Holiday Diary Day 13: pelling sight seeing

Holiday Diary Day 13: Pelling sight seeing
I woke up at 4:45 am to bright light. I thought that I'd missed the sunrise on kanchenjunga but was lucky to get a clear view from my hotel room itself.

sunrise on Kanchenjunga at 5:00 am

This is dawn breaking in pelling and the sun rising around 5:20 am. Very early start to a day in these parts.

Sunrise over Pelling at 5:20 am

We had a day of sight seeing today and our cab was expected around 9 am to take us out to a few sights in the morning, return by lunch to pelling and then take off again till 5:30 pm. This is our transport for the day.

our first comfortable cab in our full sikkim tour

Do you know that in this remote part of Sikkim we found a restaurant that serves decent dosas and guess what Uthappam. So I ordered onion uthappam and the rest of the family went with dosas and we gorged ourselves after a long time on this trip. We took off around 9 am and within half an hour hit our first roadblock of the day. A traffic jam that seemed to stretch forever.

Serpentine traffic jam

After waiting for 5 mins in the cab, I got impatient and went out to take the following shots.

typical view from the car

I found this quaint mountain abode tucked away among the trees.

mountain abode

Then Akshaye who also got bored of sitting in the car, joined me to go and investigate the cause of this traffic jam. We headed to the head of the jam and found a stretch of narrow road that was very difficult to traverse because of the loose soil and stones that have been eroded by the incessant flow of water.

I've attached the video below.Akshaye can be heard urging me to lend a hand and push the jeep.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVZGuQ7Pdsg&feature=youtu.be

Luckily for us the upcoming traffic was only around 10 vehicles and within 20 mins the road cleared and we were able to continue on our journey.

Very soon we had our first scheduled sight seeing stop a scenic spot with lots of water.

quenching my thirst from a roadside tap

 Every vehicle on this road is a tourist vehicle and they all stop here.

Bridge to tranquility

Waterfall number "n"

The next stop was Rimbi Rock Garden. This is a garden next to a river and everyone who visited was more interested in the river rather than the garden

The river as you can see was a more powerful attraction than the garden.

The next stop was.... you guessed it, one more waterfall. Each waterfall seems higher and bigger than the earlier ones.

n+1 th waterfall

After the innumerable waterfalls, we headed back towards the town and enroute swung off to visit a holy lake.

We had to remove our shoes to enter this place and it was a bit of a dissappointment to see just a normal lake and we are not even allowed to touch the water. A bit of a waste of time this and the kids were getting cranky to get back

the holy lake

After the visit to the lake we headed back to town and lunch at the hotel. With great difficulty we had to prie ourselves and the kids from the welcoming bed to finish the two other things on this tour for the day.
the first was a buddhist monastery that did not allow any fotos to be taken. So I can't share any of that here.
This was a massive monastery that had swords, scarves, utensils, prayer stools and many other artefacts that are dated from 200 to 400 years back.
The deities looked very formidable and scary and I wondered how a Buddhist monastery has them. I always associated peace and love with the buddhist religion and here there were some asura type of deities.
Other than that it had a shaolin temple tupe of feel to it.

After the visit to this monastery we set out for the last visit of the day - the ancient city that was earlier the capital of sikkim

rock carvings wonder what scrip this is...

prayer stones

tired out but still chugging on together

temple enroute 

ancient city but well manicured lawns

 This is beautifully maintained but requires an arduous 3 kms trek to reach. It was worth it once we reached here but we were pretty bushed and decided to return before it started getting dark or worse still rain, Dark clouds were ominously gathering and we decided to call it a day and return.
This was our last day here in Sikkim and we were headed to Darjeeling tomorrow and onwards to Kolkata and Chennai after that.

Lessons learnt from a dog

This morning when I took my dog Alfie for a walk, as usual this fellow was prancing about to get me to put on his collar and leash. Once that is accomplished, he starts pulling at it and tries to get it away from me. This happens most days and today was no different. But suddenly it struck me that this is very similar to what happens to us in our lives.
When ever we have a lack of something in our life, we yearn to have it. For example when a young man doesn't have a girlfriend, he feels the lack of it and yearns to have one in his life. When he gets the girl of his dreams, he feels the pressure of not being married and sooner or later succumbs to this pressure and marries her. Once married, there is the pressure of this relationship where he discovers that he cannot satisfy all the demands of this relationship and yearns for a break from this so he can get some peace. he forgets that once upon a time he had that peace but he was not satisfied with that.
Do you realise that whenever we don't have something, we want it badly? And when we get it, sooner or later we want a break from it? We are as contrary as my dog. When he doesn't have the leash, he wants it and craves for it. When he gets it, he wants to break free from it.
This pressure or tug between what we have and don't want; and, what we want and don't have defines our life and the way we deal with it determines the quality of our life.
So be mindful about what you have and what you don't. Be grateful that you have what you have, and don't have what you don't, because the absence of the former or presence of the latter may bring about pain.
Be content where you are and where you are going, because if you were not here, you may have been yearning to get here.
Don't search for what is not here, because once upon a time, you had yearned to be where you are now.
Enjoy every moment. It's a gift.