Read part four here. Day 5: Sandakphu to Siliguri (140 m). Wait, where? The road doesn’t go where man wants it to; man goes where the road takes him, and sometimes it’s not where he wishes to delve. And this is especially true in the Himalayan realms.  Elsewhere it might be true that “man proposes;…

Read part three here. Day 4: Kalipokhri to Sandakphu (3636 m) As per the plan, we embarked the Bolero a few minutes after the appointed time (for Pooja reported being slightly under the weather) and began our descent back towards Kaiyakata to reach the said haunt. It was still dark when we set sail. A…

Read part two here. Day 3: Tumling to Kalipokhri (3186 m) via Garibans (2621 m) From the depths of my beddings I forced away the hot-water pack that had kept me warm and cosy all night, and extricated myself out of bed. Bleary-eyed, I parted the curtains anxiously, hoping for the best but prepared for…

Read part one here. Day 2: Tumling The first thing I did when the alarm went off was to part the curtain to take a peek outside. And a large “nothing to see here” sign met me. I couldn’t tell whether it was foggy or just dark, for the human eyes, so effective at discrimination…

“There! Is that it?” I asked, craning over Sourabha’s shoulder, hoping I had just seen Mount Everest. A nebulous snowy spike rose far over the aerial horizon, piercing the endless expanse of cloud: like an iceberg over an Arctic mirage 12 kilometres above the sea.  “Are you sure that’s even a mountain and not just…