Do not forget to ask your guide to take you to the hot spring here. Chances are that, as you rejuvenate your tired limbs in the steaming open –air pool and look up the valley at Chango-Khang with a superb glacier descending to about 3,270 meters on its southern flank, drifting snowflakes will settle n your hair.
Inscribed in old visitors’ books in the Pema Yengchi dak bungalow in Western Sikkim you can discover the names of many famous mountaineers. Tashiding, the holiest of holy hills in Sikkim, is a day’s trek from here. You may also trek from here to Yuksom (a jeep track to Yuksom is almost ready), the most curious ad picturesque spot in Sikkim with its mini-lakes. Legend has it that the first ruling monarch of Sikkim was Himalayan Mountaineering institute for its mountain-climbing courses. From Yuksom you go up to Jongri –and then up the high Himalayas.
Sikkim is a jewel fiercely treasured by its people. Come here and you will know why.
Yak country
Drive your jeep from Lachung Yumthang (3,050 meters) and you are in yak country. As you relax in the forest dak bungalow, framed by your door is a magnificent mountain range with its peaks reaching heights of 6,100 meters and above. Across the grazing flats of the valley and the river is hot springs with a hut improvised over them as protection against cold. I have seen groups of people bathe in the sulphurous waters here, singing right through the night.
If you are equipped with a light tent, a day’s trek will take you to Yomay samdong. As you pass through a phantasmagoria of rhododendrons –as they change hue from deep crimson to yellow and pink and then blue turning finally to white – stretches of alpine flowers greet you in very direction. You trudge across the remains of last winter’s avalanches and at Yomay Samdong you see the giant rhubarbs, 105 meters high.