Pema Wangchuk Dorjee is a Sikkim-based journalist who has plied his trade three for a little over three decades. Currently, consulting editor at Summit Times, a Gangtok-based English daily, he had also co-authored Khangchendzonga: Sacred Summit, a book on Mount Kangchenjunga, and co-edited The Birds Have Lost Their Way, a collection of essays on Sikkim’s experience with hydroelectric projects and climate change.
Sikkim Stories, co-authored with Simon Lamouret, is set amid the high-altitude landscapes of Sikkim, and is represented by A Suitable Agency. Sikkim Stories explores the encounter between three people whose paths would never otherwise have crossed. Sangay, a nomadic yak herder from the northern mountains, Pema, a Delhi-based botanist returning to the land of her origins and Jaspreet, a young soldier from the plains of Punjab. Each is travelling with a purpose. Each has a different relationship to the territory. Fate gathers them for a single night, suspended on the eve of disaster.
The book showcases the difficulty of inhabiting a world with an increasingly fragile environment shaken by climate change, rapid urbanisation and the disappearance of old ways of life.