Today is Day 8 and we had not scheduled anything for today. Just laze about and enjoy the day. So I allowed the kids to sleep till 10.
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| 5:00 am at Gangtok. |
Radhika got up around 7 and we decided to go out for a walk. So we took off after the regulation morning tea and walked up towards MG Marg which is the main shopping area of this city. it's a lovely street with shops on either side. Both ends of the road is closed and no vehicles are allowed in. There are fountains and seating all around the place. These benches are so inviting and urges you to sit and take in the scenery around you.
The Sikkimese people dress so smartly and take great pride in their grooming. The guys have designer hairstyles, manicured nails and dress very well in the latest fashion. The girls look lovely with their red apple cheeks, bright round black eyes, styled hair amd smart dress sense. Even those who work as building workers and cleaners are well dressed and we can easily mistake them for students or office goers. This place looks prosperous and well tended with happy well heeled people.
The school kids are so smart too with their stockings and smart uniforms. Everyone is up and about by 7 am and many shops are opening and business has already started for many shops. We wished that we could stay here longer and didn't have to rush back. The place is so idyllic.
I understand that there are only around 700,000 people in this whole state. That's less than the population of one section of Chennai (population 7 million plus).
We headed back to the hotel to reach there around 9 am and got our breakfast before heading back to the room. The kids were still asleep and we didn't bother them till it was time to have breakfast.
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| Pedestrian crossing |
Then I spent a few hours trying to get my diary upto date and that's how I've knocked off so many days today. Radhika took a quick 2 hour nap and around 1 we roused ourselves up from what we were doing and decided to go out for some fresh air. I'd planned on taking the cable car ride today and so we walked around 2 kms to the cable station and took a cable car ride over the city
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| waiting for our turn |
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| coming in..... |
This is a 7 mins ride up and another 7 mins down. It took us half an hour to get a slot and took our places in the car happily. Within a few mins of take off, it started raining as you can see from the snaps...
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| taking off |
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| Add caption |
This ride takes us over the state assembly building. We were lucky to take a couple of shots at it.
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| first peek at the state assembly |
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| the stately building that houses the assembly |
After the cable car ride, we had our lunch at Porkys a bakery cum restaurant that had some fabulous food to make Anand feel like he was in heaven. Even the veg sizzlers were scrumptious and sumptuous and we were heavily loaded with happiness when we headed back to our room once again.
This evening I had to spend around 2 hours with he tour agent to rearrange our itinerary a bit so we can avoid going to Guandamorg lake which is at 18,000 ft. Akshaye's tryst with frost bite yesterday made us wary of taking this extreme step of going to those heights and stuck with only Lachung, Lachen and Yumtang all between 12,000 and 14,000 feet.
We are told that the roads are worse than what we encountered enroute to Tsongoo Lake yesterday and we don't want to push it too much and limited ourselves to just a 1N 2D trip into North Sikkim.
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