My Recent Sikkim Visit: Gurudongmar Lake

Well there is lot to talk about my recent visit to Sikkim. But in this post I will talk about most amazing part of our journey, visit to Gurudongmar Lake. Gurudongmar lake is around 40 KM from Lachen and it is at the height of 17.5k feet. Lachen is a small village in Sikkim, a common night halt is required here to visit the lake .

We reached Lachen a bit late in the dark. It was cold and silent and only sound breaking the silence was from nearby Tessta river. We were tired and we slept early with the hope and excitement of what is coming next morning. Usually one of the last thing that I have in mind is to wake up at 4AM morning. That is what exactly we did next morning. It was still dark, cold and silent with the exception of river breaking the silence with a rhythmic pattern sound. At around 4:45 AM, I got a chance to look outside. The weather was clear and fresh. My first glimpse of Lachen was immensely beautiful. Lachen was surrounded by high mountains with blue in color as a result of mist. Fresh leaves of trees, colorful houses and mountains with blue color created a sense of freshness and gave me immense pleasure like love at first sight.

We started our adventure at around 5 AM. We (me and my lovely wife) were sharing a cab with 7 other people all along the way during our trip. Luckily I got seat near to a window so I started trying some “moving objects” photography along the way. The road was completely zig zag. We were going down and up and down crossing multiple mountains and Teesta river. Once I was looking outside, I suddenly almost jumped out of my window as I saw some golden shining thing at the top of a mountain. Yes it was ice topped mountain and sun rise was illuminating the top like gold. We went ahead to our next halt, Thangu, located at around 14k feet and it seems last civilian residential village on the way to our journey to Gurudongmar. Thangu is lovely and colorful village at such a height. We had breakfast at Thangu and moved on.

The remaining area is controlled by Indian Army. At one checkpost, an army jawan, seems to be punjabi, asked whether everyone was well and like to have coffee or tea ("Sabhi log acche hain, kuchh chaheeya chaay ya coffee"). Tough men with sweet words.

Terrain was becoming tougher and we finally left behind mountains and found ourselves in a vast barren but plain land. There was no vegetation and nobody was watching us except mountains and patches of clouds as if they were saying "welcome to our soccer playground".

Finally we saw what I would say one of most beautiful place I have ever seen my life. Probably a few pics are worth of thousand words.

We spent around an hour at Gurudongmar. It was chilled and tough but immensely beautiful. The exact feelings are still in my mind and I wish that I could share them as exactly they are. Our return journey was less hectic as it was downhill road. We reached Lachen at around 2:30 PM, had lunch there and started for our next adventure, Yumthang Flower Valley and Zero Point.

More Pictures

Gurudongmar Lake