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.