Sikkim: The Heavenly Kingdom

Every time I travel I fall in love with my travelling companions and the people I meet and this time is no different. I have just spent an evening laughing until I couldn’t breathe, getting tipsy on millet wine, dancing with people from the village and eating momos. Does life get any better? My travelling group and the Sikkimese I have met are intelligent and funny people and they make everything good. Our guide’s name is Phurba Sherpa and, with a name like that, you know he is going to show you a good time. 

We are in the former Kingdom of Sikkim high in the Himalayas and it seems a heavenly kingdom. To enter we needed a special permit and received a stamp in our passports. It is all mist shrouded mountains connected by bridges dotted with well-kept jewel like homes nestled in amongst lush greenery. Exotic houseplants appear here as large flowering trees. Access is by very narrow winding roads with constant blind hairpin turns and fallen boulders. Men in gold rubber boots carry cement and rocks up narrow switchback paths to hidden mountain homes. Sweet faced dogs follow you everywhere hoping for a pat. There are prayer flags along the roads and Buddhist monasteries on every plateau. The people look more Nepali than mainland Indian with broad smiling faces and Asian features. The local religions are mainly Hindu and Buddhist and, while both Hindi and English are spoken, the common language is Nepali. It doesn’t feel like India.

The drive to our Kewzing homestay was winding and beautiful and I wished I could have stayed awake during all of it but the overnight train ride from hell determined that I no longer contained enough wakefulness to do so. This village does co-operative homestays so they make money and share their culture. We are staying in one traditional style home with a very charming woman and her mother. The food she cooks is absolutely amazing. She grows orchids to surround the house and to sell at market, and the home has crops and animals to supply most of its food needs.

This morning we went on a hike on paths around the village with a guide and we looked at the different exotic plants and homes. We walked through a Sherpa village and I asked if I could use the toilet. I was directed to a home squat toilet so I went in, squatted and did my biz, then opened my pack to get tissues for a pat down when my camera sprung out of my bag and tumbled down into the hole of the toilet. It all happened in slow motion as I yelled, “Noooooo....” and stuck my hand down the toilet hole to retrieve my camera. Apparently my friends heard me and debated whether I had fallen in the toilet hole or the dog in the yard had broken in and attacked me in the shitter. Unfortunately, my camera was soaked and no longer works. It went into a bag of rice but no go. I just hope the SD card still works with all my photos on it.

Is it a blessing to stick your arm down a Sherpa’s toilet? I sure hope so. Not least of all because I ate raw pickle with it before remembering the last place it had been was down a toilet. 

It’s probably not a blessing, because after our visit to the lake of seven mirrors and the Buddhist cremation grounds I managed to take a tumble and muddy up my last clean pair of pants and then was bitten on the leg by a leech. J and N got leeched, too. They were both bitten on the ankle by leeches and bled all over their socks. We finished our jaunt with a visit to an absolutely beautiful monastery and heard the monks playing horns and drums and chanting. 

Our afternoon was spent getting tiddly on Sikkim beer and wine and giggling, because we are sophisticates and that is what we do. Do not judge us.

Then Phurba decided we needed to have the local millet wine called Tongba that you drink with a bamboo straw called a pipsing. Nepalis (and many Sikkimese consider themselves Nepalis) make a fermented drink with cooked red millet and local herbs to ferment it. Then you just keep adding hot water and it keeps fermenting. We bellied up to the big wooden mugs full of fermented millet and they added hot water. When they were ready we drank them through the bamboo straws until they topped us up with more hot water. It was tasty and about as potent as wine. E is hatching plans for an entire empire based on “Just Add Water” millet wine mix that may or may not involve marrying a local girl. We managed to drink quite a bit of it before it was time for a bonfire and local dancing. 

A group of villagers, dressed in fancy silk brocades arrived, plus our hostess and host dressed up. They performed some local dances for us and got us to join in. Then we were going to teach them some dances. I wanted to teach them the “Time Warp” but instead G taught them “Achey Breaky Heart.” It was all a hoot and we all broke up laughing.

For dinner we had momos and soup and I knew this was a heavenly kingdom. To crown it all the clouds parted and we saw the peak of Mt. Narsing in all its glory.