As I predicted, we can't see the sunrise over Mt Kanchenjunga this morning coz it get really cloudy due to the rain last night. So, we slept again until 8am. After breakfast, we checked out from the hotel leaving for Gangtok. I'm quite sad leaving Pelling coz we had such a great experience here with a great hotel service. The drive to Gangtok (West Sikkim) took another 5-6 hours coz we had to go down south then went up to the west of Sikkim. The journey was mystically beautiful coz we drove through the cloud in between the Himalayan mountain. That was really an enjoyable journey for the eyes and soul.
Along the way, I asked Palden if he knew anyone that can arrange white water rafting for us in Teesta River coz from what I read, it mentioned Apr-May is the best time to do rafting in this region with Grade 3-4 rapid. That's sound really interesting coz I really wanna do rafting in Himalaya. Fortunately he had a friend that can arrange that sort of thing. Since there are a few types of rafting so I decided to do the longest (25km) and the most challenging one (Grade 4 rapid) only for the two of us in the raft. I don't want to join the commercialize rafting that they organize coz it'll be so boring for me. I need to get my adrenaline going for the rafting adventure in Himalaya. No doubt we have to pay much more for that but I don't mind paying for the experience. According to Palden, they didn't normally arrange the challenging rafting that we choose esp for two persons coz not many people wanna do/try it (only the crazy one like us heheh) but thanks to Palden coz he managed to arrange it with another 4 local crews that will join us. We need at least 6 persons in the raft to stabilize it due to higher volume of water in Teesta River. I was so excited and can't wait until Day 10 for the rafting adventure in Himalaya. For now, we continue our journey to Gangtok. Here I attached picture of Gangtok town from far.
We arrived in Gangtok around 2pm and after check in at Netuk House (see picture below). I purposely choose to stay in the traditional house rather than predictable hotel. I think it ONLY has 10 rooms and they don't normally accept Indian national guest. It was a really nice traditional lodge. The design (exterior and interior) was exquisite and really beautiful. The owner was really friendly and even though there's no TV in the room, we really like the place. Then we went out to the town for lunch and surprisingly Gangtok (1,600 m) is beautiful and quite a modern town on top of Himalaya. The weather was warmer than Pelling and Darjeeling but it's still much colder than Malaysia. Since we like to try something new everywhere we go, so we decided to try a Tibetan Restaurant. They served all Tibetan cuisine and it's hard to choose coz we don't really know what to try. We asked the owner to recommend us dishes that we can eat with rice coz some of the dishes are standalone (without rice). The food was really nice (no wonder the place was full house) and it's quite spicy. 
After lunch, we ventured out Gangtok town. It's just like going from one shop after another until we found out that there is some sort of Market Fair going on. So, we went and check out the fair but there's nothing really caught our eyes to buy the stuff there. Maybe we already did some shopping in Darjeeling and our backpack almost full. We need to save some space for our shopping in Bhutan later on our journey. Since we're quite tired after the long journey, we went back to our lodge and chill out at the balcony doing some reading with an evening tea overlooking the Himalayan mountains (see picture below, isn't it beautiful??). We can even see Mt Kanchenjunga from here but it's from different angle. It felt really peaceful and relaxing.
We went for dinner at the lodge and surprisingly they served us an authentic Sikkimese dinner set and it taste really really good coz it's home cooked. This is one of the best food that we had during this journey and I wish we can have it everyday heheh. We finished almost everything on the table and really had a full belly back to the room. We did some planing where we wanna go tomorrow before we went to sleep.
We arrived in Gangtok around 2pm and after check in at Netuk House (see picture below). I purposely choose to stay in the traditional house rather than predictable hotel. I think it ONLY has 10 rooms and they don't normally accept Indian national guest. It was a really nice traditional lodge. The design (exterior and interior) was exquisite and really beautiful. The owner was really friendly and even though there's no TV in the room, we really like the place. Then we went out to the town for lunch and surprisingly Gangtok (1,600 m) is beautiful and quite a modern town on top of Himalaya. The weather was warmer than Pelling and Darjeeling but it's still much colder than Malaysia. Since we like to try something new everywhere we go, so we decided to try a Tibetan Restaurant. They served all Tibetan cuisine and it's hard to choose coz we don't really know what to try. We asked the owner to recommend us dishes that we can eat with rice coz some of the dishes are standalone (without rice). The food was really nice (no wonder the place was full house) and it's quite spicy. 
After lunch, we ventured out Gangtok town. It's just like going from one shop after another until we found out that there is some sort of Market Fair going on. So, we went and check out the fair but there's nothing really caught our eyes to buy the stuff there. Maybe we already did some shopping in Darjeeling and our backpack almost full. We need to save some space for our shopping in Bhutan later on our journey. Since we're quite tired after the long journey, we went back to our lodge and chill out at the balcony doing some reading with an evening tea overlooking the Himalayan mountains (see picture below, isn't it beautiful??). We can even see Mt Kanchenjunga from here but it's from different angle. It felt really peaceful and relaxing.
We went for dinner at the lodge and surprisingly they served us an authentic Sikkimese dinner set and it taste really really good coz it's home cooked. This is one of the best food that we had during this journey and I wish we can have it everyday heheh. We finished almost everything on the table and really had a full belly back to the room. We did some planing where we wanna go tomorrow before we went to sleep.
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