Snow carpet- in Zuluk and Sandakphu

Zuluk in East Sikkim and Sandakphu in Darjeeling district received snowfall on Sunday and Monday.

TT, 2 January 2017: Heavy snowfall began in East Sikkim's popular tourist destination (above) on Sunday afternoon and continued till Monday morning. It was the season's first snowfall there.

Zuluk is situated at an altitude of about 10,100ft and is around 65km from Gangtok. The place has 16 homestays and they all are occupied now, said tour operators.

The snowfall at Sandakphu, situated at an altitude of about 12,000ft, started around 11.30am on Monday and continued for an hour.

Chandan Pradhan, the secretary of the Singalila Land Rover Owners' Association, said around 150 tourists were currently in the Sandakphu area. "Early today, seven Land Rovers took tourists to Sandakphu. Yesterday, too, most of our vehicles had gone to Sandakphu with tourists and stayed there overnight. Many tourists visited the place for trekking," he said.

Pradhan said the area had witnessed around two inches of snow on Monday. This winter, it had snowed at Sandakphu, around 45km from Darjeeling, on December 29, 2016 but it was very light.

Sandakphu usually starts receiving snow from the last week of November. The current temperature in the area during the day is between 1 and 3 degrees Celsius. Picture by Prabin Khaling