Wandering along Kanchenjunga Day 8

Day 8

It was the day to bid adieu to all the special friends over there and the  crown of India...The Himalayas and the beautiful and Majestic Kanchenjunga...   When the day dawned it was a misty as well as a blustery... The entire mountain range was barely visible... The Majestic Kanchenjunga had decided to shroud herself with the thick mist. We were indeed blessed to have good weather accompany us throughout... and  were in the grace of Kanchenjunga...

The journey back was downhill along the edge of the mountain face. And much to our chagrin, it was at a crawling pace... Traffic jam due to road works in progress made us take a detour as soon as we could... From going down in a gradual slope we started descending in a steep slope... Quite a hair raising narrow steep sloped roads... Our driver was adept at such roads... Believe me, it was no mean task... Time and again we admired his skill and grit... Our hotel in Darjeeling was up a hill with a narrow steep street leading to it and there was no space to reverse the car. He would take his Innova to the top and come back in reverse avoiding rubbing against the vehicle coming from the opposite direction skilfully... By the way, he was a Sherpa... from the same community as Tenzing and Cheema...  Any surprises there?

We scaled down nearly 4000 feet in two and a half hours... It was like sliding downhill... But what an experience...

What was bonus in this route was we cut across the tea estates... The thrill and happiness amidst this greenery was simply exhilarating... Believe it or not you feel like a guest of the Nature... Invited to view the best of it...

Once we boarded the flight from Bagdogra, the Udaan (flight) was as beautiful as the entire trip so far...

Once air-borne... Could see Kanchenjunga towering over the clouds at a distance and to my disbelief...! So was Mount Everest... Both it's North and South peaks... 

The snow capped mountain at the extreme right is Kanchenjunga massif and the one seen below the wing of the plane is the Range known as Mahalangur Himalaya, . This Range houses four of the top six peaks of the Himalayas as well as of the world.

Mahalangur Himalaya... The one in the front is    Makalu (ranked 5th)  and the one behind it is Everest... At one point of time Makalu  looks higher than Everest due to the Earth's curvature...

Throughout till Delhi the Himalayan ranges in India... Tibet...Nepal..China..  were visible... Naked eye could distinguish but when I tried to capture it on lens it came out as a mountain of clouds at the horizon...

I could distinguish the mountain peaks thanks to the model of the Himalayan Range in the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute .

As we flew over Varanasi, when announced on flight, I searched below for Ganga Maiyya and found her meandering below...

The light area visible is the banks of River Ganga

With this I finally end... I hope you all too had an enjoyable journey as I.