Honeymoon: Part IV

The road from Darjeeling to Gangtok via the Teesta Bazaar is a gut-swirling, bone-rattling affair. Jenna and I opted to pay a little extra for a private car, as opposed to going cheap and sharing a long-distance taxi with ten other people. From Darjeeling, our driver initially took us south through Ghoom and then made a sharp left towards the east. This put us upon a twisting, steeply descending road that made a series of hairpin turns through an alpine forest of spruce and cedar trees.

After two hours of jostling, our journey had taken us to the Teesta River. Just before we reached the river basin, our driver stopped at a viewpoint overlooking the Teesta Valley. There, we got an expansive view of the rolling hills and the river as it carved an elegant path through the countryside. (The picture in this post is one Jenna took at the viewpoint.)

We crossed the Teesta at a small ramshackle market town known as Teesta Bazaar. Then, we drove over a modern-looking bridge and set ourselves upon National Highway 31, a smoothly paved asphalt road that feels remarkably like a Western interstate. This part of the journey meandered laconically through an picturesque landscape of forests and hills. We ran parallel along the mightiest part of the Teesta River, where we could see rapids and small waterfalls from our vantage on the road fifty feet above the river.

At Rangpo, the border crossing into Sikkim, we crossed another bridge and were greeted my armed guards who directed us to a boxy looking station where we presented our passports and a special registration form. Sikkim was its own princely state until the early 1970s, when it was annexed by India. In many ways, Sikkim still sees itself as its own country. Therefore, visitors have to go through the bureaucratic pretension of presenting their documents, as if they are entering a foreign land.

After crossing the border, the road shifted upwards again and turned into a rutted mess. The final miles into Sikkim’s capital Gangtok are rough beyond compare. On this stretch of the road, landslides are common, and the rocks and boulders that shower down on the asphalt highway scar the road and leave potholes as big as bathtubs. In addition, the traffic picks up. Trucks and lorries laden with commercial goods, other jeeps and shared taxis filled with up to a dozen riders, motorcycles and scooters all head towards Sikkim’s only metropolis. Therefore, the mere 12 miles between Rangpo and Gangtok take 90 minutes on a good day. On a bad day—say when there is an actual landslide—we would not even be able to get through. This day turned out to be a good one.

Gangtok’s environs began at the bottom of a hill and the road leading to the city center ran at the same grade as the uphill tug of a roller coaster. Our car’s engine made a halting, crunching sound the entire way, and it felt as if our vehicle would die of exhaustion at any moment. We could see the twinkling of lights on the blackened profile of the hillside as we moved upwards. The streets became busier and more congested as we got higher. Most of Gangtok’s streets go up and down. Only a few select avenues—at the very top near the city’s ridgeline—actually run flat. San Francisco’s famed hilly terrain looks practically Kansan in comparison.

We arrived at the central taxi stand in the midst of this gabled city breathless. We had headaches from exhilaration. Or maybe it was just the effects of such dramatic changes in altitude combined with the five-hour pounding our bodies had taken. Either way, Gangtok presented itself as an odd mixture of Indian calamity and Swiss serenity. Its homes and apartment buildings, hanging precariously to the city’s cliffs, strike you as absolutely European. Sikkim likes to call itself the “Switzerland of the East”. After that drive, we could only hope some coffee and baguettes would be waiting for us at some nice quiet café nearby.