Day 6
Gangtok – Mangan.
Day 6 of the trip was the most topsy turvy day I have encountered for a while. it begun on a horrible note, I had parked my scorpio in a no parking zone for which my license and the car papers were seized by the traffic police. The traffic police in Gangtok is extremely rude and extremely strict. To reclaim my papers I was to go to the district court and pay the fine and then come back again to the police inspector who would then give me my papers back.
This put my whole plan in jeopardy. We had planned to be at the Permit office by 8.00 a.m, and beg for permissions, but for that we would require original documents, which were with the police…. A horrible start to the day.
So from here began the day, I ran to the district court only to find that it opens by 10.00 a.m, and the permit office closes by 10.00 a.m . So we eventually split up, my friends went to the permit office, I went to collect my license. At the permit office, it was the same story as yesterday, NO PERMITS for private vehicles…we tried to convince them about us, told that we have driven down from Mumbai, but still no permits, while all this was happening I was at the district court paying my fine and getting my license collected. The Gangtok police has a very unique way collecting fine, we have to directly go and deposit the money in the bank account provided to us by the traffic police, once we show then the money has been paid, they will give us a ‘parchi’ the same has to be handed over to the traffic inspector who has seized the license. I deposited the money in the bank, while I am doing that I get a distress call from my friend, he calls me saying that he is having car trouble. On reaching where my friend asked me to come, I found that he had tried getting the mhawk on a 40 degree incline on the second gear, because according to him the 1st gear was not getting engaged. So he tried to do the steep incline in 2nd gear. And by doing so almost burn’t the whole clutch plate and pressure plate.
It was going bad to worse for me, first the car papers and my license being sized, now the clutch plate / pressure plate almost burn’t…I was like ‘GOD THIS IS A HOLIDAY, it is supposed to be stress free and not the one that gives stress’. None the less I and my friend then drove the mhawk back to the district court (the smell of the clutch plate and pressure was pretty heavy) from where I collected my ‘parchi’, and again then went to the traffic police who had my license, showed him the ‘parchi’ and collected my papers.
Now we had only one option of getting permits, which was to visit the Police check post in Development area. By now it was already 12.00 p.m. We reached the Police point in Development area and eventually managed to get the permits by 3.30 p.m, almost whole day was gone, and we were still stuck in Gangtok. But on the bright side we had the permits.
Even with the burnt clutch, we decided to continue as per our plan, which was to reach lachen. The road from Gangtok to Mangan is BAD. We drove slowly but the smell of the clutch was giving us more and more tension. Eventually we reached mangan and decided that we need to show our car to the mechanic. We found this interesting mechanic, his name actually is ‘bullet’. He gave us the bad news that our clutch plate & pressure plate is completely burnt’ and we will need a new one. By the time we reached mangan it was 7.00 p.m, he said he will check up for spares in a shop at mangan. But to our dismay the shop did not have the spares.
Now the current situation is that we have the permits to go but our car needs repairs. Tommorows plan is to wait for the spares, get the car repaired and the head to lachen. Stay at lachen tomorrow and attempt gurdongmar lake day after, but if we do that, we will have to skip other places.
That is it from us now, very depressed, sad and angry right now.
Some pics of day 6 attached
Dark clouds, please leave us
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Construction underway
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Cheers,
Ac