Wandering along Kanchenjunga Day 7 Part 1

Day 7  Part 1

The day started with the alarm at 3 a.m. Tried to open the eyes and grumbling to myself as who set the alarm at an ungodly hour I switched it off... Realising all that grumbling as self directed I recalled why and that thought was like a quick shot... It put spring into my steps... Got ready in a jiffy and we set to the Tiger Hills to see the sunrise... We were there by 5.15 a.m. It was quite cold. As we set off we thought we were the early birds in the off season ...  We were told by our driver to cover our heads and were prepared... What we hadn't given a thought to was the dew factor... Our caps had taken a shiny gloss by the time the sun rose... Though we were there early we realized there were, quite a too many like us... By the time we reached the hill top, the sky had lost its darkness and shades of light, heralding the dawn could be seen... The sky gradually took in the lighter colour... It moved from a streak of orange to yellow to brighter colours until the sun peeped out slowly as a piece of red... Then gradually it popped out as a fiery red ball... When the full sun came out it was a blinding light of shining white with a soft circle of yellow but naked eyes perceives it as a circle of black and then spread out in hues of red orange and yellow... That was a fantastic piece of work of Nature... Just felt like saluting the sun for a fantastic performance...  Here is a sequence captured...

Parallel to it there was another display unfolding... I was leaning my neck once to East and then to West continuously... In the West of Tiger Hills is the Kanchenjunga range...The entire set of peaks started to be visible with the sky getting the silver glow of breaking of dawn.. Before the sun was visible to us it was Kanchenjunga which was lit by the orange light... Imagine snow covered peaks in that light... Sort of dream sequence... Once the sun rose the entire range was bathed in its golden glow... So was the mist covering all the lower ranges... My! Two eyes were insufficient to capture the glory... Even the camera lens didn't do justice to the colours of the Nature...But that didn't stop me from clicking... Here's the sequence of pictures...

Once the sun began to shower its golden rays on the shroud of mist covering the lower peaks, we started our trek back to the parking... And that is the Tiger Hills.

Kanchenjunga was first climbed on 25 May 1955 by Joe Brown and George Band of the British expedition. They stopped short of the summit in accordance with the promise given to the Chogyal, the King of Sikkim, that the top of the mountain would remain inviolate. Every climber or climbing group that has reached the summit has followed this tradition