Kokchurang looked different in sunlight and clear skies. The forest, the mountains, and the river seems to have torn apart the mountain felt different. Boulders the size of houses littered the river bed. From #kokchurang it is time to go to #tsoka. This was a new trail through dense forest. It was very narrow and surprisingly it was a pack animal free trail! That meant all the special manoeuvres to avoid dung were unnecessary. At a few places we scrambled over or under fallen trees. It is a beautiful trail that rises from Kokchurang to Phedang. The mountains are on your left with Pandim dominating the line. The river is out of sight but once in a while the sound of a cascade filters through the forest. There are musk deer droppings and wild cat scat on the trail. At several places the trail is only one person wide. Many sections had packed snow, hard and slippery. At other places the melting snow left a morass, more than ankle deep. Flowers made a welcome reappearance. A splash of colour in the endless greens and browns. Insects too become more visible. From Phedang starts the steepish descent to Tsoka. At times you wonder if you had really climbed all that distance. And then the #rhododendrons reappear. In the five days since we passed in the other direction a lot more trees had bloomed. A carpet of red lay at several places where trees had already shed their blossoms. Rhododendrons bear flowers once in a year, between late April and early May based on temperature and other climatic variables. How do plants remember? How are they programmed? They lack a brain or more technically, a central nervous system. What is their seat of memory? Do they feel like animals do? They are alive too. Questions, weird questions, stupid questions. To me it is unmistakable that plants and fungi and lichens are making decisions. Life makes choices to survive. As those questions cloud my mind, the fog rolls in as if to mock me about the impenetrable mystery of life and living. #himalaya #sikkim #trekking #hiking #outdoors #goechala #latergram (at Sikkim) https://www.instagram.com/p/COo4FB-pSCp/?igshid=zbm5p5k2ug13