Sights from Sikkim that stay with us

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do anything we would all love one another.

Frank Zappa

Every trip is an opportunity to form memories. Our trip through eastern Sikkim was no different. The smells and tastes are hard to share, but the sights are easy. A road trip gives you an opportunity to see and capture landscapes and light that you might miss out on otherwise. It had rained all day, with clouds low over the hills around us. The light was gloomy, but just before we reached our homestay, the warm headlights of the car illuminated a bend in the road and gave us a sight that seemed wonderfully calm.

If music be the food of love, play on.

William Shakespeare

There is nothing as memorable as ordinary people going about their daily lives. One morning we saw a grandfather on a scooter ferrying his grandchildren to school. It was a perfectly ordinary thing, but one of the most pleasant things about traveling is to realize that circumstances may be different, but under that people are the same everywhere. It reminded me of many other grandfathers I’ve seen with their grandchildren.

I often think in music.

Albert Einstein

In this decade there are roads being built across the Himalayas. East to west, everywhere you drive there are fractured landscapes around you. This panorama of fog over the old cloud forest giving way to the broken landscape created by people and machines struck me as a perfect representation of what we saw. The light was low and the photo was dark, and called for a conversion to monochrome.

1: Kahin door jab din dhal jaye
2: All you need is love
3: We will rock you

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All photos in this post were taken by The Family; the musical interpretation is mine. This post appears as scheduled while I am travelling. I’ll be connected, but may be slow to look at your comments and posts. I hope you will bear with my delays.