I was contemplating on visiting Maldives, Paris and many other exotic places for my annual holiday. That was until I stumbled upon the beautifully written reviews on Sikkim and North Sikkim praising the place to the peaks by the people who have been there. Thanks to the ‘Tripadvisor’, ‘Indiamike’ and several such travel blogs, I decided this is the right time and the right place to go. Once that was decided, I started scouting for the places that we could see and what Sikkim has to offer.
On one fine day I came back from office and convinced S that we should do this trip and do it ASAP. We both took the ASAP part quite seriously (literally) and the next day we found ourselves flying. At 9.30 pm as soon as S said yes, I booked return tickets for us in Jet airways from Hyderabad to Bagdogra and back. We called for a cab, packed everything overnight, tried and slept a bit and we were off. The next morning it was a 6 am flight for us. It was a connecting flight with the stopover at Delhi and we could see the new swanky Delhi Terminal-3 at the airport. Commendable is a lesser word to describe the T-3.
Terminal-3 Delhi Airport:
From Bagdogra we were to reach Gangtok by road and this ended up as 4 hour tiring yet scenic journey. We could see the way people toil hard on those roads to build and widen the existing ones. And it is amazing to see how the drivers follow the rules and help each other (because this is the only way I guess to reach your destination) in this part of the country. I wonder how mana Hyderabadi’s would drive on those roads with our pin-sized patience levels.
On our way we could also see the main campus of Sikkim Manipal University. We stopped over at an army canteen to have some Dosas and this was the first culture shock I felt, of which many of them were to come in the days that followed. The places where they live, sleep, what they eat, it all seemed to me like a different country from which I come from. And they do a much nobler job with a purpose than what we do sitting in temperature controlled offices to pass the workdays and strolling around in big multiplex equipped shopping malls on the weekends.
River Teestha followed us all through the journey and as I read it somewhere “Sikkim is small, yet beautiful”, the place was already living up to its reputation. As this was a last minute plan, it was obvious that we didn’t had any * hotel reservations as is our customary in other holidays that we do. Once we started approaching Gangtok, I was frantically searching on the net for good hotels in Gangtok and trying to call them to see if we are lucky enough to get a good CP or AP plan. On the way, I even got down and enquired in a resort for a room, but in vain as they were booked out the whole week. Finally I could manage to phone Sarovar guys and they had a Valley view room at a steeper price. When we finally reached the place, it was real good and we felt lucky enough to get it as it was the last room available. And the view was pleasant from our room.
A tea estate on our way:
We did the fastest way to reach Gangtok and had almost spent 12 hours in doing so. So you can imagine how far it is from mana Hyderabad. We had a quite cozy dinner and retired for the night.
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