You can cover the little state, east to west or south to north, in a day’s drive or two. And what I discovered over several days of travelling gladdens the heart. The hillsides are mostly green, often densely so; utterly different from the barren slopes that often depress you as you go across Uttarakhand. A quarter of Sikkim being under a national park seems to be helping.
The hotel we are in right now is perched at the meeting of two features. So you can look one way and try to fathom the mysteries of the misty valley below. Look the other way and the pristine snowy Kanchenjunga keeps showering its blessings upon you endlessly. In this time of the year you can usually view the peak without fail but we have been particularly lucky. Days on end, morning to afternoon, it is there, for you to behold and feel blessed.
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To those like us from large cities, the air is clear and almost heavenly. Our daughter, in particular, who has joined us from Delhi, is both elated and distressed; the latter at the thought of having to go back. Echoing a common sentiment among Dehiites, she moans, “I can’t breathe there.” But what intrigues us is the number of children, particularly girls, we find walking to school with masks on. To them, the quality of this mountain air is poor!
Why this can be so is explained by the number of cars. Sikkim runs on wheels, mostly private and a lot of taxis. Shared taxis are the key means of public transport for the middle class. Public buses are few and far between. The poor mostly walk. In fact, I kept looking for the poor who, by Indian standards, were rather difficult to find. Sikkim is a middle-income state, but if very poor people are difficult to find except for gangs working on border roads (mostly migrants), income distribution must not be very skewed.
In comparing Sikkim with Himachal Pradesh, the one point on which the latter scored was a good bus network. (Maybe population density has something to do with it.) On the other hand, though hill states are officially plastic averse, Sikkim beats all in terms of unlittered public places.
The showpiece of Sikkim’s governance is, of course, its capital Gangtok. It is sparkling clean, the traffic is dense but moves swiftly, the traffic police mean business and drivers are mortally scared about parking in “no parking” areas. This is why the traffic keeps moving so unfailingly along narrow mountain roads.
Of course the showpiece of the showpiece is M G Marg in the heart of town which has been made into a pedestrian area — no cars, bright shops, brighter young people and restaurants offering authentic ethnic cuisine (yes, Tibetan beef dishes are on the menu). One of our group bemoaned how nearby Darjeeling has been ruined many times over, the latest assault being by unregulated hawkers.
What adds to the sense of peace is the way different communities live and let live side by side. Nepali, Lepcha, Bhutia all seem free of tension. A new Hindu temple complex has clear Buddhist architectural motifs.
Sikkim has been made famous in recent years by going totally organic. Small wonder that on being told we were going to Sikkim, friends ordered us to bring tea from the famed Temi tea garden whose organic tea is as flavoured as it is costly. It was a long drive to the top of the garden. From there the snow peaks seemed within touching distance! The previous night Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes were banned and getting change back for little purchases was a headache on the way. But at Temi it did not matter. The astronomical prices of the little packages had been rounded off long ago.
For a state which relies solely on roads to get by, they are of varying quality; the worst stretches are those where the road is being widened. One look at the hillsides tells you all. The ones without roads are usually densely green. The sides bearing roads are pockmarked with landslides. So if you wish to save Sikkim the way it still is then go easy on road widening. Discourage regular tourists who add to traffic. And then whisper (too many visitors will ruin the ecology) in the ears of like-minded friends, “take the hard road to the north in April when it is still very chilly and the rhododendron are in bloom”. That is difficult to beat anywhere in the world.
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