Experiencing different cultures have often been a defining feature of travel, but Sikkim bucks this general expectation. Surprisingly, Gangtok, a remote city near the Himalayan Range and thousands of miles from Singapore, shares many features that define Singapore.
Gangtok exudes a sense of artificiality. I couldn't believe that this haven could exist after Calcutta and Chennai. The Indian government is clearly seeking to fashion Gangtok as some sort of resort town, and town-planning is very evident. Mahatma Gandhi Marg, the main tourist walking belt has well-paved streets with plenty of clean, new benches, a sight that we are yet to see anywhere in India so far. Plenty of tourist police patrol the roads and there is virtually no touting and absolutely no beggars. This sense of artificiality is accentuated since we visited Gangtok after we haved sweated through the chaos of Calcutta and freezed through the slightly haphazard Darjeeling.
The diversity of ethnicity and cultures here mirrors Singapore's. Talking to the driver and asking him about the ethnicity of persons that we saw along the roads revealed that there are at least 4 ethnic groups in Sikkim: the Nepalese, Bhutanese, Bengalese Indian and Tibetan. On top of this there is the original natives, the lepchas. Hence there is a duality to identity here, just like in Singapore, split along ethinic and nationality lines. For example just as a Chinese Singaporean exists, a Bhutanese Sikkimese exists.
Signs of cohesion and assimilation are aplenty, but so are that of the inevitable racial tensions that usually plague multi-racial and cultural societies.
The food culture say it all as far as assimilation and integration is concerned. We had breakfast at this restaurant that served Indian puri with chickpea curry, together with a Bhutanese tourist policeman. Lunch was taken with our Nepalese driver at a local restaurant that had Tibetan and Bhutanese cooks and waiters that served Indian rice and curry.
However nationality and political creeds still exists. Our driver had his own views on the Tibetan presence in Sikkim. He feels that the 40% Tibetans make a load of needless fuss over the issue of Tibetan emancipation, and quipped that if they were allowed to decide whether to join Sikkim in India or Tibet, they would choose the former. To him, their concerns are hypocritical.
The onslaught of commercialism and capitalism is clearly evident, as in Singapore. The monks at the various monasteries saunter around with earphones plugged into their ears, and they are allowed to smoke and drink. The young tour guides at the tour agency we visited all have Facebook and Myspace accounts, and were astonishingly tech-savvy.
And the same paternalistic approach to government is adopted here in Sikkim. Signs with aphorisms that warn drivers on roads are plastered on mountain walls in intervals of about 20 metres, and rubbish bags, littering and touting are strictly banned in Sikkim.
Perhaps one difference is that Sikkim, unlike Singapore, has ceded its independence to India, in rather dubious fashion if the words of our driver can be believed. At the musuem of Tibetology a particular phrase struck me when I viewed the photo exhibition at the top of the museum. A particular description of a photograph quoted a Bhutanese politician, who said that the history of Sikkimese-Bhutanese exchange is worth studying and if there is anything to learn from it, it is not to do what the Sikkimese did, which is to surrender the sovereignty of their former independent kingdom.
Maybe I will see something drastically different tonight, when we sleep the night at this monastery near Gangtok. Meanwhile the world seems to share the same thoughts, hopes and fears, an overall comforting fact to me.