My Incredible India Discovery

It’s so cozy and comfortable. My thick beautiful rose printed blanket covered me completely! I could hear him moving around the room, taking pictures, watching tv and just generally whiling away time as I refused to wake up! I finally felt bad for him and managed to unwind from my blanket. I must say this hotel was the best in the trip - but we spent the least time here! We were instructed to be ready by 10 for our trip to Lachen. I again got lost in the welcoming bathroom and took my own sweet time to get ready, I gave more than "own sweet time" for him as well! By 9 am we were ready and we already had rats playing bhangra in our stomachs a.k.a Hungry!
The restaurant at the hotel had the same name as the one in Darjeeling "The Orchid" - and it also happens to be my favorite flower too - It's just a coincidence damn it! (Sivaji aka Rajni). We hogged numerous omelets and toasted bread. We were the only ones in the restaurant and assumed the entire breakfast buffet as ours! The waiter(s) were very sweet to us while serving :-) and were probably thinking "Complementary breakfast ka fayda uthaving eh" – Never mind!
We spent some time walking around the premises of the hotel and taking some more "idea" photos as we were waiting for our ride to arrive. We could hear every vehicle passing by the main road (which was probably 100 meters from us), our big Mahindra jeep finally arrived and a thin, tiny, skinny driver appeared. I wondered if he could even drive the jeep properly. Trust me I thought wrong (you will discover it as we go on with the trip). Our jeep had the sticker "Praise the Lord" similar to the sticker I had on my previous Maruti - Again a coincidence damn it :)
On the way, we visited the "Seven sisters Waterfalls" - Apparently Seven waterfalls together one above the other. We could actually spot 5 and didn’t know where the other 2 sisters were - May be playing in the garden ;) lol. The water and the sun rays collided beautifully to create a mini rainbow; Lovely indeed.
I would avoid getting into too much of details (I would land up writing a novel otherwise) and would try to stick to the important things only :) The roads started to become non-existent as we proceeded. Every path we drove was either filled with stones/rocks/water. It was initially very exciting and looked very adventurous, but as we climbed higher it became too scary. The path was so narrow that I could not imagine 2 vehicles crossing at the same time. But guess what, a huge Army van and our car would pass each other with a centimeter gap. I was unfortunately sitting at the side where the vehicles would pass by! We had the "Teesta" river accompany us all along the trip. We spotted water from every height, width and angle. So many small streams and waterfalls contributed to Teesta. We crossed almost 15 waterfalls during the ride and we didn’t bother to click any pictures as we were having a camel ride (both in speed and feel) and we wouldn’t have got any stable photos! Our bums started to ache and we were growing impatient. The driver had a little mercy on us and halted for lunch at a nice and small restaurant. The good part about this place was - we didn’t have to pay for what we ate here, we don’t get to order either - Food just appears on the table. We had good lively music to keep us alive and rejuvenate ourselves from the painful ride.
No matter how painful it was, I must say the mountains were very attractive; Mysterious and gigantic. Hats-off to "BRO" (Border roads Organization) for taking the effort to create this route. In fact, they are in the process of laying roads on this route and am hoping it will be built before my kid is old enough to visit Sikkim ;-) BRO also painted messages like "Be gentle on my curves", "Please horn while you turn", "No hurry No worry" etc which kept us entertained during the journey :)
The drive from Gangtok to Lachen took us almost 6 hours. Teesta was enjoying every bit of water and we were far from enjoying as we held ourselves tight to avoid jumping and hitting our heads against the roof! I could already see Vishnu frowning to every bump/rock which approached us! It was 6 in the evening when we saw "Lachen". It was already pitch dark and we had no mood/inclination to go anywhere after that. It was pretty cold and we chose to spend the rest of the evening in the lodge. The lodge was a very basic place with absolutely nobody staying there. Thankfully there was a cook ;) He fed us with some yummy food and we hit the bed very early! But before that, the driver came and told us – “Kal subah 5 baje nikalna hain” and we were like - NO, Not again! The driver insisted on taking us to "Guru Dongmar lake" and finally convinced us to be ready by 4:30 am!
We wished "Good night" to Lachen by 8:00 pm and entered dream world in no time! What a day it was!

We left Darjeeling and were heading towards Sikkim, on the way we spotted the very famous Teesta River. Entering Sikkim is a totally hyped process - you need a dozen permits and there are lots of check posts where the driver is required to go sign registers. The funny part is, those check posts sometimes would be deserted and our driver would just go and honestly sign the book. I must say the driver was pretty honest, according to him, people in the locality are honest and "No thefts" usually. Impressive! We stopped by to the beautiful view point called "Triveni view point". It offers a panoramic view of the ’sangam’. This is the point where the rivers Rangeet and Teesta meet. This junction divides the land in to Sikkim, West Bengal and the earstwhile portions of Bhutan. We spotted a couple of rafts from the top and were tempted to go for river rafting.

The guy who offered the rafts was atrociously priced, but u know what, he was the only one who provided this service and every tourist who passed by would not mind paying that amount because its "a onetime experience". We had a huge discussion whether to go for it or not. Random thoughts like "should we even bother to this?", "May be we should, because we may not come again to this place", "What the heck, just don’t bother about money", "Its freaking expensive and our overall expenses will shoot up", "No other better gift to give him on this day" blah blah blah. I wanted to make sure that Vishnu had a fabulous birthday, besides me not organizing a cake or bouquet of flowers! So, after all that brain storming, we decided to go rafting! Luckily, We found a friendly couple - Smitha & Rohit - to accompany us in this adventure and to share the burden of the cost!
The river was calm for the most part of the rafting except for some rapids which made us active and scream our lungs out when the water would rise as if its ready to gulp us all down! Vishnu took the brave work of rowing and I conveniently sat in the center to enjoy the ride. Whenever a rapid was nearing, the guide who came along with us would say "On your knees" - Smitha and I would obediently kneel down and throw ourselves in front of the raft. It was as if the waters were waiting for us to bow and it would immediately attack us! It was a once in a lifetime experience for sure and we enjoyed every bit of it! :)

Our driver, was impatient to take us to Gangtok and drove as fast as he could. (we were running 2 hours late). Vishnu and I were just too tired to even bother about the view outside! In fact we were hungry. We took out our Mothers love - Brownies and Pakodas - and filled our stomach to survive the ride. As we entered Gangtok we saw a prominent pedestrian built on both sides of the road. Found that unique as we don't really bother to build one for our city! Sikkim is beautiful (no wonder it attracts tourists and terrorists) and we seemed to like it so far. Gangtok was a total buzzing city. A fully fledged market with almost all brands available: Nike, Adidas, Louis Phillipe, Raymonds etc. We bid adieu to Ram bhaiya at the Gangtok taxi stand and a new car and driver took the responsibility of taking us around the city for the rest of the day.
We were actually not interested to do anymore sightseeing and were dying to eat and sleep! But the OH-SO-HONEST driver took us to "Bhanjakri Falls Energy Park" - It looked like a miniature of the Darjeeling rock garden, except that it had an entry fee and a restaurant to feed us! We spent more time eating than actually seeing the place and instructed the driver to take us to the hotel.
The day just seemed to long for us to handle, our hotel was 15 KMs away from the falls and we were again back to hurting our bums in the car! The road was worse than before and it was already dark by the time we saw the face of the hotel. Though the ride was extremely painful, the hotel was equally cozy! We reached "Royal Demazong" just in time for dinner! Our room was beautiful - Tea maker (Yes, I needed it badly), TV (I guess Vishnu needed it badly), huge bath tub, lovely curtains and bright cushions! (Some very pointless things to make it a cozy room, but the only things we cared about at that time!) A nice hot water bath, Strong tea, Tasty food and "So you think you can dance" on TV made it a nice evening. We hit the bed pretty soon (Too much of traveling for the day we thought). We were just unaware of the amount of traveling we would go through the next day! I felt as if I was back from a hard day’s work and was drowsy. I don’t remember saying "Good Night" to him either - I just slept!