The road ends and something else begins
The jeep drops you at Yuksom and turns back toward the valley. There is no dramatic arrival, just a muddy square, a tea stall with a single gas burner, and the smell of pine resin coming off the ridge above. Yuksom was the first capital of Sikkim, crowned in 1642 when three Tibetan lamas consecrated Phuntsog Namgyal as the kingdom's first Chogyal on a stone throne that still sits in the open air, weathered and unhurried, in a clearing near Norbugang Chorten. Nobody has roped it off. You can sit beside it. Most people do.
