TOP: A water-driven roadside prayer wheel solicits safety for passing motorists. BOTTOM: A bridge over the raging Rate River. This river marks the border between Eastern and Northern Sikkim.

Nothing can prepare the visitor for Rumtek, not even the hair-raising drive up the mountain. When you get to the top, what you find is not just a monastery but also an entire monastic village. The monastery is fairly new, built in the 1960s by the 16th Karmapa Lama.

Rumtek Monastery is a happy place. The friendly smiles of the resident monks soon convinced me that even the most frightening image depicted on its walls bears a salutary lesson. And throughout Sikkim, it is not hard to discern where people’s sympathies towards Buddhism lie.

North of Rumtek, across a rickety suspension bridge over the Rate River, entering the district of North Sikkim. Lush greenery, mauve-flowering lasiandras, raging water through deep ravines – these are what define North Sikkim.

Home to the Bhutanians, people dress in Tibetan clothing, where yak-butter tea is standard fare at roadside cafes.



Breathtaking views abound

TOP: The Dianthlen Falls are relatively quiet during the dry season. But during the rainy season, they form a vast, roaring water-curtain. MIDDLE: Mt. Kabru, Sikkim's second highest mountain. BOTTOM: Young monks of Rumtek Monastery.

Be sure to take the road to Western Sikkim, via South Sikkim. The road to Yuksom is more precarious than anything previously encountered. Each gorge seems to drop sheer away from the roadside. On less steep hills, rice paddies stagger down to whitewater streams gushing far below.

Crossing the Rangit River on the South-West Sikkim border lays the little town of Kewzing. Here in South Sikkim, even four-wheel drive doesn’t seem quite enough to handle the “roads,” all of which seem to have been built straddling fault lines. Near the sublime hilltop monastery of Tashiding, a vehicle loaded with crates of brandy has run over a cliff.
We stopped at a roadside café, where villager Meru Hari Prasad offered me chhang. “It’s good for you!” he said. Chhang is sometimes described as beer, but tastes more like Japanese sake. It is made from fermented millet served in a bamboo cylinder, and sipped through a bamboo straw.

A trekker’s paradise

TOP: Fishermen use big nets to trawl the rice paddies for the "Chital" fish. BOTTOM LEFT: A Young woman harvests cabbage atop Shillong Peak. BOTTOM RIGHT: The rare and succulent "Chital" fish is sold by the roadside.

Yuksom, the coronation site of the first king of Sikkim, is primarily a trekking base, consisting of a few houses and cafes, a slightly greater number of yaks, and bemused locals languidly spinning prayer wheels. Be sure to take in the mind-blowing view over Sikkim’s second highest mountain, Kabru. The daddy of them all, Mount Kangchendzonga, is best viewed at Pelling, a town just 20 kilometers from Yuksom, via an extremely rough trail through spectacular bamboo forests that drop sheer away to the Ratong river gorge.

Pelling is the heartland of the Sikkimese tea and cardamom growing industries, with exotic flora that feature widely on menus at local hotels and restaurants. At the new Norbughang Resort, I enjoyed a sublime meal of Sishnu Dal

Phodong Monastery, in North Sikkim, is an austerely beautiful structure

(lentil soup with nettles and ginger); bamboo shoots with yak cheese; pickled orchid flowers with tomato, oil and herbs; and ferns with garlic and onion.

In just four or five years, Pelling has become an important tourist center for visitors from all over the Indian sub-continent. One highlight of any visit to West Sikkim comes at the Pemayangtse monastery, in the town of Pelling, about 20 kilometers from the coronation site of the first King of Sikkim at Yuksom. Pemayagtse is an astonishing place with a three-storied temple decorated with priceless collections of frescoes, murals and thangkas.