In September last year, I decided to quit my job and take a much needed break from tiring worklife. I joined an Irish NGO instead, as a volunteer, to help out the street children of Kolkata. I made friends with some wonderful European volunteers there and we decided to take a short vacation to Pelling. The place turned out to be beautiful but what left a mark on me was the night we spent in a tiny,unheard of village nestled in the Khecheopalri hills.
We reached Pelling on a Sunday evening and stayed the night at Hotel Kabur, a warm, cozy place frequented mostly by foreigners. The next morning, after a late and heavy breakfast which largely comprised fried eggs, crisp buttered toasts, steaming bowls of honey and banana
porridge, baked potato with tomato, fried egg, and assorted milkshakes and juices , we set off on what was undoubtedly the best part of our five day Pelling adventurous trek to the Khechuperi village. Khechuperi is a 1.5 hour drive from Pelling.
One of the owners of our hotel, Deepesh Pradhan had invited us to stay at his house in the village . He drove the seven of us in his jeep, through the narrow, treacherous roads that snaked up and down the side of the mountains where one side was constantly exposed to a sheer drop. One wrong turn of the jeep and you could actually end up tumbling thousands of feet down below!
Once we reached the Khechuperi Lake, we parked our jeep here since the rest of the journey to the village would comprise a 1200 ft hike up the hills covered with dense forests. While there is no specially designed road through this forest ,we followed the narrow, boulder strewn, relatively clearer patch of ground that zigzagged its way up the slope, with cliffs on either side covered in dense vegetation. We trudged up the moss covered slippery boulders and leech infested bushes. Two kids from the village accompanied us. While I had to stop after almost every five steps trying to catch my breath which kept growing increasingly heavier, the kids sprinted up the slopes like it was no big deal. Finally, after almost one long hour of trekking, we reached the little known but beautiful village of Khechuperi.
The village is stunning in its natural beauty! It is a virgin piece of land, completely removed from the humdrum of the city , unspoiled and largely untouched by human interference, barring about a dozen sparsely scattered dwellings here and there. Most of the houses there have been built with wood and are surrounded by beautiful gardens . Almost every family has livestock largely comprising of cows, pigs and hens. Some even have small horses! Deepesh’s house, however ,was very different from the rest . It is a beautiful , two storeyed structure, the lower half built with bricks while the upper half is made of wood. Deepesh said it took him two carpenters and four years to build the same! I wonder how in the world did the men carry the heavy piles of bricks and logs of wood up the 1200 ft high hill which we had taken over an hour to climb even without any luggage!
Deepesh lives here with his wife and some village kids whom they have adopted. The couple do not have any children of their own. The ground floor of the building houses a fairly large kitchen which also doubles up as a bedroom for the kids (who slept on thick mattresses laid out on the floor) , a neat little bathroom decorated with beautiful tiles , the master bedroom where the couple slept and a large unfurnished room with big piles of wood and other odds and ends kept in it. The upper storey is meant for the tourists. You have to walk up a short wooden stair that winds up alongside the kitchen in the ground floor and leads to the upper floor. The first room you step inside in the upper floor is the main living cum dining room. It has a cot with cushions at one end and a large dining table with wooden benches to sit on, at the other end. The window above the cot opens out to a spectacular view of the deep green forest and the mountain tops. This first room is a fairly large one. This room opens out to a long corridor cum balcony at its other end.
While one side of the corridor lets you peer down at the frontyard of the house, the other side is lined up with four bedrooms. Each of the rooms are large with a queen size bed, cupboards, carpeted floor, a lampshade on a tabletop kept beside the bed, and windows overlooking the mountains and the forest. All the rooms on the top floor are made entirely of wood .
On arrival, we were greeted with steaming hot cups of aromatic tea. It tasted like nothing I had ever tasted before! It was heavenly! Deepesh informed me that this was a special variety native to Sikkim and was very expensive. Post tea and some noodles, we were made to try out what can be best described as Sikkim’s very own version of beer that goes by the name Chhaang! It comes in long steel jars with a lid on top and a straw through it. I opened the lid of one and found the jar filled with a concoction of warm water and red little grains of millet stuffed up to the brim. The millets, I found out , had been fermented for about a month to prepare this special drink. Once the millets are done, you simply had to soak them for some time in warm water to get the rich alcoholic goodness.
The liquid tasted and smelled a lot like nailpolish remover and I loved it! As I finished guzzling down the entire liquid, Deepesh simply refilled my jar with a second helping of warm water and voila I had my second drink of the night!
After all the drinking , which though tasty sadly failed to get me high , we gathered downstairs where the family had prepared a bonfire for us in the front yard! The sun had already set, it was pitch dark all around as the electricity was gone and the temperature had started plummeting. So
the bonfire was perfect for the occasion. We watched and chatted merrily as the wood sputtered and crackled in the fire while the flames feeding on the wood, grew stronger and vigorous. Not a sound could be heard all around apart from our voices .
Not a speck of light could be seen anywhere apart from the fire burning in front of us. Even the bonfire couldn’t do much to dispel the impregnable darkness that seemed to have gobbled up the entire village. I looked up and I caught my breath! The sky above shimmered with a thousand little sparkling stars. The disorienting darkness coupled with the brilliant array of stars above, made me feel like I was lost in some mysterious and magical land, far, far away from the city I lived in. While the others talked and laughed, I quietly soaked in the grandeur of the night spent in a tiny village atop a serene, isolated mountain , not far from the majestic Kanchenjungha!
By 8:30 , all of us gathered around the dining table upstairs. Dinner was simple but warm and nourishing. It comprised an assortment of veggies plucked from the backyard garden and some pulses, with a dollop of home-made cheese for added taste. We had a ravenous appetite so it didn’t take us time to lick the plate clean. Post dinner, with a full tummy and drooping eyes, I marched straight off to my room and surrendered myself to the clean white bed and the delightfully soft, furry blanket! I slept like a baby! The next morning for perhaps the first time in my life, I woke up to the cry of a rooster! But it was so cold outside plus everyone seemed to be so dead asleep, that I decided to lie down for some more time. When I finally woke up, it was 8 am and the others were still sound asleep. Preferring to make the most of my time here exploring the place, I got up from my bed, went down, brushed my teeth and found the couple and the children already up and busy with their morning routine. I wished them, exchanged pleasantries and decided to walk around a bit of the village.
A walk around was more of a climb up and down the slopes of the hills. I saw baby pigs scampering away afraid of me , cows peacefully munching away on grass, a sick black kitten curled up on a stack of bamboo laid out on ground, small horses waiting patiently in shades and plenty of hens and chicks running everywhere around. Oh and there was one plump little snow white cat that crossed my path and which reminded me of my own little ball of fur back home.
A little farther ahead, I saw a villager milking her cow with her kid looking on. When I came back to the house, it was around 9:30 and most of our other members had finally woken up. Deepesh’s wife served us tea. Breakfast offered us heavenly soft, white as cloud, perfectly round chappatis served with a bottle of the most delicious ghee(homemade butter) and a lip smacking preparation of egg curry. The food was good but what specifically blew me away was the tantalizing aroma of the ghee and its extraordinary taste.
Long back, my grandma used to make us ghee and all this while I had failed to find a ghee tastier than that. But when I tasted this ghee, I realized that there existed a ghee tastier than my
grandmother’s. This ghee was not the average ghee you pick up from the market which has very little ghee and a whole lot of dalda(vegetable fat) and which tastes and smells equally bad. This was rich, authentic ,100 per cent natural, pure ghee made from unadulterated and untreated cow’s milk .
I was so smitten with it that I asked Deepesh’s wife for a bottle to carry back hom , to which she happily agreed and refused to take money for it. As for the curry, the eggs were from the hens that roamed their gardens. After the heavy breakfast, they handed us each a big fat Himalayan banana! It was greenish and looked raw to me and quite fat, unlike the thinner varieties we get in other parts of the country. When I put it in my mouth , it was so soft and sweet, I had to admit this was the most delicious banana I ever had!
We started off on our return trip back to Pelling at about 1 in the afternoon. The children had cut stalks of bamboo and prepared walking sticks for each of us! They were meant to balance you and give you support while coming down the slippery slope. We took the sticks, bade them farewell, clicked some last minute photographs and set off on our way. While coming up had left us all breathless and weary, going down was significantly easier, made more effortless with the help of the walking sticks. The journey to this village was one of the best memories of my life! The warm hospitality of the couple, their splendid house and the mystical beauty of the place was enough to make this trip so much of a success. I would recommend this charming little village and Deepesh’s place to anyone adventurous enough to spend a couple of days in the magical wilderness of the Khecheopalri hills.
Ananya misra is a day-dreaming, animal loving, self-sufficient, independent and hopelessly romantic adult trudging along the wrong end of her twenties.Good food and solo travel are her drugs of choice. Armed with a bachelor’s degree in Maths and a MBA in marketing, she works in a bank by the day while she spends the night cuddling with her six cats and dreaming of writing a book someday.