Journey of a Birder!!! Chapter 2- Sikkim

Continuation of the journey undertaken by a birder. 
The bitter-sweet journey that brought him closer to himself. 
The journey that will be his forever!

I was finally able to make it to the hospital in time. The doctor was not amused to see me play with a feral dog outside the hospital barely minutes after he had given me shots for dog bite. 

but.... you cannot blame the dog. I am sure I would have done something unknowingly irritating to the dog, who bit me.

It was time for me to move on with. Next stop was Sikkim. It is a tiny Indian state between Nepal and Bhutan. I flew into Bagdogra in an attempt to save time. In Bagdogra figuring out the means of reaching Sikkim was soon turning out to be a nightmare as everyone was giving conflicting information. I was told that I would be able to reach Jorthang but could not go further as the season was over and there was no transportation. Finally after hours of haggling with various shared jeep drivers (Shared Jeeps: Defined as a jeep that more than one traveler takes to a common destination, provided that most of the travelers do not know each other most of the times, probably) bus drivers and even private cabs, I decided to go ahead till Jorthang and figure out a way from there, worst case scenario will have to hike from Jorthang till Yuksom (the starting point of my trek).
There I am in an over crowded jeep racing towards Jorthang as if we were in a F1 race only that tracks were filled with potholes (for extra fun maybe). On reaching Jorthang I had to first get my second set of anti-rabies shot at a local government hospital. I had couple of hours to kill before I could get next shared jeep to Yuksom (YES!!! They were available!!!!). I am on this shared jeep zipping past the most breathtaking places and views ever randomly chatting with the jeep driver when he asks me if I was tourist to the place?
Me: I am here looking for the elusive Himalayan Crossbills. These are amazing birds that have crossed beaks (I try my best to do a crossed beak with my fingers).
Driver: Ah! What color are they?
Me: They are red in color.
Driver: Ooooh! Red in color and crossed beak (Loads of excitement!!!)
Me: Have you seen them? (I was almost ready to jump with joy!)
Driver: No! If you see them can you take a pic for me?
Me (disappointed): Yes
Driver: I know someone who can help you out, his name is Lakpa. Let me call him and see.
Next thing I knew was that I had a birding guide with me who was super knowledgeable about birds of Sikkim and he was famous in the region.
Yuksom is also famous for the largest prayer wheels in one of it's Buddhist temple. Guess what I found right outside the temple:

                                                                           Barn Swallow
There were quite a few of them, I was beyond myself with joy for finding them quite late in evening and my camera allowing me to take such a shot in really low light conditions.

I stayed at this tiny hotel overnight, the hotel owner and I became instant good friends. He invited me to his place for dinner.

Next morning, I left behind most of the stuff that I felt I would not be needing such as laptop, mobile phones etc. as I would not be in range of any electricity or network.

We as usual started early at 5 in the morning, we were greeted by choir of birds but as usual I my first pic was of the one and only amazing:

                                                                     Plumbeous red-start

As we were on our way to the top, we made note of every bird we could see or hear every 100 meters elevation difference.

I was curious if the birds here too responded to phissing the same way as they had done in America but what I was to find out was simply remarkable. The birds responded to the calls of owlet and all the small birds instead of going into hiding would come out and chirp as loud and as annoyingly (the birds thought they were annoying) as possible to irritate the owl and make it leave! Wow!
LIFERS!!! Lifers to the right, lifers to the left, lifers up above and lifers down the cliff!!!!I wished I had eyes all over my head like a spider and yes, a pair of binoculars for each set of eyes!

Scarlet Finch

                                                                Beautiful Nuthatch

The size of the trees, the waterfalls and the sheer beauty of monochromatic green all around was breathtaking!!! The morning ragas of the flowing water sweetened by the melody of numerous birds just made the whole trek a dream that I never wanted to be woken up from.

I so desperately wanted to swim in this pond, however there is a hefty fine if anyone is found swimming in it. The reason for the fine is that this pond is very risky, a tiny slip would mean free fall of around 1000 feet and I guess that would end well so...

 This was the site of landslide caused due to an earthquake a couple of days ago... Immediately after the landslide area, I had reached an area of steep climb as compared to the trek before.
Now that it was starting to be around 4 pm, I was finally able to find a small place to eat maggi, the official food for trekkers!

 Verditer Flycatcher

 Beautiful Mushrooms that I could not identify. I am really bad at identifying mushrooms!!!

 Verditer Flycatcher

 Grey-winged Blackbird

 The place where I was to stay

The view right outside my cabin!

 View from my cabin if we look a little bit higher up...

Everyday I was looking for my elusive Himalayan crossbill in a different habitat type. Moist deciduous forests to Pine forests to Rhododendron forests.

 Green tailed sunbird

 The curious Coal tit

 Grey-backed Shrike

Yellow billed blue magpie

There were hundreds of other birds that I just could not capture through my camera! Strip-throated yuhinas, Rufous sibia, Mrs Gould's sunbirds, Green-tailed sunbird, Fire-tailed sunbird, Green-backed tit, Coal tit,  Rufous-vented tit, Rufous-fronted tit, Grey-crested tit, Red-tailed minla, Chestnut-headed minla, Hume's leaf warbler, Rufous-winged fulvetta, White-browed fulvetta, nutcracker were among the many species of that I had seen but the one species that I did see on my last day was the one that kind of made up for not being able to see crossbill was Satyr tragopan. 

Apart from bird species there were many cool things that I got to see, like one thing that I would never forget was witnessing the miracle of life. I was able to see birth of a foal. 

 One hour after the birth

 Mushroom, plant and algae... love traingle

 Coral fungi

The enchanted path

The enchanted path led to this sleepy hollow... the secret gateway to...