My Trip to Singalila National Park - Part 2

Next morning at around 8:30, we started out for our next stop, Kalipokhri, roughly 15-16 km walk from Tonglu.

In Nepali as well as Hindi, the term Kalipokhri means 'the black pond'. Legend says that the pond in Kalipokhri is the left foot print of Gautam Buddha himself. Once upon a time in ancient history, this place used to be a bustling one with pilgrims flocking all around the year. But as the legend grew old, its charm grew weary and the place was left for only a handful people who made it their home. Now it is a small hamlet with a few families serving the occasional tourists and people from Seema Suraksha Bal who are posted there. Almost all the homes there serve as restaurant cum hotel cum bar cum grocery shop while the family members serve as the hotel service, stewards and bar tenders, all in one.

Kalipokhri

Locals on the way

After a day long walk through beautiful meadows and a road besieged by rhododendron and magnolia, we reached Kalipokhri at around 4pm. As usual, me and Saikat da reached first and Shrijit followed half an hour later. In between, we took stop at Joubari for a cup of warm coffee with Anne, talked to her a bit, and got to know that she is Christian, but her husband, known as master ji locally, is Buddhist, and they have absolutely no problem with their difference in faith. Later we had lunch at Kehakata and moved forward towards our destination.

 Anne

Joubari

Some slaughtered Yak

Once we reached there and lay our eyes upon the mythical pond, we knew instantly why all the hoopla surrounded it once. It had a certain sense of mysticism around it that took out all our excitement for a while and filled us with a serene and calm feeling, and for a while, I thought Buddha must have been here because I feel him inside me.

The afternoon in Kalipokhri was cold, and the wind was chilly. But the magical interplay between the bright light and small clouds made the sky a spectacle to watch. It was the brightest and most beautiful afternoon that I have ever seen.

A local family

The magical afternoon at Kalipokhri

In the valley, the night sets in quite early and as soon as it was dark, it was time for the dinner. We were etching for some good food, and the hotel owner provided us with some excellent ones, in fact it was the last stop where we had chicken before end of the journey. We were joined by two robust Germans for an evening 'adda'. To our pleasant surprise, we found out that we were not the only people busted by the cold, but the mighty Germans too were as sick of that freezing wind as we were.

The next morning at around 9am we started out for Sandakphu. The small hilltop and some hotels there were visible from Kalipokhri itself. It was a fairly easy walk through the valley, though we had to climb up and down some hills. Upon reaching there, we lodged our self in the Trekkers Hut B, in a room all to our self.

Sandakphu

Guides resting at Hut 2

From our guide, we got to know that the meaning of the term 'Sandakphu' is 'The Land of the poisonous Flowers', for some wild flower that grew in that part. It is said that if someone smells that flower, he can not leave this place, no matter how hard he tries. Then I thought to myself, may be this myth grew from the smell of this place itself, which may have compelled some ancient wanderer to come back to this place again and again. The hypnotism was in the air.

The night was peaceful and shiveringly cold night was warmed up by rum and the candidness of the guides. The Germans joined in with us to share some laugh. The whirling wind outside and the dim light of the candle made the evening mystic.

Next morning, we were again ready to get out on the path for Phalut, and it would be the longest journey for a day for this tour. Apprehensive of the exhaustiveness of the journey, we set out nonetheless. But the effort paid off as we went across the valley of yaks and ponies. The nature was oblivious to our presence. We felt like really being just a part of the creation, and the feeling was divine. It took us more than seven hours to cross the path and we reached Phalut at around 4pm. We were lucky in a way to reach in time as the weather turned sour afterwards.

It felt great to see the Indian Flag flying high in the valley

The place Phalut lives up to its name, which means 'Very windy place'. It was by far the windiest part of our journey. Apart from the trekkers hut and a Seema Suraksha Bal outpost, there was nothing around that place, I could feel the loneliness in the continuous, tiring sound of the whirling wind.

The mighty Kanchenjunga

My Trip to Singalila National Park - Part 1

So, after months of contemplation, I finally decided to come up with my own blog. And for the first post, what better of my experiences to share than the most exciting one that I had in recent time. So here goes an account of my tryst with the nature, my travel through the hills and mountains of Singalila Ridge.

As usual, it all started with a proposal that came up after our rock climbing course way back in November, 2011. I am not sure though who put it first, me or Saikat da (Saikat Chattopadhyay). So we started to look for routes favourable for novices like us and also some more novices to join us. After a few weeks research, I narrowed down my search to the route I am about to describe, i.e. Sandakphu-Phalut, a part of the Singalila Ridge. Then we started making arrangements, and in the mean time, Shrijit (Shrijit Das) and Amit da (Amit Ghosh) joined the party. But, being a last minuter in all, I was always the "lyadhkhor" one. Thanks to the other three, we didn't lack in preparation though (actually, later we realized that we were over prepared.) I just managed to do one thing that saved me from hypothermia in the tour, to buy two holofil jackets, one for myself and one for Saikat da.

All said and done, we were set to start our journey on 13th April, 2012 with another two people. But at the last minute, they pulled out for personal reason. So, four of us boarded Darjeeling mail on the said date and found out in pleasant surprise that we happened to share out cabin with another group of trekkers, who were going to do the ridge from opposite end.

Here I should probably describe our payload of foods. We packed our sacs with 90 chocolates, 15 packs of wai wai, 4X6 packs of maggi, more than 10 packs of biscuits and cookies, peanuts, butter, mayonnaise (thanks to shrijit, we will always have pleasant memory of the mayonnaise) and some more stuffs that I can't even remember now. But after all, we managed to devour most of them during the tour. When we came back, our sacs were half empty!

Fellow trekkers we met on the train

Next morning after getting off the train, we arranged a car for Manabhanjang, the starting point of our trek. It was a four hour journey, which, courtesy our half crazy driver with a junk of a car, turned out to be an entertaining one.

Local children playing at a playground on top of a hill at Manaybhanjang.

After getting to Manaybhanjang, first thing we realized was that it was a bad decision to start the trek right on that day because we were already late and it was already 2 in the afternoon and the weather was deteriorating. But what to do! We had our booking for Tonglu for the same night. So, without wasting any more time, we got off to work and visited the local guide office to book us a guide for the route. And there we met our guide for the trek, Arpan Gurung, a local lad from a nearby village of no name.

Arpan Gurung, our guide

Official works being done, we hurried through our lunch (some sort of soupy noodles, which was easy to take fast) and began walking uphill towards Tonglu. Unfortunately, the weather started to deteriorate further and after 15-20 minutes, there was a complete white out! And further, Shrijit started feeling sick. But we had to walk on. So after 10 minutes rest, started walking again, and amidst mist and fog, reached Lamaydhura, a very small hamlet with hardly 2-3 homes of Nepali people. Had a nice cup of tea, some boiled eggs and posed for a photo session there before starting again. But by the time we started again, we were already late and the afternoon was nearly gone, and we still had more than half the distance to cover.

Lamaydhura

As feared, by the time we crossed Meghma, it was pitch dark. We had to get our torches on the road for the first and last time on the tour. The road was dark and rocky, the weather was windy and cold, we were almost drained of our energy, and there was fear of himalayan black bear. But none of these seemed important then, the only thing that mattered then to us was to reach our destination. Any more delay would have caused serious problem to us. Luckily we had enough chocolates and biscuits to provide us with energy and keep us up.

A fellow on the way

Finally, at around 08:45pm, I spotted a house on a small hilltop, and figured, that must be our stop! And it was. Upon getting there, they showed us our room, and then we felt like nothing can be as comforting as those beds! Upon arrival of everyone and some rest, the dinner was served, a simple meal of daal, rice and a typical curry which i couldn't figure out what it was for the entire tour. But whatever may be the case, it tasted like the best meal I've had in years. And afterward the sleep, it was as deep as it can get.

The team

The next morning I found myself to be the first to wake up at 5am and realized that the sun was about to come up the hills and I decided to go visit him first. So, I put on my shoe, my jacket, picked up my camera and went out. The first thing that hit me was the bitter chilly wind. It felt like cutting through my face. But amidst all these, when the Sun rose above the Kangchenjunga, painting it red, it felt like every bit of pain suffered was worth it. I went up the small hilltop beside the hut to get a clearer view and got this shot.

Tonglu from the hilltop