My travels

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Day 34 (May-15) : Benaras

My third cousins (Pragati and Unnati)

Benaras / Varansi is a wonderful old city with a very strong character. The temples are intensely carved but due to over-crowding, it has lost its calmness. If you happen to visit Benaras, don't miss the Ganga Pooja. or Ramnagar Saranath too is a must see. It is the first place where lord Buddha gave his first speech. The museum too is very interesting. The ashokan pillar with its four lions is very well preserved. Antother great pleasure was meeting my third cousins there. Shubham, Srushti, Pragati and unnati. Meeting Dhadhaji too was a surprise. Juhi or Srushthi made great Lemon Sherbet. I didn't get to see her drawings though. Again, I forgot to take a picture of her or her brother.

Sarnath

Crowded road in Benaras.

Foreigners waiting for ganga pooja

Ganga Pooja

Day 33 (May-14) : Bodhigaya

We decided to enjoy Bihar and not rush through it. So, after Nalanda we halted at Bodhgaya, the place where lord Buddha is said to be enlightened. The B.S.T.D.C. hotel was beautiful. It took some effort to find it. We initially gave up and went to a decent looking hotel called Siddarth. The rate was 5000/- a night with no guarantee of AC as electricity was unreliable. We resumed our search and finally found the BSTDC hotel. The rates were just 735/-, the location was much better and uninterrupted AC was assured!! I think people underrate government hotels.

We learnt that standard food like mixed veg too gets the local flavour.

Bodh gaya, is a very peaceful place. The Bodhi vriksha there is of the fourth generation. It is presently 150 years old. There is no problem of Pundas there, so the place gives a better peaceful effect. Some things are unexplained, for example, the question of what exactly am I? A constellation of thoughts perhaps, but you are something else of course to be able to observe it!. The answer of this question is what Buddha probably experienced.

We left Bodhgaya by 12:00 PM and reached Ramnagar before 5:00 PM. Ramnagar is one side of Ganga while Varanasi on other side. My father had spent 4 years in Ramnagar and we went to see his old college and house. We also had the famous lassi there. You had to fight through the crowd to get it. Other than that, I found it to be a peaceful place. Two or three peacocks had settled on a tree behind my dad’s old house. Ramleela takes place on avery big scale in this place. The entire city becomes the stage, and people who are rich enough see the thing from elephant backs.

Reached Varanasi in night and checked in a UPTDC hotel near railway station.

Small stupa

Bodhi vriksha

The middle column in railing is from Ashoka's time ie 2300 years ago!

Penancing monk

Buddha's statue

Dharam chakras

Thai temple

Sunset on Ganga in Ramnagar

Ramnagar fort. It belongs to King of Kashi (Varanasi).

Diving in to Ganga for a bath

Day 31,32 (May-12 and 13) : Nalanda

We were initially planning to drive through Bihar quickly. That we learnt would have been a great mistake. For we would have missed all the major Buddhist pilgrims, the Nalanda university and the great food.

Our first plan was to go via Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur. However after reaching pretty close to Darbhanga and Nepal border, we realized that the bridge there had been washed away in last year floods and had not been built as yet. So we had to backtrack 75 Km in night to halt at Purnia for night. Decided to take the Maoists infested area tomorrow to Gaya and then to Varanasi.

Leaving aside the lawlessness(we didn't witness any), Bihar is just wonderful. We had to go through Maoist problem area as the highway bridge was broken. We halted at Nalanda. The college is of dimensions 5km x 10km. However only 500mt x 500mt of it is excavated. An amazing fact about the university, is that when a certain portion of the complex became old, the kings simply filled it up with soil and built a new one over it ! The university had all facilities, including baths and a proper drainage system. The door gaurds would ask the students questions. Correct answerers alone would be allowed inside the complex.

As we walked over the stairs of the place, I could imagine the great scholars running up and down the same stairs, great minds at work.

A simple house in a Bihar village

Corns drying on the road

A de-railed train

Restored drainage system from centuries ago!

The university

Big temple complex

Storytelling stairs.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Day 30 (May-11) : Gurudongmor

Yesterday’s walk helped a lot. I didn’t feel a thing while mom got a bit of headache because of altitude. We went through an army post. The soldiers there gave us tea and soup. The lake was magnificent and the road was as wild as it can be. After the place where the army checked our permits, for 5-6 Km we went through an area where there were no fixed roads. It was like a high altitude plateau at around 16000 ft. One could make their own path!

There was only one other Jeep going to the lake that early in the morning. The tourists in that car were probably feeling so cold that they had outsourced even the job of clicking the pictures to the taxi driver! The driver used to stop the car every once in a while, take the camera from the tourists and click pictures. It was very weird. Those guys threw empty wafers bag also from their car. We picked it up and gave it back to their driver when we caught up with them.

We also spotted a couple of Himalayan marmots. The lake has circumference of around 3 Km with a Buddhist temple on the farther side. Jawans from Sikh regiment have also built a Gurudwara on the closer side where the road ends. They gave us free hot tea. We spent around 90 minutes there before starting back. Even while driving back, we kept stopping often and clicking pictures.

Let the pics speak for me...

Peeping snow peaks

Me again

Long way to go

Approaching the lake

Dad

Himalayan Marmot

Make your own road

Gurudongmar Lake

Clarity

One last look at the beautiful lake

A loitering cloud and its shadow

Splash

We dropped the idea of going to Pelling. Instead, we decided to go straight to Singtam that day and then drive on to Lucknow via Bihar on following days. The road to Singtam was very bad. Waterfalls actually went over the road! Rivers were flowing on the road, and the worst of all, the narrow road was bustling with many huge trucks. Our widecar had to be backed and taken through narrow places, with a deep cliff on one side. It was night so not many pics could be taken. I had to be out of the car to keep guiding dad to carefully manuver the car. It is a tough job for a cleaner. The road clearance of the car really helps!

We finally reached Singtam at around 8:00pm. it becomes very dark in the east at this time. We stayed at a place called Shimma lodge. Again, I was to sleep alone. However this time mom took my place. The place was dirt cheep. Compared to the other places there, and the one where we stayed in Omerga, the place was great value for money.

What a road

That is a stream flowing on the road

Effect of pressure difference between 17,300 ft and 4000 ft! We drank water from this bottle at the lake and this is what happened to it at Singtam

Day 29 (May-10) : So much to tell

Snow peaks over Yumathang valley

We stayed in small hotel called "Orchid Valley Hotel" last night. It was a small hotel costing 800 for two rooms. All the better hotels (there is one from Mayfair group of hotels costing 7000 upwards per night! Since Yumathang Rhododendron season is well known internationally, many will look for luxury hotel) were already booked. Since almost all the tourists visit North Sikkim through tour operators, all the hotels get booked from Gangtok itself. Most of the hotels do not even have proper reception area the hotel staff does not even know how much to charge if you land up there like us! Our hotel rooms did not have functioning latches to lock the rooms from inside or outside. They told us not to worry about that. But the beds and toilets were clean.

We woke up at around 6 o’clock in the morning. By the time, the breakfast was ready and we left the place, it was already 7:40. The plan was to see the rhododendron forest and then proceed to Zero Point, the farthest point where road (or what passes as road in these remote high Himalayan areas). The way to Zero-point went through the Rhododendron sanctuary. The weather was unusually clear. Snow peaks were surrounded by necklaces of clouds. They looked like the dwellings of god. The rhododendrons covered the entire valley. Other than a certain type of pine, no other tree could be seen. No explanation can describe the colours of the flowers. We couldn’t reach Zero-point though. We turned back as we had to drive back 140 Km through Lachung and Lachen to Thangu

Most tourists visiting Gurudongmar stay at Lachen. But we decided to spend the night at Thangu as it is at higher altitude (3780 meter or around 12800 ft) which will prepare us for even higher altitude of Gurudongmar. It will also save us 2 hours the next day and we will have better chance of reaching the lake before the weather turns bad later in the day. It started raining as we drove up from Chungtang to Lachen. There was hardly any other vehicle on the road and we were virtually alone on the Lachen to Thangu leg. Weather plays a big role in deciding your mood in high hills. The continuous drizzle and fog creates a feeling of mystery in green hills of Sikkim but it also makes it a bit dull and depressing!

Thangu is a seasonal village of around 400 people. These people also go back to lower altitude in November and return in April. From Lachen onward you mainly see Army or ITBP camps. They stay here in winter also!

Checked in to the best hotel in Thangu at 600 Rs a night! The family running the hotel stays on the ground floor and while the rooms are on first floor. The best part was the big kitchen and dining area with wooden stove complete with big chimney etc. It was fun sitting there as the lady there cooked food and her 2.5 year old son (Rengchen) kept playing. I and dad took an hour-long acclimatisation walk while Mom read her book on Tagore.

After returning from walk, a person asked us weather we had got our permits stamped at the check post 200 meters away from the hotel. We had missed seeing the post in fog. So Dad and I walked back to the check post only to find it locked. When we came back, the same person told us that he knows where the officer manning the check post stays and will take us there. Dad had to make two trips with that person before they finally located the police person in a local, makeshift bar! He had his permit stamp with him there also. He signed and stamped our permit. It seems no one comes to Thangu after 12:00 PM or so while we had reached around 4:00 PM