Journey to the Heavenly East: (Written on 20.05.2011)

Last summer I had gone to Sikkim with my cousins.  Bought up in the Western Ghats, I had never seen the beauty of Saal - Teak forest before. The trees have straight trunks as long as a ten storey buildings, long and branch less. And a young river (Tista) flowing through the woods, cutting through the mountains as if jumping with joy. Since the western part of India lack such energetic rivers, it was something new. With the twist and turns in the road and a company like ours, we felt no less than a fun ride in an amusement park.

In Kolkata the temperature was nearing almost 40°C and within 20hrs we were shivering at 11°C. Ravangla was cloudy and foggy with rainy evenings. As the clouds cleared, we could see the outline of another mountain, trees lining up on the edge of it. I had seen barren mountains with shrubs and babool (stout and throny) but never with Elichi and broom sticks (jaru). There was one more tree, I guess it’s the fir tree, we call it ‘Jau gach’. My dad had planted one in our village and its arms shadows our balcony now.

Then, the bamboo forest was amazing; tall, straight and green bamboos. At higher altitude though the bamboos became thinner and smaller.

At one point where Tista met Torsha, it looked beautiful. Heavenly beautiful!

The houses on the other side of the mountain looked like paintings. The farming land beside the river looked like lines on a topo map in geography book. There were very few valleys and only in the valleys people have privilege of farming.

At a certain height, I had observed predominance of Banana trees and orchids were very common everywhere. The houses either -small or big, wooden or concrete, were decorated with different plants, mostly orchids, some ferns, and some wild leafy plants. Strange though, most plants were grown in plastic bags but arranged beautifully.

The place is very sparsely populated, very few houses at a stretch of few kilometers. Most people are involved with tourism business (most men are drivers) and many are part of Indian defense and the remaining into agriculture. As the transport system is not very developed, people walk miles to reach their destination and sometimes asking for lift from running vehicles. A small wooden cottage is built at an equal interval for the comfort of the pedestrians.  

We went to a place called ‘Char Dham’ on the day allotted for site scene.  On a mountain top there is a big statue of Lord Shiva and a temple. Not knowing the significance of the place, I was quite amazed by the mingling beauty of the nature and concrete. The Pagoda like temples and guest houses made me believe I was in another country like Tibet or China. Sometimes I felt I have walked through the pages of some magazine or Travel guide book. The most precious thing was the colours. The colours that people had painted (on the buildings, temples), the colours that God had painted (the nature around) and the colours people had collected and arranged around (flowers and gardens).

On the arms of Himalaya, I saw another beauty of my country.The significance of this place lies in the epic of Mahabharata; Just before the great war between the Pandavas and Kauravas, Arjun came to meditate on top of this Solophok hill, where Lord Shiva had blessed Arjuna after being pleased with him.

According to Hindu Mythology, Char Dham Yatra is considered to be a very scared. Char Dham temples at Solophok Hill is 5 km away from Namchi town, Sikkim ( South) is the replica of Chardhams in India namely East-Jagannath, West – Dwarka, south – Rameshawaram, North- Badrinath .It has a big statue of Lord Shiva.

On the same day we went to Namchi Rock Garden. Like the name, the gardenwas quite tricky. ‘Namchi’ in Bengali means ‘going down’ quite contradictory to the rock part of the name. however, as the name truly justifies we kept climbing down the stairs in search of something. Obviously both sides of the stair had various flowers and ferns. While climbing back we truly appreciated the beauty of the garden.

Next we went to visit a monastery. It was not really a monastery but a huge statue of Guru Padmasambhava. Some 8 angry lions were holding his chariot on their head.

I believed people in Sikkim worshiped ‘Buddha’ but that’s not complete true, Padmashambhava is widely worshiped there. He is more of a Tantric guru. He has these piercing angry eyes and smile in his lips and strange things in his hands.

The temples, very strange though, nothing like Hindu temples. And they call their temples Gumpha. Ringing the bell is a difficult job. There is a huge metallic thing in the middle of the temple, which needs to be rotated in order to ring the stationary bell which is placed high up on the celling.

One can feel the presence of a temple by the multiple long and verticle flags of different colours with something written on them, put for miles near a temple. Apart from these, small rectangular flags are also thread together and chained on the rocky side of the road. In the temple people tie a piece of white silk cloth as some sort of ritual.

On 16th morning, i.e. the third day in Sikkim , we said goodbye to Ravangla and headed towards West Sikkim. On the way to Pelling we saw Kanchanjanga water fall. It was beautiful, cold and crowded.

  Then we went to a sacred lake called ‘Kechiperi Lake’. The lake is surrounded by jungle and there is temple just beside the lake. It is believed that the lake grants wishes to people. The lake is full of big fishes

On the next day, we got up as early as 4 am to get the glipms of the precious sunrise and the lining of kanchanjanga range. But unfortunately fog had covered the whole sky. For 15 mins staring at the sky; confused about directions, we realized may be Sun is already up , behind some cloud.

At 7 am we were ready and out to see the second longest  Hanging Bridge  in Asia.it was raining heavily.  For breakfast we had a bowl of hot soupy noodle. In that cold, wet morning - the touch of sikkim’s cook was really  relishable. A cup of tea was like an energy drink. On the way back the rain suddenly stopped and the fog cleared and we saw the most enchnating beauty of earth.

Then as we reached another waterfall the fog again gathered and I saw the most beautiful cascade. It wasn’t straight down but we realized it lot later when the fog cleared and we saw the water coming from heaven on the far right side and a shadow of a tree looked like the gate to paradise. I felt, I have come to the country of Elves (Lord of the Ring). The serine beauty was covered by fog withing no time and the camera failed to capture this beauty . It just remained frozen in my eyes for ever.

The rain hurried us back to the vehicle and we headed for Pemayangtse Monastery. The road was steep up and the sun through the woods was picturesque.

The monestry was beautiful and unique, I had never seen anything like this before. Lamas in shades of maroon, yellow and red  were predominating the place. Some trying to make smoke in the smoking chambers, some small ones running around in some unknown hurry. As we entered , we saw lamas were all seated on a long wooden furniture decorated with cushions and sponges. An enchanting sound echoed through the room. Drum beats, blowing pipes and some unknown instrument resonated along with chanting prayers.

This is one of the oldest and most important monasteries of Sikkim. This monastery belongs to the Nyingma-pa sect. The 3-storied building of the monastery houses a good collection of wall paintings and sculptures. On the 3rd floor of the monastery, there is a 7-tiered painted wooden model of the abode of Guru Rimpoche, complete with rainbows, angels and the whole panoply of Buddha and bodhisattva. In January-February every year, a religious dance called 'Cham' is performed in Pemayangtse.

At the end we went to the helipad. It was huge. The cloud looked beautiful  just like snowflakes scattered in the sky, sometimes in the sky below because we were in the heaven.

 

Our visit to heavenly east was of a short time, just 3 days. We returned back to the earth within couple of hours. As we entered the city, the trees disappeared and  the concrete jungle covered the earth.

This life is worth because I have seen all these.