It seems to me that every village in Sikkim wants a share in the tourism pie, which resulted in our short trip to the villages of Kitam and Sumbuk for checking the feasibility of tourism over there. Kitam, which is around 12kms. from Namchi at an altitude of 2200 feet, has very recently been declared as a bird sanctuary. The first thing I could feel when we reached Kitam late in the evening was the sweltering heat. For the first time since leaving Mumbai I was actually sweating and feeling the humidity; I was back in the sub-tropics.
It was a perfectly warm and sunny morning whence I was greeted by the gulmohor, jackfruit and jacaranda trees on my morning walk, all so familiar to me. For breakfast the lady served us dal-rice and vegetables, for which I gave her quiet a quizzical look. Now who the hell has dal-rice for breakfast, that’ lunch for god’ sake. My mind and eyes were just not able to digest what was on the table, but in the end the rumbling stomach over powered the mind to have dal-rice that fateful morning. Post breakfast Nima and myself met up with the local eco-tourism committee who were to show us around the place for tourists spots. With a growing number of tourists, people everywhere are beginning to have some obsession about so called ‘ tourists spots’ , for which they will cut down trees ( destroy the natural environment) and make all sorts of ugly structures. They cannot understand that there would be tourists who would be more appreciative if they left the environment, their customs and culture intact, instead of changing them to heed to the senseless masses. A half hour drive and an equal duration by foot got us to our first place ‘Alley Khet’, which was an open football ground from where one could get some good views of the surrounding area. But it seemed to me completely crazy and highly ambitious to promote a football ground , something which can be seen anywhere around. I could only give them a skeptic look as I was pretty speechless.

From here we walked down to the Sorok monastery in the scorching heat of day, and continued back to Kitam. On our way down we took a brief halt near the Kitam primary school, giving me an opportunity to peer into the cute little school. I glanced into one of the small classrooms, bringing great delight to the kids who were enthralled to have spotted an alien like me within their midst . And as soon as I took out my camera all hell broke loose as all the kids wanted to be photographed. This thing spread like an infectious disease and in no time kids from all the classrooms surrounded me to have their photographs taken. Only after taking tons of photos did I manage to somehow escape from their clutches. Our final sight that morning was an old village house constructed of mud and timber. It was more than a 100 years old and found it hard to digest that there were people still residing in it, for it was way to basic especially in today’...
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