Before the quake, a Sikkim in hiding

I sat with two friends waiting for my cousin to reply to a text message. “Sikkim or Kibber in Himachal Pradesh?” we had asked him. “Kibber. It’s a secluded village. Sikkim isn’t what it used to be. It’s T-O-U-R-I-S-T-Y,” he eventually replied.

I glanced at the photographs on my laptop. I yearned to hike through tiny Buddhist gompa villages and press at least one rhododendron between the pages of my book. We’ll find our own ways of not getting jaded, I decided. Sikkim it is. Kibber will have to wait.

As soon as we landed in Pelling in West Sikkim, it became clear why all the hotels were concentrated along a two km stretch. Tourists flock the town to see Khanchendzonga from a vantage point only Pelling can provide.

But I wasn’t there to see Pelling or even Khangchendzonga (as sacrilegous as that might sound). I was there to experience the untouched Sikkim. Darap, a hamlet 10-km from Pelling was just the place for us. My friends and I got in touch with Indra Subba, owner of a homestay there, and began the long hike from Pelling.

It was on my way to Darap that I saw areas of Sikkim untouched by development. I didn’t see the unfinished constructions and naked scaffolding that were a regular feature of the stretch between Darjeeling and Pelling. Instead, I saw the spunky nature of the Sikkimese reflected in the way they had coloured their homes.

From a distance, stretches of road leading to Darap seemed dotted with colourful pins that were actually houses, boldly hanging in the clouds, perched on the edges of steep gorges and valleys. The Sikkimese love painting their homes in the sauciest shades of red, green, pink and purple, which gives you a kick as strong as their local brew, tongba.

Homecoming in a hamlet
Our homestay was a simple log house divided into four rooms. “It’s not much,” Indra said shyly. “But I have a dining hall...” As we stepped in, we understood why it was Indra’s pride.

It was a long room that had taken Indra months to build, with help from locals. At least 10 windows overlooked the village and Indra’s home nearby. Suddenly, we heard a volley of laughter emanating from somewhere below us. We followed Indra downstairs into a make-shift kitchen directly under the dining hall where his mother, sisters and neighbours had all excitedly gathered to cook for us. The Bee Gees’ Stayin Alive was playing in the background.

So far, we had only sampled traditional Tibetan fare at a Pelling café — thukpa, thenthuk (soup with wheat flour dough and vegetables) and steamed momos. Indra wanted to serve us something different, and his mother rustled up a delicious dish made from flowers and mushrooms Indra had gathered from the nearby forest.

The flowers were nothing like the fragile mountain flowers we had seen earlier — they were brown and grey, and floated on the surface of a thin broth. A little skeptically, I smiled and took a spoonful. Something flimsy, something chewy and something piquant filled my mouth. The flowers, Indra explained, would have lost the slightly-peppery-slightly-bitter taste if we had waited for a day.

Over dinner that night, Indra told us that he had been a mountaineer most of his life, leading tourists on treacherous treks through the Himalayas.

Later, I did manage to travel up north in areas with few people around, and pressed flowers in my book, just as I had wanted to. However, as the time approached for us to leave Sikkim, it was the simple and untouched Darap which was foremost on my mind.