Kursong eco stay is in the most literal sense nestled in the lush green hills of Kalimpong. I consciously use the word nestled as the cottage is seated in an unusual flat land among the very common slopes surrounding it from all sides. The village, Lungsel is supposed to be one of the remote off beat locations in the district but you’ll hardly feel the remoteness, because the travel will be flawlessly planned in a way that one could conveniently hop on the daily service from the nearest town of Gorubathan.
My cottage is a humble one with the smell of wood still lingering in the air. It has pretty windows, small doors and narrow passages that will keep us close. We have traditionally placed shared toilets and bathrooms outside the house. The kitchen is also separated from the main cottage as you will see in all of the traditional houses here. The front yard is where my boys Ashel and Lyangchong often play cricket with their friends. My wife Anita loves her flowers seated at the side of this yard and we both take care of the vegetable gardens on all sides of the cottage.There is a small bamboo bench at the edge of the front yard that I built to bask in the winter sun, but oftentimes I find myself lost, gazing at the horizon and so do my guests. It projects you right inside this painting-like scene, especially when the horizons pick up this tint of orange-yellow-gold that turns pink for a few minutes just before the sun vanishes behind the hills. Then the breeze starts to feel cooler on the face and my guests would come sit by the fire in the kitchen while my wife prepares dinner. The dinner is mostly picked from the vegetable garden, some pulses, peas, beans, green leafy vegetables, sometimes wild edibles foraged from the forest or fermented or dried delights that we keep for the times when we have less options in the garden.
We rise early and go to bed early because the mother of the house has to go teach in a nearby elementary school, the boys have to go to their school too and I always find something to do when I do not have to go to school myself. I have a very deep love for my culture and I have been training my boys and the children around the village to speak, sing and dance in Lepcha language and tradition. I am blessed with the ability to listen to any instrument and to self learn the tunes and to play it. I have a small collection of instruments and traditional Lepcha articles in my house. And therefore, I am appointed as a culture teacher in the school near my house so sometimes you might find me practicing with the kids in the front yard. We love to set a small traditional Lepcha program for our guests when they request for one. It is very well appreciated and we are encouraged to keep doing it to keep living the culture that is fast vanishing in the current wave of modernisation.
As you must have felt while reading about us, we are a small family, strongly rooted to the ground of our small village with morals and ethics shared with a larger very close knit community, we welcome you to our house with open arms and to live with us like a family, to live like one of us, welcome to our way of life.
Contact us for a customised trip Kursong Ecostay, Lungsel. |