Previously on The Dzongri Trek:
A part of the road 'wiped off' in a landslide
The weather was cool and nice. The view as we drove around and over the hills were amazing; calm streams, tall trees, snow capped mountains far away, and waterfalls were all around. We stopped at Legship to have some tea. Legship is known for a beautiful Shiva Temple (Kirateshwar Mahadev Mandir) at the banks of river Rangit. We didn't visit the temple though; just saw it as we passed by.
Renzil and Masoon had reached Yuksom the previous day. They left Kolkata couple of days back and reached Yuksom after visiting Gangtok. We reached the Blessing Hotel at Yuksom, where they were staying, at around 8AM. All of us freshened up there in some time and were ready to go!
The previous evening, Ren had checked with Sherpa treks, a local group there which organizes treks to Dzongri and Goecha La. They agreed to take us for around 3k per head. We agreed as we didn't have enough time to find another guide and also there were many tourists there looking for trekking agencies and guides. The package included food for the 4 days, accomodation, sleeping bags, a guide cum cook, a porter (Norton, a boy aged around 16) to carry some utensils and help out the guide, a yak - actually a Dzo (hybrid of yak and cow) to carry some of our luggage, food and the sleeping bags, and a yakman to tend the dzo.
Our yakman loading the Dzo!
The initial plan was to get to Tshoka before sunset on the first day. But as we were a little late to arrive at Yuksom, we decided to halt at Baakim (14Kms from Yuksom and 2Kms before Tshoka) for the night. We started off at around 10.30 AM, a couple of hours past the initially decided time.
The route to Baakhim was mainly through the Kanchendzonga national park, known for the Rhododendron flowers, which I was told fills the place in the month of March.We did not get to see the flower. We had to cross 4 bridges on the first day, most of which were suspension bridges.
One of the 4 bridges we crossed on the first day
As hours passed, we could feel the weight of the bags pulling us down. Each bridge did tempt us to take a dip in the cold water running below; but we did not have enough time! We kept walking. It starts getting dark pretty soon here. The sun set at around 5.30PM; we reached Baakhim few minutes later. When we reached there we were starving, but nobody was thinking about food! ( I am not very sure about one person ;) ) We were all digging into our bags, and wearing all the warm clothes we had. In 5 minutes, each person weighed an extra couple of Kgs.
We were served hot mugs of tea, which were gulped down in no time. We then got our dormitory for the night. There we had the popular beer in Sikkim - 'HIT'. Dinner was served soon afterwards. I do not remember many instances when I was more hungry! All of us kept appreciating the food! :)
The next day we woke up around 630, freshened up, had our breakfast and set out for Dzongri. Since we had halted at Baakhim instead of Tshoka, we had to cover an extra 2 Kms uphill. We reached Tshoka in 1.5 hours. We could see few snow capped mountains from Tshoka including Pandim. Our next stop was Phedang where we were supposed to have our lunch. The climb uphill was quite tiring. There were some preliminary symptoms of altitude sickness were shown on couple of us. Phedang is around midway from Tshoka to Dzongri. There is a small wooden cabin where you can prepare your lunch. We had some maggi and biscuits for lunch.
Having a mug of steaming hot tea at Phedang
We were told that the climb to dzongri was steeper than the stretch we had covered earlier during the day. That wasn't very encouraging. We started from Phedang in half an hour. The path ahead was all foggy. We couldn't see more than a few metres ahead for sometime. Within an hour we saw snow. Though it was quite cold out there we didn't hesitate to make balls of snow and shoot at others. I had never seen snow before. We kept walking and in around 2 hours after we left Phedang, we reached Dzongri! We were pleasantly surprised that we weren't too exhausted. I doubt if our guide/cook added some secret ingredient-x in our maggi for lunch!
Our guide arranged for our cabin for the night. We kept our luggage in there and then walked around the cabin enjoying the view. There we witnessed something which for me was the most beautiful sight I had seen till date!
Altitude of Paradise = 13,200 feet?
But was this going to be the most beautiful sight of the trip? The foreigners we met on the way, who were on their way back to the base, didn't think so; they told us that the sunrise at Dzongri has no match in terms of beauty! We would know that in a few hours! Until then we kept admiring the bed of clouds on front of us. It was freezing cold outside; but we waited there till sunset. After sunset, we could no longer stay outside; the temperature dropped to around minus 7 deg C!
Ready to get Bamboo-zled!
The guide told us that he would get us the local brew - Bamboo! It is made of fermented millet and served in bamboo stem, cut and used as a tumbler. All we need to do is add warm water to it; wait for 5 mins...and...voila! You've got something that tastes like wine! Once you finish the drink you just need to add more water to the fermented millet and wait for 5 more minutes to get your refill! It does get milder after a few drinks though. If you go to Sikkim, this is another thing you must try!
After that we retired for the night. We had to catch the sunrise at 4 AM the next day. Would it turn out to be as beautiful as many people we met and all the reviews on the net said? We only had to wait for 6 more hours! And you only have to wait for the next blog-post. :-)
PS: 15 shots of bamboo - Not Advisable! ;-)
Links:
