Sikkim Photo Essay: Getting there and Away

Road from Gangtok to Lachung

So we're having a bit of a break with family in Europe, so I've hand the chance to finish up on our posts about Sikkim.

What description of our travels would be complete without some discussion of the driving situation?

The winding nature of the roads, the steepness and sharpness of the curves, and the general feeling of being on a roller coaster all seemed very similar when compared to my drive up to Mussoorie.

BRO, or the Border Roads Organization, provided us endless amusement on the road as we were always on the look-out for BRO's signs

Our favorite, and sadly the one I wasn't able to get a picture of, was "Work is Worship" (Kam puja hai). One did really have to question the effectiveness of some of these warning signs ("Better Late Than Never") when almost all of them were in English and were stationed at angles that would have been challenging for a driver to read while driving. It made me wonder who the intended audience is for these signs... More than likely they were just for the benefit of tourists .... which .... is funny for different reasons. (head scratch)

You could tell from the seemingly endless roadwork (particularly in Northern Sikkim) that BRO was engaged in constant battle against the forces of nature to maintain the roads in these mountains. Landslides were a constant threat.

Landslides

During the heavy rains in the summer, many of these northern routes are blocked off entirely because of poor driving conditions. Because the rainy season had started a bit early this year, at times during our ride we got a small taste of what those driving conditions must be like.

Driving through a rock slide

But who did we see primarily working on the roads?

Women. Women making gravel --- by hand! Don't believe me, watch the video below...

Or maybe they are doing straight construction work. Again, let's go to the video...

Yes, there were men that did work on the roads -- but it was really startling to see how many more women were there...

I may have mentioned previously about our car breaking down on the way to Darjeeling...

Well, this was the garage we went to ...

State of the art facilities

... where the guys literally pulled and pushed and leveraged the wheel back into alignment. Unbelievable. We made it at least... I guess...

The scariest part about the car breaking down though was when we pulled to a stop so that the driver could take a look at what was wrong.... We stopped on a on a blind curve .... here's a short clip depicting the scene.

... not even the school children stopped for the cars....

(sigh), which isn't really that hard to believe...

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Now that we've gotten steady internet again (thank you Holland!) I've updated two previous posts on the disastrous trek and the Darjeeling strikes with pictures and video.