Non seasonal snow on Sikkim’s Silk Route

Sikkim’s Silk Route

Encountering a non seasonal snow

See also: Familiarization (FAM) Tour of Lampokhri Festival and Silk Route, East Sikkim

“But from Rongli they climbed steeply out of the tropical forest into the zone of flowering rhododendrons…..To flower lovers, like Howard Bury, Mallory and Wollaston, these were perpetual delight. They were all the more appreciated because they would be almost the last sign of luxuriance and grace they would behold before they to face the austerities and stern realities of rock and ice and snow, and the frosts of Mount Everest.”

Sir Francis Younghusband, The Epic of Mount Everest

Zig Zag roads beyond Zuluk, Silk Route, East Sikkim

Malory and his fellow mountaineers followed the route through Rongli and then across the Jelep La and on wards to Tibet to reach the base of Mount Everest in 1921, 22 and 24

Almost a century later we started off along the same route in the dead of night, but our destination was not Mount Everest but Sikkim’s Silk Route.