Our travel writer planned to write about Sikkim as a destination but got diverted by an intriguing military-tourist to a Sikh soldier's shrine up by the India-China frontier.
Crossing state borders in India does not tend to be very eventful, unless you are badly hassled at a checkpoint leading into some sensitive zone. The landscape is usually the same, linguistic boundaries are not really clear until much later, and development patterns are much the same; a lot of other little things seem very similar, at least for a while. Boundaries tend to blur. Not so with Sikkim. It is beautifully different, and you realise this as soon as you enter this "twenty-second" state, incorporated into the "Indian Union" in 1973. Sikkim was a former kingdom, and it was nice to see that Sikkim Tourism feels confident enough to once again use the 'k' word, however so innocuously – its current advertising campaign describes itself as "The Flower Kingdom".
The drive up to Sikkim from Siliguri passes through some very beautiful country. Try and get a front seat in one of the buses or jeeps running shuttle services. The breathtaking views apart, there is imaginative free advice along the road for drivers from the Border Roads Organisation – "Better be late than The Late" or "Be Gentle on My Curves". The winding road is surprisingly good and follows the river Teesta for a long stretch. The river is blue and wild-white, and rafting companies are in business at this time of year. If you are coming from Darjeeling, there are tea gardens that follow you for quite a distance and forests of planted teak three decades old, and further up, lush hillsides and beautiful terraced farmlands.
The driver was a young Tamang, friendly and informed. "Try and avoid the peak tourist season," he advised. True enough, when we got to the capital at dusk, most lodges were full and the permits to some of the best places in Sikkim taken. This is that time of year when 'domestic tourists', mostly Bengali, outnumber locals. There are few 'foreign tourists' about, notwithstanding '11 September', as the state is still to fully exploit the 'Shangri La' image it can lay claim to, like Bhutan to the east. Sikkim, probably the prettiest of Indian states, is seeing a major tourist boom – not only for sightseeing, but also to trek, raft and follow wildlife and bird-watch.