Beautiful snow in Lachung
Gangtok - Lachung
The Lachung story is in continuation with the previous one. If you have not read about the first part, let me help you by putting the URL here: Here we come Darjeeling!
We all wanted to stay in that home for some more days, but, we bid goodbye to everyone there and Gangtok Lachung journey was on. Gangtok is not as cold as Darjeeling and is fully under army control (which is a good thing). The driver was an army kid. He told us how he was ready to serve the country at the cost of his life, his views about India, about women education, the marriage culture in Darjeeling was so positive that we were keenly listening to him all the way and felt truly proud to be born in India! At around 11 am, we reached Gangtok bus stand. From there, we had to sit in another shared taxi and let me tell you, Gangtok to Lachung is an 8-hour journey! But thanks to our previous driver,we were not at all exhausted. The Lachung taxi driver took our passport size photos to make passes before starting the long journey. We were a group of 6, and 4 more people joined us in that taxi and we started.
The driver kept pausing at many places, firstly he smoked a lot, and secondly, the views were worth stopping! We got to see Seven Sisters Waterfall, and a beautiful bridge beneath which, was flowing a river! After some time, we halted for lunch at a hotel and I just took a nice walk after my lunch to cherish each and every moment. Everyone in my group felt refreshed and we did a little masti. By the time we reached Lachung hotel (as I told you earlier, we had one night stay there), it was 8.30 pm and it was damn cold! Lachung is at a higher altitude than Gangtok, so it’s obvious to be colder there. The rooms were ordinary but at least warm, which gave us a heavenly feeling. The next big challenge was to bath! And I successfully succeeded in that. We were served dinner in a common hall and the food was homely and tasty. I tried to get out of the hotel explore but then I was literally shivering, so decided to just stay in the room. I was loving it!

How's the Josh!

The next day was an adventurous day as we were going to visit two beautiful points of Lachung; Yamthang Valley and Katao. As we were going in the snowy place, we rented boots for Rs.100 (each pair). As we were going up and up in the mountains, our excitement was increasing because we could see the snow more closer to us. He stopped the taxi at Katao and told us to have fun. Woohoo! Words won’t be sufficient for what I felt and saw. So I will let the video do the rest of the work..
On our way back from Katao, we came across a scenic view; we couldn’t restrain and asked the driver to stop there for a moment. Although we had already spent much time in Katao and we had to go to the next point too, he stopped the car happily. So we took out our camera and took photos. I did not even want to blink my eye because everything around me was just so scenic as if someone has beautifully painted it!
We were so busy enjoying the snow in Lachung that we completely forgot about breakfast. The driver took us to our hotel and served us bread jam as breakfast at 12.00 pm. We ate it in a hurry because wanted to reach Yamthang before 1.00 pm otherwise it could be closed after then.

Hola Yamthang! It was even more beautiful. As soon as I got down from the taxi, I could see a huge snow-covered mountain right in front of me. I was so hypnotized literally that I didn’t realize I was going away from the group. I badly wanted to go up there and so I started to climb (there were other people climbing too). I heard a voice from the back; my friends were calling me. We had to go back to Gangtok the same day, so they told me not to climb up. That was disappointing, but halfway up we saw a snow slide and a group of boys who were acting like the soldiers in URI movie! We laughed a lot; I was not willing to leave the place, but there was no other option.
We headed back to the hotel to take our luggage; I stared at the huge mountain near my hotel and thanked God for giving me the opportunity to view this beautiful heaven! And this way my journey to Lachung ended and we headed back to Gangtok. But the picture has not yet ended! Check out what happened next here The Frozen lake in Gangtok!
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