A Trip to LAVA with Family
Today was Sunday which is my Day Off at least on Paper so I thought it was important to go get some Fresh Air from a nearby Hill Station in today's case I went ahead and booked a Cab for the day and we were on our way to LAVA via AMBIOK and PAPARKHETI. So it was me my wife and her family that were engulfed into this Trip and we were supposed to go out by 8 AM but the Car came late and then we had a Flat Tire so we basically went out almost around 10 AM so we were already a couple of hours late.
We stopped at the AMBIOK sign board to take some pictures as the Sign was pretty empty and the mountain range behind the Sign looked pretty amazing. As you can see there are Mountains behind and those are not the mountains we were climbing that day as we will be heading to LAVA and which is probably the Mountains around Kalimpong side. Since we left around 10 AM we had our breakfast but it was kind of improvised as we were supposed to eat outside for the entire day.
So I looked out for a nice place to eat and I saw a nice little Momo Stall which was screaming to me to have some delicious MOMOS. We stopped at the location and had these amazing Momos and a couple of others had some WAI WAI which is a similar version to our MAGGI and they liked that as well. I don't know what it is but I find that almost everything at Higher Altitudes tastes delicious even without adding too many Spices.
The Restaurant also had a Balcony which had a crazy view of the Waterfall that was just about 200 meters away from the Restaurant. It looked awesome and I feel like on rainy days this would have been even more spectacular to look at with all the Water flowing down the Mountain with spectacular speed.
The roads on the hills are pretty coiled around and as you can see we came from the bottom and came all the way up to this viewpoint which gave us a clear view of where we came from and how far we came from. Even though the distance may look close but trust me the time it took to do that climb was definitely a lot even with all our Pit Stops. But I have to say that the view was definitely worth it and we all really loved waiting a couple of minutes to soak in all the ATMOSPHERE.
It took us around 4 hours to reach LAVA and once we reached there we went out to the LAVA VIEW POINT which had a PINE TREE FOREST view and we could see the beauties of both. Even though I did not see the LAVA town view as I was pretty interested in the PINE TREE FOREST I feel like both are worth watching and enjoying to the fullest. But today I went deep into the Pine Forest and I liked it a lot, truth be told I would have loved it even more if there had been some Fog as that would have been pretty mystical to see. Next was something we needed to EAT.
And how could I say no to the classic THUKPA when we are in the hills?
It was even better as it was accompanied by a chutney made from a specific chili found in the hills only and that made the THUKPA worth all the money that I paid. The people who were with me were mindblown with this dish as they don't get this dish quite this good from where they are from so naturally they took some Chutney with them and also some seeds of the Chilli they used in the CHutney. Even though I told them that the Chilli that they grow in that part of the state will taste different than the Chillies in the Mountains but they insisted and I had to pack them around 500 gms of Chilli so that they could plant some and make some Pickles out of it as well.
Anyways the Trip was a successful one and I am looking to make such trips at least once a month or once a couple of months as I simply love Hilly Areas and it has been far too long since I have traveled regularly.
