Into The Clouds

After a 19 hour trip from Varanasi to New Jalpaiguri, I spent a night in Siliguri waiting for my guide to pick me up for the next leg of the trip. It involved a 3+ hour drive to Chitray in the foothills of the Himalayas which is the furthest that a regular vehicle can drive, and then a switchover to a Colonial era Land Rover jeep for another hour to Tumling. We spent the night at Tumling in a small guest house. Tumling sits on the crest of a ridge and is actually located in Nepal. You can look one direction at India and the other direction at Nepal. This area wasn’t damaged by the massive earthquake the occurred three days earlier, but they did experience strong tremors. We should have been able to see mountains from here, but alas, we had heavy clouds moving through the valleys and over the ridges.

The next morning, it was still cloudy as we boarded another jeep for the final climb up to Sandhakphu which is at an elevation of about 12,000 ft. After three hours of steep switchbacks and multiple crossings back and forth between India and Nepal we arrived at Sandhakphu in the middle of the clouds. By this time they were rain clouds and you couldn’t see more than a few meters. Sandhakphu is also situated on a ridge that is the border between India and Nepal. On one side of the road are tiny guest houses in Nepal and on the other side of the road there are Indian guesthouses. I stayed on the Nepal side again. Better facilities and I like Nepalese food more than Indian:<) That night the rain cloud we were in turned into a snow cloud so everything, sky and land, was white in the morning. But the Safron Fried Rice was yummy, the best thing I’ve had since Dubai.

The next day, there was a brief time that I could see all the way to the next ridge about 500 meters away. Still no mountains. For the lack of anything at all to do, I filmed some time lapse scenes of clouds flowing up the valleys and over the ridges.

Next morning, up at 0500 to see if it cleared. Nope, still a white-out, so back to bed under thick quilts. Did I mention there is no heat up here? At 0900, still in a white-out, we started the long journey back down to Darjeeling without the slightest glimpse of any mountains.

This large concrete pillar is the border between India and Nepal. At the moment I was standing in India, looking at the guest house that I was staying at in Nepal. Most of the time I was in the clouds and you couldn’t see this far: