Yuksom

Yuksom, a quaint town at the edge of civilization

June 2024

Yuksom is a quaint small town with a square consisting of a few shops where most of the locals can be seen hanging around. It is the beginning of the Kanchenjunga National Park and there are many treks starting from there. We boarded up at the hotel Pemathang (Pema means Lotus and Thang - a place) which is owned by the nephew of Danny Dengzongpa, the famous Filmstar from Sikkim. The day to day running is managed by another partner, Writh Dasgupta. Writh works as a sound engineer at T-Series in Delhi and stays in Yuksom during the season. Our caretaker was a cook called Gurung who in an earlier career used to be part of many trekking groups. He made some wonderful healthy dishes for us. Locally grown foods in Sikkim are potato, cabbage, carrots and leafy vegetables like Rai Saag etc. while tomatoes and Rice came from the plains. We saw a lot of maize crops growing around which is combined with rice for food as part of their staple diet.

Danny Dengzongpa is from Yuksom and studied in the local school. In fact a lot of land, hotels and property in Yuksom is owned by his family though he is not from the Chogyal or the royal family. We were told that Danny doesn't come to Yuksom often and the last time he was here was with Jackie Shroff  to promote his beer, Dansburg and also when his brother had passed away recently.

Gurung Monastery

In the middle of the square is a Gupta restaurant. The owner did his catering studies in Bangalore from a private firm near Domlur. He manages the back end  while his wife and daughter are on the front end of the restaurant. The lady served up some beautiful vegetarian fare and it was the only place where we could get curd, a staple for one of my vegetarian friends.

Kathok Lake

The town was abuzz with news that a young man and woman who were guides had just lost their lives in a freak accident - they were struck by lightning in the nearby Singalila mountains. The whole town for forlorn with grief as many of the town folk knew them.

At the square we met by chance, Sanjeev Limbu who runs Smile Sikkim, a trekking agency. A young enthusiastic man, he recently started out on his own and I instantly took a liking to him. We told him that we wanted a low intensity trek and he planned out a village to village trek for three nights and four days.

Coronation Throne

Sanjeev also gave us a local itinerary for the day and we went around Yuksom starting from Gurung Monastery, Coronation Throne and ending at the Kathok lake and Monastery. The path to Gurung Monastery was through the Secondary High School and we could see children playing football early in the morning before school started. Football is extremely popular and all across our journey, we saw football fields even high up in the mountains. No wonder, India's two well known footballers - Bhaichung Bhutia and Sunil Chhetri are from Sikkim. 

Near Gurung monastery, we saw a beautiful house overlooking the valley and were told it belongs to a teacher. Teachers are one of the highest paid Government jobs in Sikkim, so looks like the state has got its priorities right. Every where we went, we saw children dressed smartly in their White and Black school clothes going to school. 

Meanwhile, Dasgupta gave us a reference of a homestay in Ravangla which is also in West Sikkim called Borong nature camp, which we decided would be our next destination after Yuksom. We dropped going to Gangtok and East Sikkim as we heard stories of packed crowds, washed out roads and heavy traffic. We decided not do this point based tourism and go to "Pointless" places instead where we could relax, explore nature and hang around with the locals.