfelt tip and not a formality.

We stepped out for a quick dinner and got back to just crash.

Morals: Always charge your camera batteries or carry spares. The Valley of Flowers blooms in April, so if that’s what you want to see, plan accordingly. Carry sufficient woolens while on this stretch, it does get quite cold. Be prepared for a rough ride. Never underestimate the weather, it’s out there to surprise you. Don’t just go to Yumthang and return, make sure you do the Zero Point, and if possible Khatua as well. If possible, carry a flask with tea when you go up on the hill at Zero Point, it’ll surely be beautiful to sip on chai when its sooo cold. Read about migratory birds in this region, there’s a good chance you may spot a few. Please avoid debaucheries before hectic trips like this.