Slice of Sikkim

Last year when I went to Sikkim, I had a funny mis-adventure where I took a very long detour to reach an easy destination. This time, I was back in Sikkim, and as luck would have it, I was in a slightly serious misadventure. Before you start worrying about it, I assure you that it all went well in the end.

This time the plan was to reach Yuksom in West Sikkim, stay there for a couple of days, and then trek up to Dzongri, part of the famous Goechala trek. Trekkers normally do this trek in four days, however, since my wife Smita and my friend Soma were doing a trek for the first time, we planned to do this in five days. The porter was contacted and provisions picked the previous night. Our rucksacks were to be carried by Ponies, instead of the more popular Yaks. We started at 8:30 in the morning (quite late for a trek), and soon left the village and were ambling up and down the trail. The trail itself was well marked, however, it was quite steep at times and had alternating ascending and descending stretches. It took us about four and half hours to reach our stopover for the day. All of us were tired by the time we reached the Trekker's hut, and the simple lunch prepared by the group of guides and porters was quickly devoured. It soon started to rain, and we were confined to the hut. The evening was spent in playing cards. By the time dinner was served, Smita complained of a shooting pain in her left knee. It got worse with time, and she was unable to walk properly. We gave her medicine, applied ointment, and bandaged her knee, and decided to wait till the next morning for further course of action.

The next morning, Smita was better, but still not fully fit. We decided to leave the group and go back to Yuksom. We left early since we were not sure how much time it would take for us to return. To increase our problem, I had to carry my own heavy sack. Further, we were on our own - without a guide. For the first one and half hour, we did not meet a single person. However, our pace was not bad, and Smita seemed to be doing well. We were also encouraged by sightings of two breeds of mountain goats, giant squirrels, and many birds which we had never seen before. We also found an injured Yak right in the middle of the trail. We took several breaks to adjust the bandage, my bag, or generally enjoy the view. Unfortunately, the camera battery was drained and we could not take too many photographs. We finally reached Yuksom at one p.m.

We were just glad that we could reach Yuksom safely. After the long trek back, we didn't mind the hot water bath, hot lunch and other "luxuries" at all. We soon started planning things we could do in the extra days that we had with us. We finally went and stayed at Ravangla (South Sikkim) and Gangtok (East Sikkim) for a couple of days each.