we had an amazing day today going around the various monasteries in Sikkim; not because we are great fans of monasteries but because we had a really good guide - Keyren. He basically gave us a great education on the sociopolitical culture and landscape of Sikkim and its various inhabitants and his own personal views and opinions on monks, monasteries, hinduism, football, cricket and just about everything under the sun. it is too much for me to put into words here and words will not really do it justice in any case.

we have also run into a slight problem. while trying to upload photos, our thumdrive was infected with a virus and as such the photographs of Darjeeling (later editions), the trip here to Sikkim and the monastery trips today cannot be posted. Its a shame because we took a photo with a really stunning Nepali girl with piercing eyes. But unfortunately you guys won't be able to see her.

In any case, we leave for our 9 day trek to Gochen La tomorrow. Gochen La is the base camp area of Kanchenjunga, which is the third highest mountain in the world. We will be going up to 4960 (about 5000 metres) and it appears that there will be snow, judging from the view we got of some peaks today while triapsing around the monasteries. The weather is also unpredictable in these recent days so its anybody's guess as to what we will be facing up there.

that being said, we are in the care of a company that we randomly selected while walking around the streets of Sikkim. its kinda funny cos we appear to keep making good choices. the company turns out to be quite reputable, having offices in Singapore (near Peninsula Plaza), Switzerland, Nepal and Sikkim and they have operated for 14 years doing treks like these. to cut a long story short, logistically speaking they seem to be sound. And there are going to be Yaks to carry our bags. how cool is that?

we leave tomorrow for Yuksam. The original capital of Sikkim. there we will stay for one night in a hotel before dumping extra stuff into a locker and hucking our bags onto our friendly Yaks.

we should return by the 23rd assuming everything goes well.

tonight, we will be spending the night in a prayer room at a monastery called Tamang Gompa. Gompa is a generic term for monastery and Tamang refers to the ethnic sect of the people in that monastery. There are 4 different sects of buddhist monks and they correspond to 4 different cultural groups with their own practices. some monks can drink, eat meat and make love while others are not so lucky.

Sikkim is very very multi cultural and very very political in terms of its makeup. There are so many cultures and sub cultures here - Nepalese, Sikkimese (the original Lepbchu inhabitants of the area), Bhutanese, Tibetan and various Indians. Apparently, everyone doesn't like the Tibetans cos they "try to dominate others" and "are not friendly or grateful to India for [offering them shelter from China]"

there is a whole history behind the reason why Sikkim is a part of India instead of China. why chinese nationals are not allowed into Sikkim, why a famous tibetan temple in sikkim had funds contributed by Jackie Chan towards its construction, why there are indian army guards at the oldest tibetan temple in sikkim and how the state soccer team selection works. apparently, the law is also very malleable in sikkim. you can kill someone and if you have enough money to pay you will go scott free.

also, being sikkimese is not a matter of birth. its a matter of who your father is. if a girl from sikkim marries a foreigner, even if their child is born in sikkim, the child is not considered a sikkimese. only if the father is sikkimese is the child considered sikkimese. this has implications as non sikkimese people cannot own property in sikkim and one can only buy and sell property to someone of the same ethinicity (bhutanese to bhutanese).

Keyren also told us of some deadly practices where people pay other people to put poison in the food. this happens in specific locations around sikkim which is also why he doesn't eat in certain areas. as for the motivation why, i could not really understand his explanation.

we stood at a rock which was a place for suicides and the view was great. we had a local nepali lunch with an enormous serving of rice (about 4 bowlfuls of rice plus 2 servings of vegetables and pork fats with dal washed down with Coke) and we noticed that nepali girls are really quite pretty. bhutan girls have unique features (sharp noses, small eyes and very long hair to mid back) and tibetan girls look like samsui women from old time singapore.

keyren is 29 and he has a kukri knife of his own, although he uses it for cutting meat in the kitchen. he has a 5 year old daughter and his wife is 26 and runs a business. he regrets marrying so young (married at 23) because then your life priorities change drastically. he belongs to a higher caste called Chittier (all my spellings of sects/cultures/names are based on phonetics and may not be actual spellings) and the nepali people have many castes and sections in their society.

keyren also grew up in a village and he told us about the village shamans who could eat hot coals and jump amazing distances. they were impervious to poisonous plants and being burnt as well. however, this only occurred when they were shaking from head to toe in a trance. keyren saw all this himself with his own eyes so i guess there must be some truth in it. i did ask him if they could do all this when they weren't shaking all about and he said nope, they had to be shaking. so there ya have it - their achilles heel.

keyren however also mentioned that it was hard to be friends with those guys cos "if you give them normal food, they will start shaking".

see you guys in 9 days.