The Sikkim Diaries: Part 2 (March, 2025)
Special Permission
The second landing into Bagdogra was surprisingly smooth after the first attempt left tensions high. Reaccelerating at around fifty metres above the runway hadn’t been entirely convincing, but the rusty barbed-wire fence we rapidly left behind made me grateful for nothing more than a surging heart rate.
The shock clearly didn’t faze the gentleman next to me. He continued to snore and dig his elbows into my side as we circled the runway. I stared out at the barren landscape surrounding the isolated airstrip and was unimpressed by this self-proclaimed “gateway” to the mountains.
The airport itself was tiny and uninviting, somehow managing to feel claustrophobic despite welcoming only one flight at a time. As I waited for my bag, I glanced around the arrivals area and spotted the Sikkim Tourism Information Centre – an unmanned stall, with neither staff nor customers drawn to its modest display.
I wandered over to see what I could learn from its simple noticeboard. As I approached, a face slowly appeared from behind the desk. I stood there for a moment before realising that I should probably start a conversation. I hadn’t thought that far ahead and was caught slightly off-guard by his presence.
I fumbled for words. “I want to go to Sikkim.”
He looked about as surprised as I was. The interaction evolved into something of a standoff. I hadn’t given any details (because I didn’t have any), and he hadn’t asked for any. A strange chicken-and-egg situation that he eventually solved by simply entering his personal WhatsApp number into my phone.
His name was Yogen. He kindly informed me that if I needed anything at all during my time in Sikkim, he could help me arrange it.
Perfect. I needed anything at all right now.
I asked him how to reach Sikkim. He took the question literally and unfolded a comically large map, which he began annotating as he talked. Information came thick and fast – much of it lost on me – as I focused instead on making sure I could decipher his handwriting later.
By this point I had fully leaned into the absence of planning. The days of my multicoloured itinerary were long gone, and I had quietly made peace with winging it. I was now receiving handwritten recommendations on how to spend my time in Sikkim, directions to the border, and even a few Nepali words I might find useful.
It started to feel like a real adventure. I placed my faith in Yogen’s notes and had no desire to plan any further. The encounter had given me the quiet permission I needed to let things slide – to embrace the trip for what it was: a spontaneous adventure.
However, there was one special permission I was missing. Yogen drew a line on the map and asked me if I had obtained my ‘Inner Line Permit’ – the first time I heard those words. Uh oh – paperwork.
That sounded like something that required forward planning, and suddenly the mask had slipped. I felt a brief flash of panic as Yogen revealed that all international visitors require a special permit to visit Sikkim, part of the Indian Government’s efforts to control access to sensitive border regions.
Luckily for me, he made it clear that the process was fairly straightforward. My spare passport photos and photocopies were enough to complete the form along with some basic personal details. Turns out some contingency planning is worthwhile. Had I known permits were required, I probably would have worried about them in advance and refused to relax until everything was signed and stamped.
Instead, the process was seamless. Any energy spent worrying would have been completely wasted. Ten minutes earlier I hadn’t even known such a permit existed, yet here I was standing at baggage reclaim with my Inner Line Permit in hand – my green light for access to Sikkim.
Gangtok! Gangtok! Gangtok!
The chaos and noise of Siliguri Junction left me disoriented. I had followed Yogen’s advice to the syllable, yet progress towards Sikkim was at a standstill. Walking up and down congested streets and unpaved roads in search of a bus was proving futile – made worse by a Google Maps link that led me to a live chicken salesman rather than anything resembling a transport hub. Frustration was setting in.
I struggled to communicate with many of the shopkeepers and Tuk drivers. Their body language suggested they were trying to help, but my absence of any local language and their absence of English reduced our conversations to pointing, shrugging, and intermittent noises.
At one point, one particularly enthusiastic man delivered directions to the bus station in English at rapid-fire speed, before sprinting off in the other direction, leaving me scrambling to remember anything he had described.
I continued to wander aimlessly, entering an almost trance-like state to escape the blaring horns and pollution hanging in the low heat, only breaking focus to wipe the sweat from my brow and readjust my increasingly dragging backpack. Then, suddenly, a magical sound broke through.
“GANGTOK! GANGTOK! GANGTOK!”
The cries snapped me to attention. I turned to see a battered bus slowing down by the roadside, a fluorescent man hanging out of its door. The vibrant orange and blue of his tie-dyed shirt and multicoloured bandana clashed violently with the beige, rusting bus.
As he shouted his rallying cry, a handful of people hurried forward, bundling oversized suitcases through its narrow doors and windows.
Gangtok was exactly where I needed to go and our brief eye contact seemed to tell him so. He beckoned me over. “Gangtok?”, he asked, upgrading from his earlier chant. “Gangtok”, I replied. He repeated it once more – “Gangtok” – this time stepping down from the bus and inviting me aboard.
It was impossible to doubt what was happening – our entire conversation had consisted of repeating the name of Sikkim’s capital city with different facial expressions and changes in tone. There was nothing lost in translation. I was going to Gangtok.
We left the congested city behind as the bus climbed higher and higher into the foothills of the Himalayas, weaving through scattered villages and clinging to ageing hillside roads. The main route into Sikkim follows the Teesta River upstream, a stretch of which forms the natural border between the Indian states of West Bengal and Sikkim.
Across the water, multicoloured houses beckoned me closer, teasing the moment when a bridge would mark the official beginning of my adventure. As the sun descended, a calmness settled over the otherwise tense road, and it felt like I was slowly leaving the chaos of India behind.
Checking In
After a few hours of twists and turns we eventually reached Rangpo, a checkpoint town that serves as the main entry point into Sikkim. The fluorescent conductor waved me towards the police checkpoint – a humble bungalow by the roadside – and I climbed down from the bus as it eagerly pulled away.
I edged towards the checkpoint with a few nervous glances back, conscious that all my belongings were still on a bus that was already out of sight. I had placed my faith in a man whose only interaction with me had been various outbursts of the word “Gangtok.”
I showed my passport and documentation to the security officers, who unveiled an enormous green book and slammed it onto the desk in front of me. They made gentle small talk in broken English as I filled in the paperwork, clearly puzzled by the rugged state of my passport.
As I wrote, the thin paper caused my handwriting to wobble slightly. I soon realised why – I was resting on the inside cover of the book. I was writing my details about halfway down the first page of their book, which suggested that only a handful of overseas visitors had passed through this checkpoint since the beginning of the year.
It was March.
I caught myself smiling. It reminded me exactly why I had come. And with that, I received my first ever non-international passport stamp – official permission to visit Sikkim.
I walked up the hill to find my fellow passengers waiting by the roadside, snacking and chatting. The fluorescent controller handed me a lukewarm cup of overly sweet tea. Of course they hadn’t left me behind. In fact, they’d even bought me a drink.
The remainder of the drive to Gangtok was seamless, and my visible enthusiasm for the increasingly dramatic landscapes caught the attention of my fellow passengers. We began to communicate in broken English as they showed me photos of their hometowns, families and places I should visit during my time in Sikkim. Their warmth distracted me from the dropping temperature as the sun disappeared behind the mountains and the evening air grew cooler.
The bus slowed as we climbed higher into the mountains, and progress halted every so often as the fluorescent controller leapt from the moving vehicle to deliver rice and apples to small roadside shops, hauling enormous bags from increasingly mysterious compartments of the bus. He was clearly in the freight business as well. A jack of all trades.
Eventually, when the bus reached its final stop, we all worked together to shift our luggage through the windows and doors. Our farewells were unspoken – handshakes and a smile. I wandered off alone, overcome with excitement that I had made it to the heart of Sikkim, so much so that I realised I hadn’t yet booked a hotel.
This was completely out of character. Arriving so late in a new city without any accommodation would normally feel daunting. Yet after my early interactions with Sikkimese people, the relaxed bus journey into the mountains, and the spontaneous start to the adventure, I felt strangely at ease.
I emerged from a small alley onto Mahatma Gandhi Marg, the main boulevard of Gangtok, and began approaching random roadside hotels in search of a room. Luckily – or unsurprisingly, given the limited number of visitors – there was room at the inn. I dropped my bags in a simple hotel room before heading out to explore the town in search of dinner.
Gangtok was immediately intriguing. The high street resembled an Alpine village, with wide pedestrian streets and multicoloured chalet-style buildings framed by mountains on all sides. Ornamental lampposts lit the pavements, and small groups of young people gathered beneath them, blaring music from their phones.
Those I passed greeted me gently. Many looked ethnically different from people I had encountered elsewhere in India, and there was no masking my regular out-of-place pasty white boy aesthetic. Even dinner felt unfamiliar. I ordered Thukpa, a Tibetan noodle soup, along with Momos, the iconic steamed dumplings of the Himalayas – worlds away from a classic Indian curry.
I had only just arrived, yet I was already getting a glimpse of Sikkim’s unique cultural identity: its people, its environment, its architecture, its food, and its hospitality. Everything felt incredibly different.
I paused at the end of MG Marg to take in my surroundings, and looked back down the street to take it all in once more. Towering above the town, illuminated by spotlights, a huge flag of India waved in the mountain breeze – a striking reminder of where I actually was.
