Yumthang
Valley and Gurudongmar Lake had been on my travel wish-list for a long time.
Both of these places are in the Northern part of the Indian state of Sikkim,
high in the Himalayas of North East India. Our travel agent in Calcutta
suggested we add Dzongu, a forest valley that has been reserved for the Lepcha
peoples of Sikkim, to our itinerary. Since I am not the type who treks, me and
my friend Prasenjit chose to do the normal tourist thing, i.e. travel from
Calcutta to Bagdogra via air, and take a car from there to Gangtok, Sikkim’s
capital. A four by four would then take us for our week-long vacation in the mountains. I don’t know why, but to me, music always sounds better in the mountains,
and I find myself quietly staring out of the car window at peaks and valleys,
listening to classic rock. Sikkim is magical, they say, and the first piece of
magic happened as we pulled in to Gangtok. I had just turned on Led Zeppelin’s
Houses of the Holy album on the iPod, and as if on cue, as the first strains of
The Rain Song started playing, it began to rain! We arrived at out hotel as it
was getting dark, to the sounds of thunder echoing in the mountains.
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| Thunderstorm in Gangtok |
