Just got back from a beautiful, memorable trip to the lush green, mountainous North-East Indian state of Sikkim. What we intended as a budget trip turned out to be an awesome experience in village life and culture which is so different from ours. We covered two villages - Dzongu (restricted area for a tribe called the Lepchas, and Lingee Payong which was predominantly Nepali - stayed at some lovely homestays, met some interesting village folk, a great mountainside experience, peaceful and quiet and a super relaxant for our laptop-weary brain and senses!
Living with the villagers, eating their food, leading a fuss-free life, huffing n puffing up the steep countryside which is an everyday walk for them :) ... it was indeed a humbling experience for me and my husband. I can sum it with our host Gyatso Lepcha's words "you people must come and stay in our villages for a few days, just to realize how small we are in this world"... completely agree!!
I shall do a couple of posts on Sikkim starting with this one.
One striking thing about Sikkim and all mountain villages is their quaint and colourful wooden houses. They are usually two-storeyed ... the top for people to live and the bottom floor for storing grains and firewood. For me this was a first time, such colourfully painted homes, each with a lovely garden of potted plants - in containers varying from buckets, to paper cups, to mud pots, tiny pathways, stones and pebbles ... it was a treat to the eye as we trekked up the mountains passing one pretty home after another!
Let me show you around with a few ...
This is one of my favourites!
Here's a post office, never seen one prettier than this!! :)
Shaded green n blue
And they had a tiny, lovely garden where I saw live poppies for the first time!
This is the homestay in Dzongu we stayed at - "Mayal Lyang" meaning the hidden land, truly!
That's for now, let me stop myself from making this post any longer :) Hope you enjoyed and loved the houses as much as I did! Shall be back with more on Sikkim in a day!
Meanwhile do any of you have a post on mountain homes? Do share them, and your experiences!
I'm sharing this at
Colours Dekor and the
Little Red House.