CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
154 km one way from Gangtok - plan on about 1 h 53 of riding. On the way it passes Tsomgo Lake, Nathu La and Zuluk. The highest point is about 4,300 m. It crosses from India into China - carry ID and check the toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 23 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go — slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did.
This part of the ride is 17 km of Sikkim Silk Route.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
Gangtok sits on a ridge in the Himalayan foothills of Sikkim, at about 1,650 metres, and on a clear morning you can see Kangchenjunga, the third-highest mountain in the world at 8,586 metres, floating pink above the clouds. Sikkim was an independent Buddhist kingdom until it joined India in 1975, and the culture is still a mix of Lepcha, Bhutia and Nepali traditions, with prayer flags on the rooftops, monasteries on the hills and a feeling of calm that surprises people coming from the plains. The state became the first in India to be fully organic in its farming, and the cities are noticeably clean.
Read the complete Gangtok write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gangtok is where the day begins. Next is Tsomgo Lake.
Tsomgo Lake, also called Changu, sits at about 3,750 metres in the mountains east of Gangtok, a small oval of cold water cupped in a bowl of bare slopes. It is a glacial lake, fed by melting snow, and it freezes over in winter, when the surrounding hills are white. The Sikkimese hold it sacred, and local lamas once used the colour of its water to foretell the year ahead. In spring the banks are bright with primulas and rhododendrons, and in autumn the air is sharp and clear.
Read the complete Tsomgo Lake write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tsomgo Lake comes up about 50 km into the recorded legs. Next is Nathu La.
Nathu La is a mountain pass on the border between Sikkim and Tibet, at 4,310 metres, and it carries more history than its modest size suggests. It was part of an old trade route that linked Lhasa with the plains of Bengal, one of the tributaries of what people now loosely call the Silk Route, along which wool, salt, tea and silver moved by mule. The pass closed after the 1962 war between India and China and stayed shut for decades. It reopened for border trade in 2006, and today the two armies stand a few metres apart on either side of a fence.
Read the complete Nathu La write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 67 km into the recorded legs you reach Nathu La. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Zuluk, mostly downhill.
Zuluk is a village strung along a ridge in the eastern Himalayas, on the old Silk Route that once connected Sikkim with Tibet, and it is a very different place from the busy tourist spots of Gangtok. The village is small, with a few homestays, an army post and a prayer-flag-covered hillside, at around three thousand metres. On clear mornings, the sunrise lights up the peaks of Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world, which seems to float above the clouds.
Read the complete Zuluk write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zuluk, late in the day. Next is Aritar.
Aritar is a small village in the east of Sikkim, close to the border with West Bengal, and its great attraction is a lake. Aritar Lake, also called Lampokhari, lies in a fold of the hills with green slopes around it, and locals take boats out on the water at weekends. The village lies on an old branch of the Silk Route that once carried wool, salt and tea between Tibet and the plains of India through the Nathu La pass. The nearest towns are Rangpo, about fifteen kilometres away, and the capital Gangtok, about seventeen, and the bigger one has the fuel stations and shops.
Read the complete Aritar write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Aritar. That is the ride.
Gangtok → Tsomgo Lake is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tsomgo Lake → Nathu La is 17 km. This is the part worth slowing down for - look through the bends and use the pull-offs.
Nathu La → Zuluk is 44 km. Brakes and eyes forward; the views are behind the corners, not in them.
Zuluk → Aritar is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.