Fire On The Mountain.

Fire On The Mountain., originally uploaded by The Wandering Hermit.

{"The Evening Tempest Begins, as Clouds boil over the Kabru Ridge in Sikkim."}

Sikkim is one of the places which like Ladakh has a special lure for me.. Have made 3 trips exploring in and around The Kanch Massif, Yumthang Valley, Gurudrongmar Lake and a midway aborted attempt to recreate the 1935 route of the German expedition which had Frank Smythe too...

The land is forever shrouded in mist and the activity of the clouds as the monsoon carrying winds from the Bay of Bengal rush over the gangetic plains to hit the barrier created by the Himalayas and find path their blocked onwards towards Tibet is also a fascinating aspect.. Here you literally see nature at work....and feel a closer kinship with everything creation has gifted to us.

It is scenes like this which compensate for the hard terrain, leaches and the cold one has to bear during trekking in Sikkim..

To have seen this one moment and feel so connected to some higher forces of creation is what draws me to these wildernesses and makes it all those hardships worthwhile