The Blissful Vacation
Hello, my fellow reader’s. I’m sure that you all know the type of genre I normally write. But, today’s story is going to be a little different from the usual one’s. So sit back, relax and get ready to experience the land of wonders.
Oh! I almost forgot to introduce myself. Hi, my name is Rageshree Das and I’m a 20 year old college student from Goa.
A fun fact about me is that, even though I was born in Goa, I’m part Bengali and part Odia.I love to visit different places and tell stories from there. Out of the 22 states I’ve visited so far, the most memorable state would definitely be Sikkim.
So, let me take you back 8 years ago, to where the story begins. I clearly remember waking up at around 3:30 am to catch my flight which was scheduled at 7 am. I just couldn’t sleep that night because of the loud EDM being played right next to my place (Narkasur celebration) and also because I was so excited. It was the dawn of Diwali(2014), so my parents decided to leave early. On our way to the airport, we witnessed an accident. It was probably because of the Narkasur festival that day. Luckily the person wasn’t hurt badly, but the sight of it made me a little sick. So I tried to ignore it by listening to some music. I didn’t realize it, but we had finally reached the airport. After boarding the plane, we were ready to take off. It was a direct flight to Kolkata, which meant it would take us 3 hours to reach there. I decided to take a nap, because I was aware of the fact that it would be a long journey. To my surprise, three hours passed by quickly and I was now in Kolkata. After collecting the luggage, dad went ahead and called a cab. Every time I visit Kolkata, it feels like a whole new experience altogether. My dad couldn’t stop talking about how excited he was to finally be home. But we stayed there for a day just to take a short break, and from there we headed to Sikkim. It took us an entire day to reach Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim. From Kolkata we boarded a train to New Jalpaiguri station and from there, we continued our journey by car. I was soon overcome with the feeling of joy, as now I could see the Magnificent Kanchenjanga Mountain range. It looked as though someone had painted them to be so perfect. I just couldn’t take my eyes off the road. After a long drive (about 5 hours to be precise) we stopped by a tea stall to have our evening snacks. It was a tiny little cottage that was situated alongside the Tista river. The water was emerald green in color and shined brightly just like the jewel. It was a cold winter evening, and nothing is better to warm oneself up than with a cup of piping hot tea. As we sipped our tea, the sun slowly set behind the magnificent mountain range. It slowly grew dark and suddenly got colder, that is when we decided to take our leave from there. My mother wrapped a shawl around her neck and I wore my warm and fuzzy sweater (I just cannot bear the cold weather).
Gangtok was now only an hour away from where we were. It felt like time had stopped, we were the only ones on that particular road, not a single person at site or even a house, it was completely silent outside. I checked the time on my phone and was shocked to discover that it was only 5:15pm. It bothered me a little, but I soon shrugged that thought out of my mind. We were soon welcomed by the bustling city of Gangtok. The road was bright and colorful, there was now a gleam in my eyes. After a long journey of 12 hours, we finally reached our guesthouse. The guesthouse that we booked was
situated at the outskirts of the city. To my surprise, we were the only family in that guesthouse, so the entire place belonged to us. But, I was too tired to look around the entire place, hence we decided to have our dinner and hit the bed early. With the good night’s sleep, I woke up fresh and energetic, and so did my parents. Our driver reached right on time and we were now ready to begin our adventure. At around 7 am, we stopped by a little waterfall which was en route to our first destination. The water was cold and after touching it, I felt a little more alive than before as it completely woke me up. So after waiting there for a little while, we decided to hit the road again. The people of Sikkim were very hospitable and humble. Let’s take the example of our driver, he was friendly and told us everything about him and his family, by doing this he broke the ice. The sky was clear and bright that day, so was the weather. We all decided that it would be great to visit the Gangtok Ropeway in the morning, trust me, nothing is better than this. The ropeway was about 1km long, and to top it off it was trembling a lot. This terrified me because I have acrophobia. I tried to calm myself down, so my parents told me to wait in the car. But I mustered up my courage and decided to give it a try, it was worth it. I could see the entire city in one glance, everyone looked so tiny from up there. It was a picturesque view, if you ever visit Sikkim, please do visit this.
After the ride we visited the sacred Do Drul Chorten monastery. This monastery was very close to the ropeway, and I could see it from the cable car. It was a Sunday, so the monastery was crowded that day. Women of all age groups wore their traditional dress to the monastery called the “Bakhu”. They were all seated in the prayer hall where the monks were reciting their prayers. It was all so calm and serene. The Do Drul Chorten Stupa was built by Trulshik Rinpoche, head of the Nyingma order of Tibetan Buddhism in 1945 CE. According to legend, it is believed that this entire place was once haunted by evil spirits and many people who wandered around this place became victims and died. Later, Trulshik Rinpoche came to this place for hermitage and built this popular stupa to drive away the spirits. The stupa is girdled with prayer wheels all around it. We recited our prayers and sat there for a while, I felt really calm. After waiting there for some time, we went to the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology which was very close to the monastery. The Namgyal Institute of Tibetology is an abode of centuries-old Tibetan-Buddhist culture and its history. I took this opportunity to visit the museum, and to embrace the Buddhist culture (but, it was the beautiful architecture that caught my eye). The museum was on the first floor itself as the rest of the floors were off limits. As I strolled down the hallway, I saw an area which was designated for old statues of Lord Buddha. These statues were of different shapes, size, color and some artifacts are over 1,500 years old. It was a shame that I couldn’t spend more time there as we had to cover other places as well. Just as we were heading down, my mom stopped by a little souvenir shop. That particular shop only sold traditional Sikkimese dress. She told me, that she always wanted to buy a Bakhu for herself, but never got the chance to do so. Instead of buying it for herself she bought one for me, also because her size wasn’t available. To this day, it is one of the most unique clothing items I possess. Moving on, our next destination was the Flower Exhibition Center. My dad has a great interest in gardening, therefore this was an ideal place for him. It was a medium sized greenhouse filled with varieties of exotic flowers, especially orchids. I’m pretty sure, you can imagine how colorful and fragrant it must have been in there. Again, we couldn’t stay there for a long time and it was very crowded that day. After spending an hour in the greenhouse, admiring the beautiful flowers and clicking a few pictures, we decided to have our lunch. So our driver took us to an authentic Sikkimese restaurant that was situated very close to the Greenhouse. We were so hungry that we dived right into our food. We ordered traditional momos/ dumplings and a hot bowl of Thukpa which is a type of noodle soup. That hot bowl of soup warmed us all up and we were now ready to continue our journey.
On our way back down, we stopped by the Hanuman Tok temple. There are many legends surrounding this temple. Some believed that an Indian army man died while protecting the temple from the hands of the Chinese during the Indo-China war, therefore everyone must stop by even if it is for a little while to pay their respects to him. Others believe that Lord Hanuman himself took rest at that particular place while collecting the Sanjeevani buti for Lord Laxman. After climbing a couple of
stairs, we reached the temple hall. It was surrounded with pictures, depicting the life of lord Hanuman. The temple is surrounded by valleys and glittering snow peaks all around it. The view from up there was so mesmerizing, that it is perhaps the best place to sit and relax one’s body and mind. We sat there for a long time without even realizing that it was time for us to leave. That is when the priest came up to us and informed us that the temple was closing. So, we headed back to our car and made our way towards the city. Like I mentioned earlier, during the winter the sun sets at around 4:30 pm which is quite early. We reached our guesthouse at around 5 pm in the evening and it was already dark outside. That evening, my parents made a plan to meet their college friend at M.G Marg and informed the driver to pick us up after an hour. We came back just to freshen ourselves up. After getting ready, we waited for our driver. To our surprise, he brought his wife along with him saying that they needed to do some shopping as well. She was indeed a very friendly person as she suggested that we visit their house after shopping. But we soon declined it.
I don’t remember this very well but I think there was some kind of celebration the next day and hence the market was crowded. My dad called his friend as soon as we reached the market and to our surprise he was already waiting there for us. Both of them were very happy to meet each other after a long time and had a lot of catching up to do. So we all went to a nearby café to have some hot chocolate. Basically, that is how we spend our evening that day. I have no idea how the hours passed by, but we soon had to say goodbye to him. We only had half an hour remaining in our hands and hence decided to do some shopping. After buying a few souvenirs for our family and friends we headed back to the guest house. I decided to wash myself up and head down to have my dinner. I’m a very slow person, so my parents went down before me. That day, the chef prepared an amazing chicken curry for us with some jeera rice and roti. Normally, I only eat a little at night but that day I ate more than my parents. After stuffing myself, I watched some T.V in the living area and then prepared to go to bed.
Our trip to Sikkim was only for three days, so we tried our best to visit as many places as possible. I was really looking forward to visiting the Nathula pass, unfortunately we couldn’t go there due to a landslide. We had no other option but to go back and head home. Thus Day-2 ended quickly.
Since we couldn’t go anywhere the previous day because of the bad weather and the landslide, we decided to enjoy our last day in Sikkim to the fullest. And so we began our journey down south. Our plan was to visit only 2 places that day: The Char Dham temple and the Samdruptse Hill. The main reason was the distance, but not being able to visit these places would lead to an incomplete trip. The Char Dham temple was exactly 90 kilometers away from our guesthouse. Keeping that in mind, we made sure to begin early. That day, we took a different route from the usual one. This route was a little narrow and bumpy, hence we decided to move slowly. It was not in our original plan, but we decided to visit the Temi tea garden which was en route to the temple. Upon entering the Temi Tea garden, we were all at an awe to see something we never expected. And it was the dazzling Cherry blossom tree. It felt like a dream. So I took out my phone and clicked a ton of pictures. This was a little surprise that my parents had planned for me. Honestly, it was the best day of my life. After walking around the tea garden for some time, we went and had our lunch at the Cherry resort. We reserved a table in the outdoor dining space to enjoy the lush green surroundings. It was an amazing experience for all of us. I wanted to stay there for a longer time, but I knew that wouldn’t be possible. Anyway, I was thankful for the wonderful time we spent there together. My dad quickly glanced at his watch, and told us that we were extremely late. The reason we rushed out of the resort was because the temple would close early that day. We tried our best to reach there by 2 pm but reached at 3pm. It was okay since we had about an hour left. According to the Hindu religion, if a person visits one of the Dhams or the Holy Shrine, he/she has to visit all of them at least once in their lifetime. The four pilgrimage sites are: Uttarakhand’s Badrinath, Odisha’s Puri, Tamil Nadu’s Rameshwaram and Gujarat’s Dwarka and therefore called The Char Dham. The replica of the Char Dham temple along with 12 jyotirlingas, is built on top of the Solophok hill in South Sikkim. This picturesque complex
houses a 108 feet tall statue of Lord Shiva. It is believed that this place wash’s off people’s sins away. We entered the complex through a lovely gate and the temples surrounded by colorful flowers greeted us. We began from the left-hand side so that we moved around the complex in a clockwise manner. Doing this, helped us with the parikrama or circumambulation of the whole complex. Before visiting the Char Dham, I had already visited the Jagannath Puri Temple countless times, and was elated to see a brilliant copy of the one I had seen at Puri. After visiting all the temples, we sat down on a bench and admired the beautiful and divine view from up there. We expected it to be good, but it was well beyond all our expectations. A visit to this place is like visiting India in a nutshell. Just before leaving the temple premises, we all prayed once again and headed towards our last and final destination which was the Samdruptse Hill. The Samdruptse Hill is actually very close to the Char Dham temple, therefore we reached there in no time. After getting down from the car, we had to climb up the hill to reach the entrance of the Samdruptse. This epic hill is also ornamented with a giant statue of 148 feet of the Guru Padmasambhava and is gilded with gold that glitters when the sunlight falls over it. To reach the statue, we first had to enter a huge prayer hall (mainly used by the monks), which led us to a flight of wooden stairs. The prayer hall was decorated with paintings and sculptures of Lord Buddha. Soon after exploring the place, we headed up the stairs to take a better view of the statue. When we reached the top, we could see the statue of Lord Shiva in the distance. We waited there only for a while, to enjoy our last sunset in Sikkim. It slowly became dark, and with that it was time for us to leave. I sat down in the car with a heavy heart, so I decided to listen to some music. I was so tired that I dozed off on the ride back to the guest house. My mom woke me up as soon as we reached the guesthouse.
We all got changed, and started packing our luggage. After packing everything, we took our luggage and kept it in the living room, so that it would be easier for us to carry it the next day. I was feeling a little sick that day so I skipped dinner and headed straight to bed. My dad’s alarm rang at exactly 4am the next day (our last day), so that we would have enough time to get ready and leave by 7am. But our driver called us up in the morning and told us to be ready by 6am. So we followed along with him. He took us to a nearby area, and asked us to wait (it was a little surprise he had planned for us before leaving Sikkim). It was still dark outside and was extremely cold. After waiting for about ten minutes, the sun slowly rose to an absolutely brilliant dawn. I had never seen a dawn more beautiful than this one. The sun made its way out gently through a thick layer of clouds. The distant snow peaks of Kanchenjunga shone in the morning rays. My heart filled with joy after witnessing something so magnificent. My parents and I thanked our driver for the wonderful gift he had given us. We couldn’t ask for anything more than this. With that, we thanked him for everything he did for us in the past couple of days and said our last goodbye to him.
I soon realized that it was time for us to leave. As we left Sikkim behind, I closed my eyes and every detail of our trip went through my mind. I was missing it already. But thanks to this wonderful trip, I got to spend some quality time with my family, something that we lacked due to our busy schedules.
The Glittering lakes, endless pastures, waterfalls at every turn, quiet monastery towns, and scenic drives on some of the worst roads we’ve encountered on our travels made our trip to Sikkim an adventure that we will never forget.
Thank you and I hope you enjoy it.
Written by-
Rageshree Das