waiting for the sun..
view on the other side..
the horizon..
After some wait, sun started peeping over the hills.. the rays coming out from behind the peak..
more light..
view on the sides.. the sky started turning from black to blue..
clouds appeared like black dots in sky..
meanwhile in the centre stage, the shades of blue were disappearing..
in the sides also the orange color started taking over..
mean while at the other side, the sky was white and the clouds on fire..
the scene up front..
the scene at the back..
Uptill now i had not noticed the valley to my left.. Here the first rays of the sun were visible..
Sun hits the mountain top..
Whole mountain is sun soaked..
A little more towards the right, the sun has completely lit the valley..
and finally the protagonist decided to come for the curtain call..
all the fire is now turned to smoke..
The mighty Sun in person..
The Sun's rays flooding the valley..
The enthralled spectators watching the play presented by Mother Nature..
It was 6 when the show got over. We came back to hotel and went to sleep. Got up at 9, got ready, paid the hotel bill and left by 10 with me driving. The manager's daughter. Wouldnt keep still for even a second..
I thought we had gotten a bit late. Our hotel manager had said that there are 2 waterfalls, a lake, some ruins and the Pemayanste monastry to see in Pelling. We headed first for the waterfalls and lake. First we stopped for breakfast. 2 plates of Wei Wei noodles and one plate momos for only Rs.30. View from the dhaba
The valleys were as green as the previous day..
First stop was Rimbi Waterfalls..
There were some other tourists also who kept on spoiling my shots..
the sun bursting through the trees..
the two riders..
there were many small waterfalls on the way.
Innitally the road remained good. But after some time there was no road. only a gravel trail surrounded by forests..
Next stop was Kecheopalri Lake.. Dont ask me how to pronounce that name. Also it was spelled differently at different places. The history..
a temple near the lake..
a chorten..
from were we parked our bike, there was a small 500mtr walk to the lake. It was a bright sunny day and walking with all the riding gear on was making me tired. The way to the lake..
prayer lamps inside the lake. Me and Jithu also lit one each.. i prayed for my bike to reach NJP fast..
The lake panorama..
It was a big lake surrounded by prayer flags.. All around were green hills.. nice place to camp..
first attenpts at macro photography.. not too successful i'd say..
i was thinking that sitting next to the lake with my feet in the water will be cooling. we had to take off our shoes here..
Oh ya it was a wishing lake.. what ever you wish when you light the lamp, it is said to come true..
a 360 degree pano of the lake. to my dismay, we could only stand at the railing and look at the lake. we were not allowed to put our feet in the sacred water.
so we came back feeling ever more hot. the black riding gear wasnt helping much either. the riding jacket was burning in the sun and wearing it made feel as if i was in a furnace. but as they say, safety first. no choice but to keep wearing it. i opened it from the front to let some air in.
a small child playing near where we parked our bike..
from this place we had to back track our way for nearly halk an hour and from a junction turn towards Kanchenjunga waterfalls. When we reached the waterfalls and saw this..
as we were taking photos a local came and said that this is not the Kanchenjunga waterfall. This is just the water falling from Khelcheopalri lake. The waterfalls were behind this. So we took a small path in front of the falls and saw this.. a nice smaller waterfall..
the 2 posers..
the view of the bigger fall while coming back..
We had some tea and snacks in the dhaba outside. Again we were smitten by the beauty of the Sikkimese girls..
a taxi driver had told us that there was no need to go back till Pelling if we want to go to NJP. We could keep on going forward on this road towards Tashiding and we'll reach join back on the road from Pelling. But what he dint tell us was that there was no road on this route. We started from the tea stall at 2:30pm. Some places it was under construction, hence big stones..
and in most it was dirt track..
after lot of offroading, we finally got good road..
what ever the road be, the scenary was always beatiful..
lots and lots of waterfalls..
as we were riding, Jithu pointed out a rainbow..
looking closer we saw there were actually 2 of them..
we started following the rainbow. riding with both of us looking at the rainbow was a risky think to do. once we almost headed towards the cliff..
good roads..
Finally around 4:45pm we reached the place called Legship. Our odo was already showing around 100 kms done in that day itself and surprisingly we were only 25 kms from the place we had started in the morning Pelling. Some shortcut we took!!!
Now we were around 100kms from NJP and had only 45minutes before it got dark. Also on the horizon we could see bad news in form of dark clouds. Rain was a big possibility. The thought of staying in Legship crossed our minds, but we decided to keep on going till we had light. At 5:30, we reached a place called Naya Bazar/Jorethang which is 85kms from NJP. Here it got dark. Now we could either stay here or ride in dark. Jithu was also very very tired sitting pillion since morning. He was in severe pain but hats off the guy's endurance, he said lets keep on riding. Riding at night is pretty straightforward. Ride slow and ride carefully. We had small encounters with rain but luckily no heavy downpour. We reached NJP at 9pm. Terribly tired, we are going to hit the sack after dinner. Tomorrow we will go to the station again to find out about my bike. In case it has still not come, i have decided that i will make a lot of noise about it. Also the Mumbai guys are coming tomorrow. Dekhtein hain wo kis khet ki muli hain..
Distance traveled in the day: 190kms
Total distance in the trip: 320kms
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