Lepchajagat (Darjeeling Hills)

My wife and I enjoyed a wonderful holiday at Lepchajagat in the Darjeeling Hills in Dec 2005. We also visited Jorepokhri and Mirik.

We holidayed at the WBFDC (www.wbfdc.com) resort at Lepchajagat (8 km from Ghoom along the Mirik road). The view of Kanchenjunga from Lepchajagat and Jorepokhri is quite spectacular. Our suite at Lepchajagat had a completely unobstructed view of the Kanchenjunga massif from our bedroom window.

We travelled from Kolkata in our car (Maruti Esteem). Around 50% of the road between Kolkata and Siliguri (Kolkata to Siliguri is 600 km) is pretty bad at present -- some stretches are so badly potholed and broken that I had to drive for scores of km in first gear. The car's suspension took severe beating, but survived. The stretch between Dalkhola and Islampur is excellent. Ghat roads after Siliguri are good -- we climbed up by the Main Road (Hill Cart Road) but descended by the Mirik Road -- the latter is wider and better.

As usual, I took many photos -- have uploaded some at http://community.webshots.com/user/debashisphotos

I had gone thro' Arnab Chatterjee's travel blog before going to Lepchajagat and seen the pictures of Lepchajagat( http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Asia/India/East/West_Bengal/Lepchajagat/ ) -- I even printed out his guide Amar Rai's photo (http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Asia/India/East/West_Bengal/Lepchajagat/photo177553.htm ) in the hope that I might locate him at Lepchajagat. As I approached the WBFDC resort in my car, Amar opened the gates -- I recognised him from his photo and asked him,"Is your name Amar Rai"? He answered in the affirmative and my wife was stunned as we had never been near Lepchajagat before. In jest I told my wife that my recognition of Amar had something to do with reincarnation!

Subsequently, I gave a printout of his photo to Amar and asked him to guide me to 'Hawa Ghar' thro' the forest, as he had guided Arnab. I got up early one morning, Amar was nowhere to be seen, and I decided to locate Hawa Ghar myself -- based on rough directions given by the caretaker the previous evening. Following the foot tracks thro' the forest and my own instinct, I climbed the nearby hills and reached the spot with the large rocks surrounded by railings (Ghoom Rock) without much difficulty. I had forgotten reading about Ghoom Rock at Arnab's blog and thought that was Hawa Ghar. After resting a bit and taking pics, I noticed another foot track leading away from this spot into dense forest. Since this was in the general direction from which I had come, I decided to be adventurous and follow it. To my amazement, after 100 metres or so down this track I came across Hawa Ghar from where I got a spectacular view of the K'junga range.

After taking many pics, I followed another foot track and started descending. After about half an hour, I found myself in a valley and then the tracks disappeared. The logical thing probably would have been simply to go back to Hawa Ghar, then to Ghoom Rock and back to Lepchajagat -- but I decided to navigate my way thro' the forest using the sun for rough directions as I was already quite tired and did not want to climb back. Eventually, I got completely lost -- got into really dense forest -- got extremely tired (I wasn't carrying any water, unfortunately) -- and almost panicked. I sat down and rested and realised that I had climbed down into a valley between two large hills and there was no choice other than climbing out of it. Again, using the sun and my instincts for direction, I started climbing a hill through dense undergrowth which was difficult to penetrate at times and took a lot of effort and energy. The forest was slushy and I slipped and fell a few times -- if I had injured myself, it would have been virtually impossible to get any help as there wasn't a soul anywhere near and nobody was likely to come that way either. My mobile phone (Hutch) was showing full signal strength, but I was not in a position to give my co-ordinates to anyone over the phone.

To cut a long story short, I did manage to cut thro' the forest and climb to the top of one hill from where I could roughly determine my position and identify some foot tracks again. Subsequently, I could hear the faint sounds of passing vehicles and descended towards the road. I managed to reach the same foot track which I had used for ascending and thereafter reaching Lepchajagat was no problem.

I must place on record the fact that if I had not seen Arnab's blog and his account of going to Hawa Ghar thro' the forests I would not have attempted this trek. The trek turned out (luckily) most fulfilling and memorable in the end -- it would have been just a routine trek if I had taken a guide!

Another amazing coincidence was that Arnab's colleague and friend Indranil Sarkar was holidaying at the same resort along with his wife Shrabana -- when I narrated the story of my trek to him and told him about Arnab's travel blog, he told me that Arnab is his colleague at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics at Kolkata.