Somewhere Between the Mountains and Ourselves: Reflections from Sikkim

In Sikkim since the last two days. Gangtok.

Busy with tourists, traffic jams and chaos. But that’s India for us. Our India.

And yet, as we moved higher into the mountains, past endless trees and quiet new constructions, something kept making me feel this was another India altogether. People smile here. No one litters. Even the smallest roadside eateries feel clean.

Nobody honks endlessly. Nobody aggressively overtakes.If a vehicle breaks down, people stop to help. So I see that there is a certain dignity in how public spaces are treated here.

And then, in the middle of all this beauty and serenity, you hear loud screaming across hotel corridors, speakerphone calls in cafes, children running unchecked through museums touching everything, entitled behaviour disguised as tourists, unforgivable, identifiable as those from the Hindi speaking belt. 

You wonder why so many of us still carry this strange mix of arrogance, lack of civic sense and public indiscipline into every beautiful place we visit. In India and abroad, we are being labelled as uncouth and annoying, but we do not care. 

Rabindranath Tagore once wrote, and I read it today incidentally - “The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world.”

Perhaps that awareness is what places like Sikkim quietly teach you...that nature is not just scenery to be consumed, but a space to move through with humility, softness and respect.