Recently lots of people sent ecards from Sikkim Online. It was really nice to know how much people liked our ecards and cared enough to send them to their beloved ones. Thanks to our devoted members for sharing such nice photos at Sikkim Online Photo Gallery. Here’s the current stat.
The Kohinoor Restaurant welcomes you with a large blue and white sign board overhead the entrance and which is visible to its patrons, new and old alike, along the M.G Road from quite a distance. The first time I went there I knew that this was one of the oldest addresses in Pune. It houses two floors, one for ladies and families and the ground floor, which is ever so lively. It has a big space with low ceilings, four sturdy pillars, big open glassless windows, which makes sure that the fans are not required and seats about one hundred people at a time. The waiters in deep yellow shirts and the cleaning boys in colonial blue move around swiftly in perfect synchrony. Even the waiters won’t ask you what you want have. They present the menu to you and you have to do the talking. They don’t speak much only quickly pass on the orders to the kitchen and rattle the total to the fat chubby smiling spectacled man behind the counter.
I come from the hills and well, I am naturally soft spoken (because of the clam and cold weather I suppose), so one time when I had seated myself comfortably in one of the cushioned benches of the restaurant, after ordering a cup of tea, a group of Marathi men, in their early twenties came and shared the seat with me. They sounded excited and were engrossed in their lively conversation. One man, seated in front of me shouted an order for tea known as ‘cutting chai’, a very popular form of tea drinking. An exhibition of both brotherhood and economy where a cup or a glass of tea is shared by two or more people (if it is enough!!!).
So teas came and one was shared by two people. However, I was not amused because I had ordered for a cup of tea before they came and they were served before me. It wasn’t a touchy thing but just that things like this are not really funny. So I voiced my displeasure, in Hindi.
The man in front of me looked at me and asked, ‘you speak Hindi?”
“Of course I can and pretty well too”. I replied in Hindi
“You ordered for a cup of tea?”, he asked me
“Yes I did”,
“Ok” he said, “…maybe you didn’t do it the right way”, he continued
I looked at him not sure whether I understood him right. Then he yelled at the waiter in Marathi and looked at me and said, “…these people don’t understand kind words. You have to shout at them”.
Finally finished making short narrative video on Sikkim, this is a photo slide show travel guide in a hope that it will be useful to all people, who are eager to learn about this teeny-weeny Sikkim.
The Himalayas is a mystic adventure for many people especially from the west and the far-east. Grand white mass of mountains, dark forested hills, beautiful waterfalls…the list of rhetoric are endless. They all seem to attract the discerning travelers as the bees to flowers. The memories are sweet nectar.
My 3 hrs hike to Taktsang Monastery in Paro, Bhutan was one that transported me to an era that I thought existed only in a digital studio in some corner of Hollywood. Bhutan has always prided herself in the ‘Thunder Dragon Kingdom’ ruled by a benevolent King. So, it is a surprise not to experience that in Paro, a truly picturesque valley. There are many things to do in Paro…from admiring the Dzongs to lounging in discos. Since I am not a party animal I took the path that gradually takes one through the blue pine hills never dropping in altitude until one has the view of the unbelievable work of art resting heavily on the mystical Buddhist legend. It is so powerful…that you accept the translation ‘The Tiger Nest’ probably as immediately as Yeshey Tshogyal had transformed herself into a Tigress on whose back Guru Padmasambhava flew to the grand rocky edifice in Paro in the 8th Century.
It’s always a pleasure to see things in improvement, as you feel the whole thing shape up for a good cause. This time the sight is the construction of Char Dham, the all in one pilgrim for Hindus. They also call it “Solofok”, It is located just few km from Namchi, South Sikkim.
