Singalila Ridge Circuit Trek

I had forgotten to mention in my last blog entry that after church on Christmas morning while we were outside having biscuits and Darjeeling tea, a whole horde of monkeys ran into the open doors of the Church. On the sign outside the church, they list mass times for English and Nepali (they speak Nepali in Darjeeling), but I guess they had forgotten to mention that they also have mass in Monkey. I think the monkeys enjoyed playing in the hay from the nativity scene and swinging from the rafters of the big cathedral.


So I had figured after I left Nepal that I was pretty much done with big trekking. However, once I got to Darjeeling and saw the Himalayas shimmering in the distance, I couldn’t resist. They beckoned me to come…mountains and me I guess. So I decided to do a 5 day trek on the Singalila Ridge Circuit. The weather was poor in Darjeeling at the moment, but Wangchuck told me that the weather would be good the next few days. He gave a very good description of how the weather works around here (the first I had heard from any local people anywhere in the Himalaya…no one ever seemed to know anything about weather or weather patterns when I would ask!). He said that in winter when there is bad weather and snow in the mountains, it will clear for several days and then slowly get bad again until it snows. So I had a short window of nice weather coming up, and I decided to go for it. Prateep, the Thai guy at the homestay, who had never trekked or anything, made a last minute decision to go partly because he was very intrigued by my description of trekking in the Himalayas, but mostly because he saw a few of my pictures from my blog and Eastern Asians (Thais, Chinese, Japanese) will never say no to an opportunity to take tons of gorgeous photos! It was funny b/c he was so excited to trek, but also so scared and nervous. I think he was very glad to have me to help him along. For this trek it was mandatory to have a guide, but the guide, Rajin, mainly walked with Prateep as he was quite a bit slower. We also had a porter, Bikash, for Prateep, but funny thing was that he had trouble keeping up carrying all of Prateep’s stuff, so I ended up carrying a bit of the stuff.

12-26 Day 1

Back to Nepal…
So in the morning, we set out for Many Bhanjang (2130m/6986ft) by jeep. It was very clear and sunny in Darjeeling and we had nice views of the Kanchenjunga massif as we drove away. The first day we trekked to Tumling (3100m/10,168). The walk the first couple of days was along the Nepal/India border, so there were lots of Indian border checkpoints where we had to show passports. And actually the first 2 nights we spent the nights in guesthouses that were actually in Nepal. The trek was sunny in the bottom, but Tumling was very foggy and cold, so Prateep and I just sat around the fire with a French guy doing just a 2 day trip. One of the nice things about trekking here in India was they would give us a hot water bladder to take to bed and put in our sleeping bag! Around the fire we enjoyed some Thumba, which is a local alcoholic drink in which water is poured into these seeds. You then drink the Thumba out of a bamboo straw.

12-27 Day 2

Frosty morning and gorgeous sunrise lighting up Kanchenjunga (3rd highest mountain in the world). I could also see Everest, Makalu (5th highest), Lhotse (4th highest), Nuptse, and other peaks in the Everest range. More alking along the border and a lot of up to get to Sandakpur (3636m/11,926ft) At a rest stop along the way, some kids gave me Himalayan chestnuts. So today seemed just like the song: “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, jackfrost nipping at your door” as we had had frost that morning, a fire that night, and chestnuts today. First time I had ever had chestnuts actually. Sandakphu was above the clouds that had formed and thus had tremendous views of Kanchenjunga and the Everest range. It is much closer to the mountains and higher than Tumling, so that makes the views even nicer. Amazing, amazing! Sunset over the cloud sea and of course coloring the big mountains orange then pink. Met a nice couple from Vancouver (Helen and Ewen) and a nice couple from France (Sago and Ben) whom we would travel with the rest of the time. Prateep, these 4, and myself were the only people doing the circuit and we had a great time trekking together.

12-28 Day 3
Gorgeous sunrise painting Everest range and Kanchenjunga massif amber, pink, then orange. Very cold and windy, but it didn’t matter with the scenery. We walked 21km along the ridge to Phalut (3600m/11,808ft). Incredible views the whole walk: to the front was towering Kanchenjuna; to the left the Everest range; to the near right the mountains of Sikkim; and to the far right, the mountains of Bhutan. Amazingly crystal clear day too, so the mtns are especially clear. Watched an amazing sunset from a viewpoint near Phalut but in an ‘Estes Park in December’ type wind. From the viewpoint you could see Everest range in Nepal, Tibet Himalaya, Bhutan Himalaya, and of course the Indian Himalaya. There was a sea of clouds to the south towards the plains with smaller mountains rising just above the clouds like islands forming a really cool visual. And some of the clouds were flowing quickly over the low mtns forming a wave-like effect. Kanchenjunga is really close and just stood massively in front of us. Sweet! Sunset w/ all the mountains and clouds and fantastic lights.

12-29 Day 4

We all skipped the sunrise b/c it was so cold and windy and early and it would have been impossible to beat the sunset. But I did walk back up to the viewpoint after a chapati and potato curry breakfast to see the view again. The trail to Ramman (2530m/8298ft) was nice through bambook and forest and a cute (and warm!) village of Ghorkey.

12-30 Day 5

Nice trail through villages clinging to steep hillsides until reaching Rimbick (2290m/7511ft) were we took a jeep (16 people crammed into this one with 5 on top as well) for the 4 hours back to Darjeeling along a road that wound down one of the steepest mountains I had ever seen a road go down. The Thai guy was definitely very much freaking out as the jeep was often quite close to a 3,000 foot or so drop. And of course it was a one lane road but sometimes we had to maneuver somehow around oncoming jeeps or even large trucks. Back in Darjeeling we saw a nice sunset over the now storming Kanchenjunga.