Day Four - Darjeeling/Gangtok

We woke up early morning and we outside the temp was 3 deg and got into our car and took off at 5:15 for tiger hill , we reached there in about 20 min , the vehicle drops u almost at the top of the hill. this is the place which affords u a brillinat view of kanchenjunga and also on a clear day a glimpse of Mt Everest ! But we were not lucky , it was a partially clouded day and we went up the hill and got into the observatory which was fast filling up with ppl. there rows n rows of chairs and glass panes arnd us thru which we were to observe the sunrise .


As time started progressing ppl started gettin restless and were bedoming a huge nuisance , outside it was real cold so we decided to stay inside the observatory where we could sip tea/coffee which were provided inside. As the first straks of light appeared on horizon ppl started standing up n clicking pictures ( God knows what they got ! ) and we decided to move out of the the observatory into the open after gettin our first glance of the rising sun.






What a spectacular sight it was ! then I heard a old gentleman telling everyone that Sun is not hat we should be looking it , we should actually be looking at the other direction Where Kanchenjunga will recieve its first sunlight of the day. We cam out and started cliking pics of sunlight and patiently waited looking at the op direction and then saw the marvelous sight of a huge mountain slowly coming into view in between the clouds , the first rays of sun falling on the whitish mountain and the resultant effect was unbelievable and just cannot be described in words ... After enjoying the sunrise and watching the entire valley slowly emrging out of darkness to a brnad new day , we started from tiger hill to the next point which was Ghoom monastery, followed by something called Bastasia loop which was a memorial. But these two turned out to be a big dissapointment as there was nothinh worth wacthing there. We returned back to our hotel some time after 8 , then got ready and went to the Mall and strolled around looking for some good restaurant and had a really yummy breakfast and then packed our bags and proceeded to the Jeep stand. We had made a big mistake in not planning this part of the travel properly , we had just enquired where the jeep stand was and had assumed that we would get a vehicle at all times. It turned out that they had only hourly service after 10 , so had to wait for a long time and finally got a jeep for Gangtok at 11 AM.






The journey was supposed to take close to 4 hours.


And we had braced ourselves for a tortorous trip as it was in a jeep. But it turned out to be quite an experience. The views were simply awesome , we passed through a few tea gardens and a lot of places where 'Terrace farming' was practiced.






The total journey itself was gr8 as the road to Gangtok was through hills and after a point we came across Teesta river and after that the entire journey the road and the river ran alongside and there lot of scenic views



There is also white water rafting on Teesta river which was attracting quite a big crowd. There was a place on the way where there were numerous resorts which offered rafting experience.






.Finally reached Gangtok which was also a city on hills at 4 and managed to locate out hotel Shilton Lodge(once again had found out about it through internet). The rooms were pretty good and very affordable .We had reached the place late afternoon around 3:30 and after checking in , asked the guy at the hotel about the places we can visit. To our dismay we were told that we wont able to visit any of the places we had planned as it was too late and places inside the city were all sunrise view points which were not worth it during evenings. So we went out dissappointed and hungry and decided to have a late lunch at a restaurant nearby , which had a band performing during nights. We had gone in arnd 4 and the band was somewhere inside practising for their performance later that night and after a point it was really irritating and they took a huge amount of time to bring the food , after waiting for 30 min we were angry tired and totallyclueless as to what to do. Everything seemed hopeless the mood in the camp was totally down. We were about to walk out of the place , then the food arrived ! I have never such good chinese food ever before in 10 min we had finished our late lunch and trooped out into the main market place. Which it turned out was very small just a couple streets ! For a capital city Gangtok is very very small. But still it was a pleasant expericence , we walked around looking for some trinkets. The weather was also very pleasant must have been 15- 20 degrees , a huge departure from Darjeeling where it was below 10 in the afternoon itself.

We headed straight to the tourist info centre ru Sikkim govt. unfortunately for us , by the time we made it the place was closed , it was around 5PM. Here also people shut shop much earlier , most shops close by 7:30. Then we started walking around the central area called MG Marg which had shops on wither side and was a busy street. We spotted a lot of Travel agencies and decided to ask a few of them the rates for sightseeing and then decide what to do the next day. The first place we entered , the guy gave us the normal tour package where you with a group of 10-15 which wud be economical but crowded and also suggested that we could hire a cab on our own ( Maruti Van) since there were 3 of us , it would be comfortable and not so hard on pocket for us. The places covered would be Tsango lake which was 40 Km from Gangtok but close to 2 hrs on road and a place called Baba Mandir which he assured me was wonderful. We also wanted cover a couple of other view points ( in this part of the country view points r meant to view the sunrise) and the cost came about 1500 for the vehicle. But he said all permits for Nathula Pass were finished so we cant visit that place. Nathula is on Indo-China border on the famous 'silk route' . You need to get prior permit to visit the place and visit is possible only on Tuesday, Thursday, Sat and Sunday. We had landed there on Saturday evening , which he said was a bit too late for permit. When we asked if it is possible somehow to procure a permit , he said that the no: of visitors on any day is limited to a certain number and he had run out of his quota , but told us that we can try with any other operator and if we were lucky (since it was pretty late) we might get , so we tried our luck at another 3-4 places each one told us the same thing , No Nathula permit. Finally we came back to the first guy and booked for trip to Tsango lake and also for early morning sightseeing in Gangtok. Tot cost was 1500.
One good thing about this place is that they treat the tourists really well , Govt stipulates a standard rate for these sightseeing trips and do a constant checking to ensure that those rates are maintained.

We had dinner at a hotel in MG Marg which served North Indian food , there were a lot of good hotels there and returned back to hotel to sleep early , the whole city sleeps by 10 ! We had planned our Sikkim sightseeing from 5:30 next morning.