anything. We were ready to go anywhere but not home in the next few days. We had also a Plan B in case we failed to make Gurudongmar Lake – we would visit Pelling. Day 1: The day finally arrived. After spending a near sleepless night, woke up pretty late as Kinjal had some important work and we would not be leaving early as planned. We left home, with both of our mothers praying for our safety while hiding their anger on our crazy unplanned sudden trip, and started on our ride to live our dream. After fuelling-up “Dhanno” we thumped our way through the metalled roads enjoying the freedom and he sound of the breeze whizzing past our helmets that we had long been craving for. We reached Rangpo and rain greeted us into the “Hidden Land of Sacred Treasures”. In our hurry to get out on the road we had forgotten to buy plastic sheets to cover the bag. We had to quickly buy a plastic-sheet to protect our bags from getting soaked up with rain. In the process we ended getting ourselves thoroughly drenched. After having cholebatore at a Marwari hotel in Rangpo we continued on our trip having dressed to ward off the rain, but we were sweating as well. We reached Singtam, which is a located 10kms from Rangpo, and from there took the road left after taking directions from the policeman on duty in the traffic post. A signboard informed us that our destination Mangan was 50 kms away. The roads were
Travelers’ Adda
pretty good but then it wasn’t quite the same all the way through. We reached Mangan at around 4.30 p.m. and after checking out both high end and low-end hotels we chose to spend our night at Hotel Malling Residency, which was pretty cheap and well-maintained. Day 2 : We woke up pretty late, as the District Collectorate’s office
would not open before 10 a.m. and we were required to get our Restricted Line Permit from there. We freshened up, packed our things and left for the Collectorate’s office which was a mere 4kms from our hotel. One needs to provide photocopies of the driving license, bike registration, blue book, insurance, tax and a photo identity proof as in Voter card or PAN card.
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