We ambled down the dirtily paved lane towards the Jeep stand in the early morning mountain mist. As we neared the bay of Jeeps waiting to go each direction on the compass, the crowds of people thickened. People were dressed heavily in over-sized, well-worn jackets, pants and hats. They carried burlap and canvass bags full of goods and belongings for their destinations.

We found an ultramarine kiosk with Gangtok painted in saffron above a window made of rusted chicken wire. I asked a prematurely aged man behind the wire for two tickets to Gangtok and he scribbled on a piece of paper and asked me for some money. A much younger man led us to a silver and yellow Mahindra Jeep. The jeeps could comfortably seat eight people with driver. Since this is India, they sell ten seats. I was unfortunate enough to be assigned the third row back corner seat.

The jeep rolled along the asphalt-paved roads of the Himalayan foothills towards the border with little to see. Well, I saw little as I was concentrating vehemently on not vomiting from the pain I felt in my knees and hips from being wedged into the back of a jeep with three full-grown Indian men wedged against me.

Finally, we arrived at the border check-post and I awkwardly stumbled from the jeep. My knees were locked and unwilling to move. Anna led me to one office and I slowly tottered behind. We had to go to another office and receive our special permits then come back to this office to receive our entry stamp in the passport. Anna took care of this for me as I laid on the registration office floor trying to stretch my legs and get some feeling in them. The people were generally concerned and the driver moved me to the front of the jeep and the rest of the journey was fine.

We arrived in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, at one in the afternoon. The sky was a dark grey and a light rain was falling. The town is quite similar to Darjeeling—winding lanes with four- and five-story, multihued, dirty buildings rising from their ridges. We found a hotel and had lunch whilst the rain began to pour.

We wandered a few streets and ate excellent sogthup and shylaphal (Tibetan soup and fried bread stuffed with pork and vegetables). My legs and knees were feeling worse in the cold mountain rain, so we bought a bottle of Sikkim Special Whiskey (125 Rupees) and stayed in the hotel for the remainder of the evening.

The next morning we found the Jeep stand and purchased seats to Ravangla. Roger (the manager from the Hotel Prestige in Darjeeling) informed us of this high mountain town and recommended it highly. I misunderstood the name and thought the town was called Ravanga and this reminded me of Steven Bauer in Scarface chanting ‘Libertade! Libertade!’ then shouting, ‘Ravanga!!!’ as Al comes around the corner with a knife.

It was early afternoon when we arrived in Ravangla at an elevation of 2100 meters. The jeep ride was pleasant and comfortable—it was a bigger jeep with smaller people. We quickly found the Hotel 10zing. The owner’s daughter—a twelve-year-old girl who could have been Nepali, Tibetan or Sikkimese—showed me a room with a concrete floor, squat toilet, bucket and spout for flushing and bathing, and an old double bed with worn duvets under large windows looking towards Prussian blue silhouettes of Himalayan foothills. It was convivial and perfect.

We had a walk around the two roads that created the town. Wood-planked, two-story buildings lined the main bazaar (road) which was free of litter. The odd concrete construction sprung between the aged, chipped wood. The rebar reinforcements jutted into the sky like dreadlocks as higher floors awaited the spring and the continuance of construction. Shops sold the essentials of life and a small, dirty square hidden behind the bazaar sold the vegetables and meat needed to nourish the town. Every other establishment was a bar or wine shop selling Sikkim Brandy, Rum, wine and Whiskey.

As night drew closer, silver clouds engulfed the hamlet. People began heading home for dinner as night descended and the town became an opaque dream. There was no electricity and running water was scarce. Lights flickered behind gaps in wooden doors and one could just hear the clatter and laughter of those within. All the light left the earth and rain began to hover around the vacant, milky streets. It was the first time we had experienced rain that does not fall. We were in a different world-free of trivialities.

Morning came with a brilliant, yellow sun that burnt the azure sky, myrtle hills and mottled township. What we came for was finally within sight. We left our chilly room early and walked north out of town. A white, grey and slate horizon rose from behind the hills, the Himalayas. Mount Kachendzoga (the third highest mountain on Earth) was the most prominent, due north. A necklace of over a dozen peaks reached west and Mount Everest was just visible amongst a distant triad of summits.

We walked along a mountain path dotted with small villages built from hand-milled planks on hand-crushed rocks. Mothers were bathing small children with disgruntled looks on their faces from the glacial spring water. Goats, pigs, cows, cats, dogs and chickens wandered, milled, pecked, and laid around in the dirt and grass surrounding the homes and outbuildings. Running water and electricity were nonexistent. But, they had cellular phones. Their view was a magnanimous range of mountains framed in tall, flapping Buddhist prayer flags of dirty white, blue, red, yellow and green hinged to tall, ochre bamboo polls crowned with a sprout of dry, auburn Sequoia.

We spent three nights in Ravangla feeling the ‘Libertade’. We ate luscious momos and drank Sikkim brandy. The food was basic, hearty and always great. The alcohol was strong and drunk openly. I felt like a light weight watching a woman—easily 70 with an alizarin scarf wrapped around her body and large, gamboge rings hanging from her nose—order a triple of XXX-Rum and down it within five minutes without a bat of her eye. Mind you, three shots nearly filled a cocktail glass.

The people moved about their daily affairs with a gentle ease. Nothing was done quickly, nor was it done shoddily. We could have stayed there for six months, living a life so many search for: free from want, able to grow, and content with all you really need.

But, alas, our permit was only for five days and we had to depart. We would have left on Sunday, but all of the jeeps were shuttling citizens to polling stations for their national vote. We left early Monday morning. We procured two seats in a Jeep and drove the 30 odd kilometers on an intermittedly graveled (the gravel was made by hand: boulders were broken with sledgehammers and spikes, the rocks were individually crushed with heavy hammers) and paved, high mountain road to Namchi. Then we hired two more seats to Jorethang. Once there, we hired our last two seats back to Darjeeling. We chose to come in from the north and complete the symbiosis of our journey.

The road ascended switchbacks over a mile into the sky up a mountain covered in vast, myrtle tea plantations and clutches of jade bamboo. Tiny hamlets grasped precariously to vertical slopes, housing the people that make your tea. We arrived back in Darjeeling at three in the afternoon. It was as busy as when we left and we bumped through the crowds to the Hotel Prestige for a shower.

All told, we took five jeeps: Darjeeling to Gangtok, Gangtok to Ravangla, Ravangla to Namchi, Namchi to Jorethang and Jorethang to Darjeeling. It cost 335 Rupees each, which is just inexpensive. We never paid more than $3 for lodging for one night and an eighth that for a full meal. And we experienced a locale indisputably inimitable, magnificent and humbling in this world.