Drive to Gangtok

The night before I decided - I would leave tomorrow. I woke up at six, walked down to the motor stand. The sun was smiling softly and gradually filling in the town street by street. Bakeries took the dough out from kneading trough for the new-day bread and pastry; boys started their first cricket match; shopkeepers were opening their shops. Here daylight is short-lived and therefore precious, so it is utilized at most – people have to be early birds. I bought my ticket to Gangtok, got back to the hotel for breakfast, paid my bills and left.

The drive (described as “scenic” in my guidebook – at the end of the day I hate it as much as I find it helpful.. these guidebooks and the expectations they created based on at times very dubious accounts) was actually very good. The vision was still limited: it seemed there was a light smoky blue chiffon curtain in front of the nearby hill, one more curtain in front of the next one and one more layer would add the further it goes - totally hiding the remote hills. The road went along the sunlit jungle on the slopes of the caramel-colored hills and the emerald, at times turning snow-white rash river. The state of Sikkim, as again I read in this time an official brochure, prides itself on 4500 species of flowering plants, 515 species of orchids, 36 species of rhododendron 23 species of bamboo. And even without such a detailed insight you can make out that the diversity of the flora in the area is mind-boggling.

The border with Sikkim was demarked with a colorful gate painted similar to those of Buddhist monasteries. While I was looking through the window and admiring the river, they checked my permit issued in Kolkata (as a foreigner you need to apply for a permit to enter Sikkim – being surrounded by Nepal, Butan and Tibet it is a restricted-access area), put my name in their rosters and let me in. Welcoming Sikkim border, lush greenery, colorful houses along the road and beautiful sunshine made me believe it was an ultimate spring.

I was traveling with a small girl and her grandfather. The girl was about 10 years old and looked like a typical Asian girl of her age: slanting eyes, perfect porcelain skin, short straight black hair fixed with a bright hair-slide, pink jacket and pink ballerina shoes, jeans and dark blue scarf from her school uniform – with its ends pulled back – an exemplary of sweetness and female beauty in its infancy. The sweetness and the beauty yet appeared to be an utter nightmare. She was shooting questions one after another with a horribly serious look and I felt like I was through an elaborate interview at the immigration office while applying for the Indian citizenship. She herself reported that while she attended her school in Kalimpong her parents stayed in Gangtok and she was visiting them now. Once we started off I asked her to close the window so to avoid the way too refreshing wind and she just would not cooperate. I had to explain her I just recovered from the fever and I do not fancy a relapse. So, I had to close the window myself, yet she would resist and even once I managed to close it she would find a reason to open it – clearly she had to throw (as any kid here learns from his/her parents) an empty package of chips, pakotas and candies (nutrition of the angels cannot be overlooked) all of which this little one had consumed over a short while. I am sure that the parents who get to see her only for holidays and poojas admire this little perfection… And I was thinking of the phenomenon of “little king” psychology in the Asian families towards their only kid. My troubled mind…..