The local story
The lake whose colours told the future
Tsomgo is usually explained in Bhutia, the Sikkimese language, as tso, lake, and mgo, head: the source of the lake, or the head of the waters. Nepali speakers call it Changu, and you will hear both names on the road. It lies in a glacial basin on the old route from Gangtok to Nathu La, where mule trains carrying wool and salt passed until the border closed after 1962, and it has always been more than a stop for water.
The lake is held in deep reverence by the Sikkimese. Buddhist monks are said to have studied the changing colours of its water, which shifts with the seasons from blue-green to grey to white ice, and read in them signs of what was to come. Local tradition also holds that jhakris, the faith healers of Sikkim, gather at the lake on Guru Purnima to draw on the healing power of its water. These are beliefs to respect, not to test: do not throw things into the lake or wash in it.
After the 1962 war the road became a military road, and Tsomgo lay inside a restricted zone. As tourism opened up from the 1990s, it became the most visited high-altitude sight in Sikkim, the first place many Indian families from the plains see snow. The forests below were protected as the Kyongnosla Alpine Sanctuary, about 31 km² of rhododendron, juniper and silver fir, where red panda and blood pheasant still live.
