Dipen, the taxi driver from North Sikkim. Excerpts from the pages of my North Sikkim Adventure Diary.

From the pages of my North and East Sikkim Diary.

In our journey of life, at times we meet few ordinary people on our way who create extraordinary impressions in our mind. We never meet them again in life. But we remember them for the rest of our journey and keep searching for them forever.

One such person was Dipen, a cab driver of a travel agency of Gangtok. I met him while travelling to Gangtok,Tsango, Nathula, Yumthang and Gurudongmar. For the entire trip, he was the person who drove through the dangerous, yet beautiful and adventurous muddy tracks winding upwards towards the remote North Sikkim mountain ranges which are actually the parts of Himalayan mountain ranges.

All through out the route, we had travelled on an average of 10000 feet above the sea level and at times we reached the height of 17000 feet above the sea level. The dangerous landslides, narrow stiff roads with slippery road conditions because of heavy and continuous rainfall with deep mystic foggy weather made the journey an absolute thriller. Death is the only result if we fall down and our lives were depending on the young hands of Dipen, a cute 21 year young guy from Sikkim origin. He was bold, youthful, energetic with a million dollar smile on his face and in the whole journey he just whistled passed the dangerous, half broken narrow hairpin bends of the muddy zigzag roads slippery with rain water. And there were no railguards on the roads !!!!!

The beautiful small villages like Mangnan, Lachen, Chungtham, Lachung , the lifestyle of the local people staying on the hills, their day to day hardship scripted an absolute fairy tale. We met four little sisters hardly 10-15 years of age running a grossery shop in a small village like Lachen. Each weekend, they travel to Magnan, 120 kms away from Lachen making a five and half hours journey to purchase the necessary grossery materials required to run their grossery shop. On the other hand they study in a small school of Lachen and each one of them are well conversant in English. Those little legs and the innocent angels remined me of a famous Hollywood movie called “The Little Sisters” which reflected the struggle of four little sisters and their growing up inspite of all odds and obstacles in their life.

Each day, we had a different dawn and a different twilight full of mysteries of mountains, and where you wake up from your sleep perhaps by the noise of a heavy shower in the middle of the night or cannot sleep at all due to spin chilling coldness and loud and continuous burbling noise of streams flowing with many unrevealed sagas of the mountains created through ages.

In small villages of Sikkim, you will not find too many good hotels. You have to stay most of the time in local residences converted into temporary guesthouses for one night stay with no extravagant luxary and comfort and this perhaps adds an adventurous flair to the entire trip. The housewife of the tribal family will prepare hot rotis and chicken served with utmost warmth and care. You are bound to look back once again to their small cottages of rural and hilly traditions and warmth blended with the floras and faunas of the mountains.

Dipen was a similar person with youth and enthusiasm. I was surprised by the way he tackled the entire trip with his young hands holding the steering continuously throughout the journey which was always hectic and risky. A cool personality like him who not even for once lost his innocent smile from his face and had driven continuously for six days with all most 8-10 hrs of journey every day. One day I could not resist myself from asking that how does he manage such a continuous hectic and risky profession for days after days and years after years. I was spell bound by his reply that its very easy to manage your living once you start loving your own profession and enjoy your profession. I got this reply from a person who is hardly educated, but his answer made me feel that he is the most educated person I have ever met. I had also asked him that why the girls and women in the mountains are always so well dressed and always maintain themselves with colourful clothes and raw cosmetics when hardly there is any population in those remote villages . Even in the day time darkness prevails in these villages because of continuous fog, rain and snowfall. I was surprised to know that it’s a common way to avoid depression of living in a small isolated village located in a far away lonely mountain where there is nothing called entertainment and no one is there to pay attention to these girls. They just want to see themselves beautiful infront of a mirror and that's the way they motivate themselves every day and night during their entire lifeline in such remotest paradises on earth.

And Dipen was romantic too. Whenever we made a nighthalt in small villages, Dipen was missing all throughout the night. Next day morning when we asked about his whereabouts, he replied with a tiny smile that he spent the night with his wife. Immediately we asked that how many wives does he possess and he made a quick reply stating that his life is just like a pot of spicy curry where it’s meaningless to count the onions. Quiet meaningful!!!! Isn’t it????? Yes, behind every succesful man, there has to be a woman. And to handle such risky death calling tracks of North Sikkim every day and night, these local lads have every reason to add extra spices to their lives.

After coming back to Kolkata, I tried for his number many a times and each and every time I found that his number is out of reach. May be he was busy and lost into those hills with other tourists. If anyone of you accidentally read this article and ever visit Gangtok and make a trip to North Sikkim, then please tell him that we still remember him and would like to meet him again. He is mostly available in the Gangtok main tourist taxi stand.

And mark my words. Every bit of Lachen, Lachun, Chungtham, Katao, Zero Point, Gurudongmar lake and Yumthang are broader versions of Switzerland in India. If you ever visit North Sikkim, you need not visit Switzerland or Alps in this birth. And you are ought to be proud about the beautiful India where the beauty of entire world is hidden. You just have to take the risk of making an attempt to visit these places with some one like Dipen who will make your journey easy and comfortable.

On our way back to Gangtok, we thanked almighty for giving us a second chance to see this world. And for us , Dipen was our God.

Miss you Dipen. Hope to meet you someday somewhere in this world. I have spent a significant amount of my career on the hills of Sikkim and North East. Whereever I saw people smiling, I felt that Dipen must be somewhere nearby. I love those people on hills. Inspite of every problem in life, they never forget to smile. And they believe in making people smile.