A soft knock on the door signaled our morning tea, at about 6 AM. I received special dietary treatment Sikkim style: lemon tea for breakfast, rice porridge with curd and a banana. Axel had breakfast downstairs, a three course breakfast with porridge, followed by a fresh egg and then two potato pancakes from the potatoes dug up yesterday that don’t taste like any other potato he’s ever had.
Our hosts are speaking perfect English with us. The wife, who is a teacher of English and Environmental Studies in addition to the usual grade school curriculum, learned her English in a missionary school. The missionaries were quite active here. On our drive from Darjeeling we had noticed several catholic schools, some churches and a few Jesus-loves-you bumper stickers.
With our guide our hosts speak Nepali. This appears to be the lingua franca (not Hindi), even across the border in Darjeeling and upper West Bengal. Our hosts are also speaking Bhutia, and Lepcha and then there are another 9 languages, Tibetan and others I have never heard of.
The weather is cloudy again but in the morning we glimpsed a few of the white capped tops of the real high mountains through openings in the cloud cover. The sun was out while we walked down and for the first time since we arrived I was warm. Brightly colored finch-like birds darted left and right, chasing each other, cows lowed, donkeys brayed, and somewhere in the valley someone was nailing planks together. It was utterly peaceful in a way that only a forgotten corner of the world can be.
Sylvia's Journal 
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