An Affair to Remember

It’s a love affair that has been there for as long as I can remember. Tall, dark and wildly beautiful – they are the mountains of the Himalayas. The ‘love at first sight’ happened at Darjeeling - the mysterious Kanchendzonga and its neighbouring snow peaks playing hide and seek amidst the clouds while the mist descended on the Mall. Barely seven, I was drawn to the mountains like nothing else. Ever since, I have never tired of visiting them – be it in Kashmir, Himachal, Sikkim, West Bengal or even Arunachal. In recent times though I have approached the mountains with some apprehension... is it still going to be the same, will they cease to captivate, and will I still be as excited and happy as I was the first time? The same doubts nag me as the car begins its ascent from Siliguri to Gangtok and they grow larger as we remain stranded for a few hours on the road that is being widened at random stretches, leading to rather large traffic snarls. The dust from the excavators mask the cool mountain air and the increased number of vehicles on the mountain roads add to the heat and the pollution. I feel like I’m imprisoned in the ordinary city traffic that I face every day. Six arduous hours later (the journey normally takes four) I reach Gangtok but there is no considerable drop in temperature. It is as warm and muggy as the plains below. The late night rains do little to change the humidity. I sleep uneasy, unsure of what to expect the next day. A new day dawns but fails to bring with it any of the change that I am longing for. Gangtok has become a rather busy mountainous town with hordes of tourist everywhere. There are too many cars on the narrow, winding mountain roads. Thankfully the mall has been made off limits for all kinds of vehicles but so many shops have sprung up around it that you hardly have any view of the mountains left.

A trip to the zoological gardens and a temple in the higher reaches of the city, remain the only times that I get to be in the solitude of the mountains. Disappointed by the surging crowds and unplanned urbanization and growth everywhere I plan to go to Changu but the mountains seem elusive. Frequent landslides make the road completely unmotorable. The driver claims it is all due to faulty and indiscriminate road construction. Desperate I get out of the car and try to wander through the mountain tracks into the nearby villages. There are huts doing brisk business selling Maggi to hungry tourists, stranded on the road. Looking down I see a never ending queue of cars, all lined up on the road, snaking to Changu.

I realize I am doing this all wrong; that I need to get off the beaten track. I start looking for a less touristy place and Sajith, my chauffer cum guide, comes up with “Ravangla”. He recommends a budget hotel with simple food - Clouds End. I look it up on the internet. It looks beautiful but then everything on a website does. With a lot at stake I am on the road again. The same traffic snarls prevail on the way out of Gangtok. Missing nothing I doze off. I wake up to a cool breeze caressing my face and suddenly it’s all there…all that I was so desperately looking for. The crowded roads of Gangtok have given way to the less travelled one to Ravangla. The mountains are all around – lush green, and with that beautiful woody fragrance that emanates from coniferous trees. Peace reigns supreme broken by the sounds of the occasional waterfall gurgling its way down the mountain slopes. I start looking forward to Ravangla. As the numbers on the roadside milestones start counting down the distance to Ravangla a sudden sense of excitement sets in. The idea of being able to see the mighty Kanchendzonga up front makes for a sense of anticipation. And then around the bend the picturesque little town of Ravangla appears. Small, clean and thinly populated, Ravangla, starts seeming more and more like the ideal getaway. The clouds that have descended on the road part to give way to a two storeyed wooden cabin – Clouds End, literally. Modest, unassuming but with an understated charm of its own, Clouds End manages to make its own place. The clincher though appears when I climb up the stairs to my room above. It opens up to a terrace from where the snow peaks rise towering into the sky.

The monsoon clouds barely make the silhouette of the mountains visible. I camp myself for the rest of the day on the patio. Sounds of prayer bells and monks chanting come from a little monastery nearby. I wait patiently for a view of the snow peaks and catch only a fleeting glimpse when the sun goes down. But I don’t care because I know I will sit there all evening and count the lights in the surrounding mountains after nightfall. I know I will wake at the crack of dawn just to catch another fleeting glimpse of the snow peaks. I know I will walk down to that monastery below or trek up Menam hill to see the endangered red panda. I know for the next couple of days I will be blissfully happy doing nothing in Ravangla because I have finally found the mountains that I love so much.