Ruins , Confusion and Gangtok Glimpses - Day 2 -Sikkim

By virtue of its location, mornings dawn early in Sikkim. After all the ravings and rantings about A.Tiptur, the previous night (We are indebted to JK for throwing so much light about such a worthy soul), the morning started on a lazy note. Finally we started off towards Rabdenste Ruins (For some reason the apparently phonetic me is still not sure how this is pronouncedL). Rabdenste was the second capital of Sikkim shifted from Yuksom. Presently the Rabdentse Palace in West Sikkim is in ruins.

The entry to the ruins is calm, enchanting place where it seems criminal to exercise your vocal chords and disturb the tranquility.

A walk of about 0.5- 1 Km leads us to the ruins.

There are many motivating boards enroute, which ensure that the lazy software guys don’t head back without getting a peek of the Ruins.

(The climb could be a wee bit strenuous for someone who is used to staring at the monitor 8-10 hours a day).

The ruins are on a small hillock and are primarily blocks of walls and a chorten. On a clear day (which we were not blessed with) one could get a very nice view of the Pemayangste Monastery! The ace photographers were exhibiting all the acrobatic skills they possessed by climbing up and down several of the walls :-P.

Our videographer a.k.a Kiran recorded some rather scandalous conversations and is shameless enough to use those as blackmail tools :-(( .

Our itinerary said we would be heading towards Temi Tea Garden and Ravangla! None of us had any clue about either of the places except that a couple of us had read these names in the itinerary. The mallu junta was not very enthused about the Tea Garden coz no Tea Gardens can compare to Munnar. Durga with his ESP sensed this, and decided to head straight to Gangtok. Unfortunately his ESP did not make sense to us and we had to sort out the confusion with our Mr. Mukhiya. And before we realized, we reached Gangtok by 4 in the evening.

An interesting piece of information – Every vehicle in Sikkim is generally registered in specific districts and the permits allow them to operate only these specific district(s). So , to my misery, we had to bid farewell to our dear Durga since he was the West Sikkim hero. After a tearful farewell we headed towards our hotel in Gangtok. The journey was full of mystery and we were curious to know our destination. We went through the winding roads, savoring this small hill capital and eventually reached a narrow dingy road. I was hoping against hope, this was not going be our destination! But Murphy being my close buddy, our hotel happened to be on this narrow piece of winding land called a street. The hotel was disappointing to say the least and we realized that we are possibly being taken on a ride by our dear Mr. Mukhiya and the ride had just begun!

But the hotel happened to be nice cozy place and it seemed like a cottage entirely for our group. DCM and I got the best room (I prefer to think so) with a heavenly view. But we were not yet blessed with the view of the mountains :-(.

Travails of Gangtok will follow soon! The good news is that I have decided to update my blog especially the Sikkim travelogue regularly and the bad news is that I am yet to implement them.

Keep visiting http://rashthedash.blogspot.com for quick(hopefully) updates ;-).