My travels: Day 26 (May-7) : The Permit

Well, early in the morning, we went to Gangtok to take the permit to enter North Sikkim border area. First, we parked our car on M.G. road. The tourism dept office there told us that one was not allowed to take our own car there and had to take a Taxi. When we insisted, they told us to try our luck at Police check post.

It was difficult to locate the permit office. After a long search, we reached a Xerox booth in an area where the office was supposed to be there. The person there was very helpful. A policeman came there. We told him that we wanted a permit. The guy said that we cannot get the permit. So, dad marched to the permit office and talked to the higher official. Finally, he agreed.

After getting the permit we ate in a local pizza joint. The place was very very good. The pizza was as good as gold. We then realised that our permit did not include Changu lake so we decided to take a taxi there the next day.

We then hired a taxi and decided to tour around Gangtok. The taxi first took us to the zoo. We saw the birds, the Himalayan bear. One thing about this zoo, is the concept of emergence zoo. The cages are very large. And we view the animals from a place high up. It sometimes becomes difficult to spot the animals, but, in this zoo the animals are the greatest priority. We also saw Himalayan birds like the Monal, red peasant and red panda. We couldn’t go further as it began to rain. We returned to our taxi and went to a flower show. The flowers were very pretty. Then, we went to the ropeway. Surprisingly, there was absolutely no crowd at the place when we reached there. We had the cable car to just 3 of us! By the end of the trip, as we got down, there was a huge crowd waiting to enter the cabin. Talk of luck
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