tRAVEL .. it's time you took off to

Caravan trail to roadways

 ...a story enroute NORTH SIKKIM

“It’s been nearly half a century ever since my father and grandfather led their caravan trains upon this highway,” says Tega (actually Tshering Dorjee Lachenpa) of Marcopolo World Travels. But it wasn’t a highway then, just a rough mule track. Today Tega revs up his jeep upon this curling North Sikkim highway. Huge awkward army trucks, shiny jeeps with a load of tourists to fancy cars honk past us. The highway seems busy but it wasn’t until a decade ago when these ruggedly beautiful North Sikkim highlands were open to tourism in 1997 that life seeped into the road and alongside it. Until then the Lachenpas and the Lachungpas had lived in near seclusion for generations. These burly, robust tribes of ancient Tibetan stock have inhabited the snow clad treacherous mountain homes of Lachen and Lachung ever since the great caravan-trade flourished between Tibet and India prior to 1959 when the Chinese occupied Tibet. They have moved along with their enormous herds of yaks to the highest altitudes in search of grass, cultivated the snow-chilled earth in spring and prodded endless Mongolian pony trains to Tibet and fro sustaining a rich trade. In years as the highway, built and maintained by the Indian army for security reasons as Sikkim was a protectorate of the Indian Republic, offered opportunities of a different kind (the hospitality trade of course) they became part of the mainstream and the two tribal lairs have since then metamorphosed into much sought after tourist haunts in North Sikkim.  

It seems a challenge to have a highway here. This stretch to Lachung in the heart of North Sikkim is a 118 km long adventure. From unpredictable boulder-crashing zones to dicey looking remains of the road still lying suspended after a landslip, slushy patches flooded with uncontrollable streams to sections under bonnet deep water and even a spooky tale of a dead spinster’s spirit luring drivers for a lift – the highway turns out more to be an adventure driver’s fantasy.  

There was a roadside graffiti that tried to sprinkle some on-route humour. It read, “You have tasted coca cola and campa cola, now taste lanthey khola”.  “Lanthey khola,” a slang portrayal in Nepali means “bothersome river” and Lanthey, indeed, was a bother ever since those highlanders chose to walk this route. The torrent crashed upon the road and spilled over it. During the monsoons it would turn wilder. “My father recalls it till date,” informs Tega. Even his ancestors had to put up with the bother and they had now inherited the menace.

 I begin to imagine crossing long trains of caravans with burly, thick set bakku clad, long hair braided Lachenpas and Lachungpas transporting coxy apples (once famed apples grown in the region), salt, wool, yak butter and other essentials valued in far away Tibet or Gangtok. High hills loom on one side of the road clothed with forests that have refused to die, the other side keeps changing, sometimes an abyss with the Teesta river roaring far below and at times paddy fields brace the topography that look like an interesting sketch upon the mountain earth. Sometimes, all at an instant we ride through unexpected clusters of houses that have sprung along the highway catering to hungry tourists and wayfarers. Phodong, Namok, Singhik and others have clung on to a new profession of feeding visitors. Hospitality is selling in these long concealed nooks too.

The road stretches on, bridges appear, check posts show up and the highway shifts on to another hill seeming like a kind of a leap from knoll to knoll in hot pursuit of a destination.

At times surprises could be lurking round the bend. Those sparkling frothy white torrents crashing down a precipice is a visual spectacle. How awesome they look, while some like the by now famous seven sisters falls has turned the spot into a stopover. Vendors have pitched their temporary huts serving tea and snacks to tourists getting off to check out the cascade. You could trudge up a set of steps departing into a steep slope hosting numerous trees and a flourishing cardamom grove for a better view of the falls.

The seven sisters seem to have attracted the name owing to its series of seven fall-and-crashes at regular intervals with the last one striking the ground being the longest in the series. Diki, a young girl serving tea at a shop secretly informed me that somebody had discovered the eighth one too. “And where is that one?” I queried. “You need to get to the top of the hill,” she says. “But, they say there are so many in that series higher up,” Diki further discloses letting out the entire secret. But for now seven is good enough, I feel, staring up at the eroded cliff that resemble a series of well scraped hoods.

Closer home to Lachung is the twin falls that is another dazzler.

Another wonder, characteristic of other mountain roads is the way the highway has been engraved on the precipice. They have bored through stubborn rocks, negotiated uphills and downhills, braved scary precipices, endured shooting boulder zones, witnessed horrible landslips and occasional death of a fellow road worker.  The highway at once makes you wonder – all these sacrifices, was it just another opportunity to earn a living or did they really have some noble thoughts. Whatever be it, this intrepid bunch did manage to effect a great change as they earned their living.  Today, they say there are about sixty hotels in remote Lachung alone, Lachen is growing too, Chungthang enroute has prospered, entire units of the army survive too and the old tribal societies have now marched on the trail to modernity. Isn’t this enough change in a little over a decade?

Tega who handled the operation section of their travel company himself had attended a reputed public school in Darjeeling. There were many like him. Their generation had taken on to modern jobs – doctors, engineers, teachers and were even wealthy entrepreneurs. So the highway that had succeeded the old caravan trail had indeed opened up opportunities. A journey that once took days, a good store of food at hand, sufficient camps, enough ponies and men thus seeming like an entire village migrating now required a mere four hours. This caravan trail to roadway story doesn’t end here (no wonder they must have coined the word eternity), we need one here to relate and conclude the story.

Hours ago, as Tega had careened into the North Sikkim highway departing from the one that began at Gangtok he had cried out customarily, “Syo Syo” as his ancient ancestors had done each time they had hit the trail to their homeland. “It means blessed be our land,” Tega had explained.

Over the years, I guessed, their salutations had miraculously worked.