Rest Day –I wake up at 5:45AM to a picturesque view of the
mountains and a lake next to our guest house. Since everyone was asleep and I
decided to work on my journal for the next hour and catch-up on the last couple
of days. Mona woke up and went down to make her special tea for everyone and
soon everyone was walking up after a some real deep sleep induced by 9hrs of
trekking J
We have our tea and take in the views.
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| Sipping Tea and taking in Views |
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| Nagesh paddles on the lake below |
“I see a Temple” I noted, “Its Maa Durga’sTemple” I hear one
of the staff tell me from below. A pretty temple at the edge of the lake. Soon
I see Nagesh walking down to the lake and sitting on a paddle boat J Now I want to walk to
the lake so Mona I go down there for our little ‘romantic walk’ by the lake.
Some alone time, a visit to the temple and some photographs. Kavi and Nagesh are
also now walking around the lake. We run into some kids going to the local
school in school uniforms. "Its just 10 minutes away", they say and then quickly
disappear. Sikkim is one of the most progressive states apparently with very
high levels of education (but not as much employment, which is where schemes
like NAREGA come into play).My right knee is still acting up, so after a few
rounds, we sit down and then slowly come back up. I call Ahmedabad to check on
the kids and here that the papers there have been reporting unseasonal snowfall
in N.Sikkim. Great !! Glad we didn’t get stuck up there ….
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| Lake and 'Maa Durga' Temple |
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| Gentle walk for tender knees |
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| Back to Eating - Breakfast @ Hee Gaon Guest H |
Everyone comes down as we get our breakfast together and
decide to go on a light walk to the local Hee Village. Monozh and NB take us
down a small walk, we cross a pretty Government school and enter the courtyard
of some houses below (remember, all movement in this area is vertical… wherever
you go, you are going either up or down). Neat little houses, with small farms
in the back, cows, chicken, pigs and a satellite dish. We settle down in the
courtyard and Monozh and NB arrange for our women to dress up in the local
saree. Its like any other saree, just worn differently. Mrinal, Viji, Mona all
don the sarees, some jewellery, we take pictures and have a good time sipping
in some local culture. As I was saying, Sikkim is a very progressive state.
“Any family in Sikkim that doesn’t have work gets 40Kgs of rice a month from
the government” Monozh tells us “and if you are over 60, you get Rs 600 in stipend every month, and there are
also stipends for the disabled”. We complete our visit to the local home, walk
back up the school, protect our guide dog David from some local mongrels and
get back to the guest house.
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| Government Primary School in Sikkim |
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| School boys and girls playing Soccer. Everyone plays soccer here. |
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| Traditional Sikkim House |
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| Inside a house in Sikkim |
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| Traditional Sikkimese Women |
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| Earrings and Noserings |
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| Traditional Florida Girl |
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| Traditional Sikkimese Iyer Girl |
Over lunch, we discuss plans for the next few days. We are
supposed to spend two days in uttarey and 1 day in Pelling. One idea is to
cancel Uttarey and get straight to Pelling, but the hotel in Pelling is very
expensive, plus some of us don’t want to fully skip Uttarey. Some heated
discussion later, we agree on one day at Uttarey and 2 days in Pelling J
But what are we going to do right now? A walk to the Market
place? It’s a 8Km walk and we decide to take the gentle path down to save some
of the bad knees. Whoa… what a walk and what views. In front of us we have the
green slopes and and by our side we can see the village on our side of the
slopes, and the sun is slowly setting behind the mountains. Mrinal gets down on
a her knees and announces that David, the guide dog is really a girl J Now, we wonder if she
should be Daisy. We have no idea where she had come from. I first saw
David/Daisy at the campsite in Barsey, though Venky says he saw her in Hilley
too. David/Daisy accompanied us on every trek after that, and was a constant
companion on the 9hr trek down from Barsey to Hee. Everyone had developed a
soft corner for her, and we knew that we would part ways soon. We would be
taking a taxi back up from the market, so what was going to happen of her?
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| David/Daisy on the walk down to the Market |
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| Soccer under the mountains |
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| Sikkim Premier League - on the slopes |
We reach the market and the girls are shopping for some clothes
already J I
take pictures with the local cop in the Police outpost, walk around, play
table-tennis with a local kid on a make-shift table. Minoti and Nagesh pick up
things for local kids of the support staff in the guest house and for kids
playing on the streets.
Our Taxis show up and we are about to head up. David/Daisy?
She is hanging around the Taxi. Monozh convinces one of the Taxi drivers (his
friend) to take her in J
Yah !! She now has a home as we move on.
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| Hee Gaon Police OutPost |
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| Clothes Shopping in the Hee Gaon Maketplace |
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| Table-Tennis with a local boy on a make-shift table |
We reach our guest house and Monozh
gets us the local millet brew. It’s a small bamboo flask filled with fermented
millet; pour hot water in, wait for 5 minutes, and sip it with a bamboo straw.
Cultural experience complete J
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| No local experience is complete without local alchohol |
Now a new twist in the story L
Siliguri Bandh on the next day… so Mukund and family will not be able to leave
the city and get to Uttarey. Uh…Oh… Minoti is on the phone trying to figure
what can be done, Piran arranges for a local hotel stay near the airport, while
the rest of us, drinks in hand, descend into a heated discussion on the
situations in India and how do we solve all the problems J Nagesh (restless soul
that he is) wants a timeline for solving issues, Ron wants judicial progress, I
wonder aloud why corruption is bad, Mrinal draws parallels to Florida, and Viji
just wants to be heard – a little too hard. All in all dinner is delayed in
this intense conversation.
Finally after everyone from Anuja to Piran to Monozh calls
us for dinner, we finally trudge down to find some awesome home-cooked chicken.
Minoti finally seems to relax a little bit and open up, picking up some
colorful language along the way (only to be shell-shocked later when she
figures out the meaning of the words J).
We move back to one of two rooms that the women were using and continue
chatting over drinks late into the night, as the women go on to empty a few
bottles of alchohol.
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| Local Chicken for Dinner |
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| and Minoti has some fun |
Love Love Love all the pictures! These days I have become a "picture book" person... so thanks for posting the pictures along with the words, I would hear the words/stories in person from you guys sometime soon...hopefully!
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