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.

Holiday Diary Day 12 - Gangtok to Pelling

Holiday Diary Day 12 - Gangtok to Pelling

Pelling (pronounced Peeling) is in West Sikkim. We've already visited East and North Sikkim and this was our first time in West Sikkim.

Road to Pelling

As you can see from the below map, to reach W Sikkim we travelled through the South which is basically a small parcel of land wedged between East and West Sikkim. Nothing much to report about the South except for the rivers and the dams that seem to abound everywhere.

Do you notice the mountain peaks and its proximity to the places we visited?

Our transport was a shared cab that is operated very much like the non stop bus services operated between two cities in the south. They have dedicated taxi stands for each major destination and we had to go to the Pelling Stand that was luckily just 5 mins from our hotel.

Pelling Taxi Stand

Our departure was 7 am and reporting time 6:30 am. We were glad we reached at 6:30 because we could grab the middle seats which is way more comfortable than the back seats.
We started at 7 sharp with 10 passengers on board (full capacity). We were the only 4 tourists. The rest were locals for whom this is inter city bus travel.
This route is very picturesque and very safe compared to the other roads we've been on in Sikkim. We enjoyed this road since it wasn't as bumpy and as adventurous as the others.

picturesque South Sikkim Road

One of the most distinctive features of these roads and rivers are the number of hydel projects that we see enroute.

one of the numerous dams enroute on River Ranjeet

South and West Sikkim is watered by the River Rangeet which is a tributary of the Teesta river, the largest river in Sikkim. The Rangeet river originates in the Himalayan mountains in West Sikkim district and is popular among rafting enthusiasts owing to its turbulent waters. The river flows past the towns of Jorethang, Pelling and Legship. During its final few kilometres, it forms the boundary between West Bengal (Darjeeling District) and Sikkim. It joins the Teesta river at Teesta Bazaar on the border of West Bengal and Sikkim.

The Ranjeet

I've shared below some of the sights that we see enroute. The landscape is dreamy at times, raw and beautiful at others and generally enticing enough to want you to stay back here for ever.

typical rural Sikkim home

bridge over river, mountains and clouds

The journey itself was around 5 hours and we reached Pelling in time for lunch around 1 pm after a couple of short halts. The first was for a tea break, The other was a break in journey at Gayzing which was the last stop for this taxi and we had to take another taxi to reach our hotel in Pelling.
Pelling is a small town compared to Gangtok. And every hotel seemed to have a view of the Kanchenjunga.

view of kanchenjunga from Peliing

We tucked into some hot rice and dhal for lunch and spent the evening in the room. The kids spent the rest of the day there while we walked about a bit to get a feel of this quaint mountain town.