Hiren Kumar Bose
Teg Bahadur was always there for us—our family of four and our three friends—with his easy smile, self-effacing demeanor and his willingness to do our bidding. Months after we had left Sinolchu Lodge, situated at the topmost place in Gangtok, my school-going daughters would regale at family dinners their stories about him: his manner of speaking Hindi, his beliefs in myths associated with Mount Khang-Chen-Dzon Ga or Kanchendonga and his tales about his family, left in Nepal. It was in the first year of the new millennium that we spent a week in Sikkim but Tek, a Nepalese Gurung, continues to remain with us in our memories though we have lost touch with him. Yes, we do recommend friends wanting to visit Sikkim to stay at Sinolchu and say "namaste" to Teg on our behalf.
Travel, I feel having journeyed to scores of places, mostly in India than abroad, is not just about bringing back and nourishing memories of places one has visited but also about individuals one comes across during these peregrinations. These memories are very private and individual which cannot be swapped with friends and acquaintances, like the digital images on Flicr or Picasa accounts.
After a scalding hot train trip, cooled by frequent swig into not-so-cool water bottles to Howrah station in a non-AC coach we found ourselves at New Jalpaiguri Station. From here we engaged a Tata Sumo roomy enough for seven people. After a four-hour long ride encountering hair-pin turns, the gushing Teesta river and the steep valley below, we were ushered into Gangtok on an April weekend—on the eve of blooming rhododendrons and orchids.
"Can you see the TV tower?" asked the genial driver pointing his finger in the north. "That's where Sinolchu Lodge is and is the best place to watch the Khang-Chen-Dzon Ga from your windows."
The first day was spent familiarizing with the surroundings, visiting a monastery and a school close by, doing window shopping and having the fifth ice cream of the day. By now my 10-year-old daughter had earned the nickname of "Ice-cream Bose" having gorged enough ice cream to fill a five-litre bucket. As we were advised against keeping a taxi for seven days we hired a zeep, according to your need for travel. On the second day, I rose with a view of the Khang-Chen-Dzon Ga garlanded by the blue-white clouds; we armed with lunch packets and bottles of water left for Nathula Pass and Baba Ki Mandir. With gigantic mountain walls and steep wooded hillsides as company we reached the must-on-tourist list, the Changu Lake, 35 kms from Gangtok. It was around 1 pm and the visibility dropping with fog, as thick as butter, we tried to make the best of our time: throwing snow balls at each other and riding yaks on the frozen Changu Lake. It was getting cold, biting cold. Girija, our accompanying friend, thanks to the poor visibility had minor fall, slipping in the snow. Her teeth chattering, we revived her with liberal doses of Sikkim-made whisky. Before we could say cheese to my Yashica, the driver was insistent that we leave for our rendezvous with Nathu La, because it was just 20km from the Tibetan border. An extremely beautiful place we did sight Chinese guards dressed in their olive uniforms. From here one could visit, we were told, the Kyongnosla Alpine sanctuary where a profusion of wild flowers bloom between May and August and migratory birds stop over in winter on their annual pilgrimage from Siberia to India. We were likely to unlikely to sight them being in the first week of April! Next day we found ourselves at the laid-back, scenic hamlet of Pelling where swarms of Bengali lodges and hotels welcomed us. Pelling offers numerous attractive walks and hotel terraces--we stayed in one of them overnight—are the best place to gaze in awe the world's third largest peak. We also visited the small monastery of Sanga Choling, one of the oldest gompas in Sikkim and house some of the original clay statues.
If in Pelling you're likely to be recommended to visit Khecheopalri Lake, known as the "Wishing Lake". Surrounded by dense forests and hidden in a mountain bowl, legend has it that if a leaf drops onto the lake's surface a guardian bird swoops down and picks up. Well, we were neither fortunate enough to see a leaf drop nor a bird swooping. Our driver assured us, may be on our next visit!We slept early that night for there was nothing much to do: for the TV channels had nothing good to offer. Moreover, the reception was very poor.Our next destination was Yoksum, 40 km north of Pemayangtse.
Unlike other places in Sikkim, which survive in its mythical history, Yoksum lives in its recorded history. For it was here that three lamas converged to enthrone the first religious king of Sikkim, Chogyal Phuntsog Namgyal, in 1642. Named the "great Religious King" he established Tibetan Buddhism in Sikkim. Guru Rinpoche predicted this meeting of three lamas coming from different directions across in Himalayas nine centuries earlier. Lhatsung Chorten is supposed to have buried offerings in Yoksum's large white Norbuhgang Chorten built with stones and earth from different parts of Sikkim.Sikkim is home to the Nyingmapa (Red-hat) sect of Tibetan Buddhism, an unreformed group that fled south to the mountains of Western Sikkim following the great Tibetan reformation of the sixteenth Century, when the Gelugpa (Yellow-Hat) sect now headed by the Dalai Lama gained the upper hand. Also to be found in Sikkim is one of the few remaining monasteries of the Bon religion, the pre-Buddhist indigenous faith of the Tibetan people.We had kept our last day for Gangtok and its neighbourhood.
With its florists, souvenir shops, phone booths, hotels, travel agents, eateries and its stadium Gangtok tumbles down the sides of a steep hill-ringed bowl that converges in a natural amphitheatre.We began with Rumtek Monastery, an hour's drive from Gangtok, which follows the turbulent Rehpola River, gushing waterfalls rush over lichen-covered rocks that line the roadside. After crossing the River, the road begins a sheer ascent to the summit. When you reach the top, what you find is not just a monastery, but also an entire monastic village.The friendly smiles of the resident monks, of varied ages, welcome you. We happened to meet one, an early thirties monk who spoke both Hindi and English well and explained us about the different forms of Buddhism practiced in Sikkim. Before we could exchange addresses in hope of keeping in touch, his brother monks had dragged him for the classes.We left Gangtok, hoping to come back again. This time to log as many monasteries as I can: for there are around 200 of them belonging to the ancient Nyingmapa sect. And also do the northern parts requiring special permits—places that resemble a guitar twang: Yume Samdang, Thangu, Mangan, Chungthang and others.
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Monday, July 14, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
Pearl of the Orient
FOOTLOOSE Hiren Kumar Bose
DANGLING from the Chinese mainland, Macau is an odd hybrid, a mix of old world Portuguese colonial charm and Las Vegas glitz
FOR several years now I have had this recurring dream: It is late in theafternoon and I am on my way home walking through a jungle when I chance upon gold coins strewn around- under the trees, hidden in the tall grass or on the dirt track. I pick up the coins, one by one and later handfuls thrusting them in my already bulgingpockets. Tired of the routine thedream soon comes to an end.I have never been able to read the reason behind this dream. But as Istepped into the lobby of Macau’sGrand Emperor Hotel, I encountered a similar sight: the lobby’s floor was littered with gold bars - 88 of them, each weighing one kilo, protected behind thick glass. I did not get the opportunity to lay my hands on goldbars but surely got high walking on gold! Like many others my eyes popped up like Richie Rich but I coulddo nothing but shoot a picture of yellow metal. Macau’s streets may not be paved in gold but with casinos all around theplace you have the opportunity of a lifetime to hit the jackpot. Every hotel here - there are scores of themin this 28.6 sq km island - has a casino where tourists, housewives, schoolteachers, college kids, office workers, chambermaids and others from mainland China arrive in buses as early asnine in the morning to try their luck.
The casinos offer the widest rangeof games in the world including baccarat, blackjack, roulette, boule and, ofcourse, scores of the most glitteringarray of slot machines with bets beginning at HK$5. The big hotels have an added attraction - chalk-white EastEuropean girls performing cabarets tillthe wee hours of the morning.Dangling from the Chinese mainland, Macau is an odd hybrid, a mix ofold world Portuguese colonial charmand Las Vegas glitz. The colonial architecture with Mediterraneanflavour is unable to hide the fact that itis a typical Chinese city depending onthe mainland for basic things such asdrinking water.
In fact the joke doing the rounds is that if the Peoples’Republic of China one day decides to close the tap, Macau will go dry. Macau is an import-dependent economy - fresh food and tea from China, frozen food from the US and chicken from Holland and Belgium.The metamorphosis of Macau hasbeen complete after the Portuguese left in 1997. Like the Chinese, the people here are a superstitious lot - youare unlikely to come across any high-rise that has a 13th and 14th floor!Macau has the look of a boomingAsian city brimming with relentlessconstruction, hellish traffic, high-rise apartments, and showbiz happenings.Over the years it has been growing in landmass. Just two decades back it was mere 19 sq km; but with international hotel chains wanting to put up hotels, the reclamation of land is an ongoing activity.
TODAY Macau is in the news for the US$2.4 billion Venetian Macao, the largest single-structure hotel in Asia and the second largest building in the world activity here. An additional six hotels
and the second largest building in theworld. With 3000 suite guest rooms, one million square feet of retail spaceand 15,000-seat Venetian Arena, it hasdwarfed all other properties here. One has to visit it to believe the vastness ofthe resort which has come up on the Venetian Macau Resort Hotel . In the next few weeks the Venetian Arena will host a series of NBA exhibition games and a match between tennis greats Roger Federer and Pete Sampras. Two days after it opened in the last week of August, around 1,70,000 people including residents of Hong Kong
trooped in with their families to have a dekko of their lifetime.Once you are in Macau you are likelyto visit places like Fishermen’s Wharf which has a theme park with structureslike the Potala Palace, a Roman amphitheatre, the 40m high man-made volcano, Alladin’s Fort, a Tang Dynastypalace besides structures from theItalian Riviera, Trinidad, Havana,Amsterdam, Lisbon, Mississippi andNew Orleans. At Alladin’s Fort wherethe distances of major world cities areinscribed on the stone floor, you willcome across the name of an Indiancity, Mumbai 4244kms as the crow flies.Do visit the Wine Museum to savour and even buy a bottle ofPortuguese wine; vroom to the GrandPrix Museum which has a valuable collection of machines that have competed and won on the Guia Circuit; takethe escalator to Macau Museum, located in the Mount Fortress that was builtby the Jesuits in the early 17th century,are waiting in the queue to put up their skyscrapers while the South China Sea gets pushed inch by inch.Today Macau is in the news for the US$2.4 billion Venetian Macao, the largest single-structure hotel in Asia light a joss stick at Ma Temple, themost revered goddess of Macau, lookat the façade and ruins of St PaulCathedral, and gamble at the greyhound races held in the evenings. All these sounds tame as you rise 61floors to do a sky walk on the MacauTower. Once there, walk on the tower’souter rim at an altitude of 233 metreshinged to an overhead safety system. If you are the daring and adventurous dothe world’s highest bungee and returnhome with pictures and a certificate. Itis like being in the Guinness Book (ask those who have not attempted it)!For food lovers Macau is a paradiseof sorts; indeed a gastronome’s Mecca.
If you are looking to try combinations of food that you will not find anywhere else in the world, Macau is the place togo. Name the cuisine and you are likelyto get it here. Most Indians prefer tohave their dal-chawal or Mughlai mut atfour Indian restaurants. The enterprising ones prefer Macanese cuisine - the world’s oldest fusion cuisine. Some sayit is 400 years old. Macanese cuisine is basicallyPortuguese but with local ingredients and embellishments. Imagine a cuisine in which the zingy flavours ofPortuguese cuisine emerge in each morsel. Add to that the influences ofChinese food which by itself is anabsolute explosion of exotic spices and taste.Macanese cuisine dates back to thedays when Chinese wives tried toreproduce Portuguese dishes for their husbands but often lacked the rightingredients. So they began to improvise: cloves from the spice islands, saffron from India, Chinese sausageinstead of Portuguese, crabs andprawns from the local market and, ofcourse, rice. With smidgen of Thai,Vietnamese or Philippine food added to it, Macanese food is seasoned with various spices including turmeric,coconut milk, cinnamon and bacalhau,giving it a special aroma and taste.
Do not forget to savour on delicacies like Macanese Minced Meat (Minchi),Green Vegetable Soup (Caldo Verde),Grilled King Prawn Macanese Style(Gambas à Macau) and Baked CrabMeat in Shell (Casquinha deCaranguejo). Famous dishes includeGalinha à Portuguesa, Galinha àAfricana (African chicken), Bacalhau,Macanese Chili Shrimps and Stir-FryCurry Crab and wash it down with vinoverde, an excellent green wine fromPortugal. I recommend African Chickenand Serradora for dessert at Restaurante Litoral, the bacalhau (codfish) at Porto Interior, the callo verde and roasted suckling pig (like lechon) at the Capital.
If you thought that the highlight ofmy trip was food (yes, I did add couple of inches on my love handle) you must be joking. Let me tell you, it was the thrill of stepping on Mainland China for a short period of five hours which I spent on shopping at a mall at Zhuhai.We entered Zhuhai on a group visapaying HK$25 each. An individual visa can cost around HK $150. Getting a group visa makes sense and can be hadfrom a travel agent in an hour. The only catch is that your passport doesnot get stamped and you are unable toboast to friends that you have been to Chairman Mao’s land.
Zhuhai is a place where you can shop-till-you-drop for leather bags,cameras, mobiles, shoes, travel gear,clothes, and watches from worlds’ best known names. Here you cannot distinguish fake from real but you need tobargain like you are shopping in a chorbazaar. Calculators in hand, the shopkeepers haggle with you in Cantonese.The trick is if you are offered anything for 350 begin the bargain with 50 and it is likely you end up owing a Langhe &Sohne watch for HK$180 (More so because the brand has yet to arrive in India and is priced at Rs 4 lakh). Is not that a deal? 1 October 2007 btw 29
DANGLING from the Chinese mainland, Macau is an odd hybrid, a mix of old world Portuguese colonial charm and Las Vegas glitz
FOR several years now I have had this recurring dream: It is late in theafternoon and I am on my way home walking through a jungle when I chance upon gold coins strewn around- under the trees, hidden in the tall grass or on the dirt track. I pick up the coins, one by one and later handfuls thrusting them in my already bulgingpockets. Tired of the routine thedream soon comes to an end.I have never been able to read the reason behind this dream. But as Istepped into the lobby of Macau’sGrand Emperor Hotel, I encountered a similar sight: the lobby’s floor was littered with gold bars - 88 of them, each weighing one kilo, protected behind thick glass. I did not get the opportunity to lay my hands on goldbars but surely got high walking on gold! Like many others my eyes popped up like Richie Rich but I coulddo nothing but shoot a picture of yellow metal. Macau’s streets may not be paved in gold but with casinos all around theplace you have the opportunity of a lifetime to hit the jackpot. Every hotel here - there are scores of themin this 28.6 sq km island - has a casino where tourists, housewives, schoolteachers, college kids, office workers, chambermaids and others from mainland China arrive in buses as early asnine in the morning to try their luck.
The casinos offer the widest rangeof games in the world including baccarat, blackjack, roulette, boule and, ofcourse, scores of the most glitteringarray of slot machines with bets beginning at HK$5. The big hotels have an added attraction - chalk-white EastEuropean girls performing cabarets tillthe wee hours of the morning.Dangling from the Chinese mainland, Macau is an odd hybrid, a mix ofold world Portuguese colonial charmand Las Vegas glitz. The colonial architecture with Mediterraneanflavour is unable to hide the fact that itis a typical Chinese city depending onthe mainland for basic things such asdrinking water.
In fact the joke doing the rounds is that if the Peoples’Republic of China one day decides to close the tap, Macau will go dry. Macau is an import-dependent economy - fresh food and tea from China, frozen food from the US and chicken from Holland and Belgium.The metamorphosis of Macau hasbeen complete after the Portuguese left in 1997. Like the Chinese, the people here are a superstitious lot - youare unlikely to come across any high-rise that has a 13th and 14th floor!Macau has the look of a boomingAsian city brimming with relentlessconstruction, hellish traffic, high-rise apartments, and showbiz happenings.Over the years it has been growing in landmass. Just two decades back it was mere 19 sq km; but with international hotel chains wanting to put up hotels, the reclamation of land is an ongoing activity.
TODAY Macau is in the news for the US$2.4 billion Venetian Macao, the largest single-structure hotel in Asia and the second largest building in the world activity here. An additional six hotels
and the second largest building in theworld. With 3000 suite guest rooms, one million square feet of retail spaceand 15,000-seat Venetian Arena, it hasdwarfed all other properties here. One has to visit it to believe the vastness ofthe resort which has come up on the Venetian Macau Resort Hotel . In the next few weeks the Venetian Arena will host a series of NBA exhibition games and a match between tennis greats Roger Federer and Pete Sampras. Two days after it opened in the last week of August, around 1,70,000 people including residents of Hong Kong
trooped in with their families to have a dekko of their lifetime.Once you are in Macau you are likelyto visit places like Fishermen’s Wharf which has a theme park with structureslike the Potala Palace, a Roman amphitheatre, the 40m high man-made volcano, Alladin’s Fort, a Tang Dynastypalace besides structures from theItalian Riviera, Trinidad, Havana,Amsterdam, Lisbon, Mississippi andNew Orleans. At Alladin’s Fort wherethe distances of major world cities areinscribed on the stone floor, you willcome across the name of an Indiancity, Mumbai 4244kms as the crow flies.Do visit the Wine Museum to savour and even buy a bottle ofPortuguese wine; vroom to the GrandPrix Museum which has a valuable collection of machines that have competed and won on the Guia Circuit; takethe escalator to Macau Museum, located in the Mount Fortress that was builtby the Jesuits in the early 17th century,are waiting in the queue to put up their skyscrapers while the South China Sea gets pushed inch by inch.Today Macau is in the news for the US$2.4 billion Venetian Macao, the largest single-structure hotel in Asia light a joss stick at Ma Temple, themost revered goddess of Macau, lookat the façade and ruins of St PaulCathedral, and gamble at the greyhound races held in the evenings. All these sounds tame as you rise 61floors to do a sky walk on the MacauTower. Once there, walk on the tower’souter rim at an altitude of 233 metreshinged to an overhead safety system. If you are the daring and adventurous dothe world’s highest bungee and returnhome with pictures and a certificate. Itis like being in the Guinness Book (ask those who have not attempted it)!For food lovers Macau is a paradiseof sorts; indeed a gastronome’s Mecca.
If you are looking to try combinations of food that you will not find anywhere else in the world, Macau is the place togo. Name the cuisine and you are likelyto get it here. Most Indians prefer tohave their dal-chawal or Mughlai mut atfour Indian restaurants. The enterprising ones prefer Macanese cuisine - the world’s oldest fusion cuisine. Some sayit is 400 years old. Macanese cuisine is basicallyPortuguese but with local ingredients and embellishments. Imagine a cuisine in which the zingy flavours ofPortuguese cuisine emerge in each morsel. Add to that the influences ofChinese food which by itself is anabsolute explosion of exotic spices and taste.Macanese cuisine dates back to thedays when Chinese wives tried toreproduce Portuguese dishes for their husbands but often lacked the rightingredients. So they began to improvise: cloves from the spice islands, saffron from India, Chinese sausageinstead of Portuguese, crabs andprawns from the local market and, ofcourse, rice. With smidgen of Thai,Vietnamese or Philippine food added to it, Macanese food is seasoned with various spices including turmeric,coconut milk, cinnamon and bacalhau,giving it a special aroma and taste.
Do not forget to savour on delicacies like Macanese Minced Meat (Minchi),Green Vegetable Soup (Caldo Verde),Grilled King Prawn Macanese Style(Gambas à Macau) and Baked CrabMeat in Shell (Casquinha deCaranguejo). Famous dishes includeGalinha à Portuguesa, Galinha àAfricana (African chicken), Bacalhau,Macanese Chili Shrimps and Stir-FryCurry Crab and wash it down with vinoverde, an excellent green wine fromPortugal. I recommend African Chickenand Serradora for dessert at Restaurante Litoral, the bacalhau (codfish) at Porto Interior, the callo verde and roasted suckling pig (like lechon) at the Capital.
If you thought that the highlight ofmy trip was food (yes, I did add couple of inches on my love handle) you must be joking. Let me tell you, it was the thrill of stepping on Mainland China for a short period of five hours which I spent on shopping at a mall at Zhuhai.We entered Zhuhai on a group visapaying HK$25 each. An individual visa can cost around HK $150. Getting a group visa makes sense and can be hadfrom a travel agent in an hour. The only catch is that your passport doesnot get stamped and you are unable toboast to friends that you have been to Chairman Mao’s land.
Zhuhai is a place where you can shop-till-you-drop for leather bags,cameras, mobiles, shoes, travel gear,clothes, and watches from worlds’ best known names. Here you cannot distinguish fake from real but you need tobargain like you are shopping in a chorbazaar. Calculators in hand, the shopkeepers haggle with you in Cantonese.The trick is if you are offered anything for 350 begin the bargain with 50 and it is likely you end up owing a Langhe &Sohne watch for HK$180 (More so because the brand has yet to arrive in India and is priced at Rs 4 lakh). Is not that a deal? 1 October 2007 btw 29
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