Every place has a story

Before the motor road came, the main route from Kalimpong to Lhasa ran through the hills around Aritar. Mule trains carrying wool, salt and hides came …

For most of its history Gangtok was a minor settlement. The first capitals of the Namgyal kings were at Yuksom, Rabdentse and later Tumlong in North …

In 1968 Harbhajan Singh, a young sepoy of the Punjab Regiment, died near Nathu La. The most common account is that he slipped into a fast …

The first monastery at Rumtek was built in the mid-18th century under the 12th Karmapa, Changchub Dorje, one of several Karma Kagyu temples in Sikkim. By …

Tsomgo has long been treated as a sacred lake by the Buddhist and Hindu people of Sikkim. Its name is usually given as source of the …

In 1886 Tibetan troops built a fort at Lingtu, on the trade road a little below Jelep La and above the place where Zuluk now stands. …

The Lepcha, who call themselves Rongkup or Mutanchi Rongkup, are regarded as the oldest known inhabitants of Sikkim. Their homeland, which they call Mayel Lyang, takes …

Gurudongmar takes its name from Guru Padmasambhava, the teacher who is said to have brought Buddhism to Tibet and Sikkim in the 8th century. Buddhists in …

Lachen Monastery, also called Ngodub Choling, stands on a ridge above the village. It was established in 1858 and belongs to the Nyingma school of Tibetan …

Long before Sikkim joined India in 1975, the villages of the Lachung and Lachen valleys governed themselves through a council called the Dzumsa. Every household sends …

In 1849 the British botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker travelled up the Lachen and Lachung valleys collecting plants. He was working for Kew Gardens, and rhododendrons were …

The Lepchas, the oldest known inhabitants of Sikkim, tell of a time when the rivers Rangeet and Teesta rose and flooded the whole land. People and …

Sikkim's first king, Phuntsog Namgyal, was crowned at Yuksom in 1642. In 1670 his son, Tensung Namgyal, moved the capital to a ridge just below where …

In the 2000s the Government of Sikkim set out to mark the 2,550th anniversary of the birth of the Buddha, which Buddhists celebrated in 2006. It …

In 1860, relations between Sikkim and British India broke down over the kidnapping of British subjects and the flight of runaway slaves and debtors across the …

Sikkim's own histories tell that in the seventeenth century three Tibetan lamas of the Nyingma school travelled into Sikkim from different directions: Lhatsun Chenpo from the …

Long before the British arrived, a small Buddhist monastery stood on the hilltop now called Observatory Hill. The name Darjeeling is usually traced to the Tibetan …

On a curve of the road above Kurseong, in the Giddapahar area, stands a plain hill house that once belonged to Sarat Chandra Bose, an elder …

Fifty years ago there was no lake at Mirik. The hollow below the town was a marsh, thick with sweet flag, a reed locals called bojho. …

The name Sandakphu is usually traced to the Lepcha language and translated as the height of the poisonous plant. It refers to aconite, Aconitum ferox, and …

Before 1878 the journey from Calcutta to Darjeeling took five or six days by train, river steamer, bullock cart and palanquin. That year Siliguri was joined …

For most of the 19th century, the people who watched the dawn from the hills above Darjeeling believed they were looking at the highest mountain in …

When the British took the Kalimpong hills from Bhutan in 1865, the town was little more than a hamlet. Its value lay in the route north. …

Lava's monastery is new by Himalayan standards, and it was the village that asked for it. In the 1980s the local Buddhist community offered four acres …

The Lepchas are counted as the oldest inhabitants of the Kalimpong hills and of Sikkim. They call themselves Rongkup, from a longer name meaning the beloved …

Ask in Rishop where the name comes from and you will hear more than one answer. One common explanation splits it into two parts: ri, a …

Long before Kalimpong was a town, the hills around Pedong belonged to a Lepcha kingdom with its seat at Damsang. Its best-remembered ruler was Gaeboo Achyuk, …

Buxa Fort stands at 867 m on a forested spur above the plains. It was first a Bhutanese fort, built to command the Buxa Duar, one …

Deep in Chilapata forest, a jeep track ends at walls of narrow old bricks, half buried in roots and leaf litter. There are the remains of …

Most watchtowers in Indian parks are named after places. Gorumara's best-known tower is named after an animal. Jatraprasad was an elephant of the forest department, and …

For decades the most sought-after rooms in the Dooars were in the Hollong Tourist Lodge, a wooden building on stilts deep inside Jaldapara. It stood beside …

Suntalekhola is a Nepali name: suntala means orange and khola means stream. People in Samsing say that orange trees once grew along this stream, as they …

In Haa people tell how the Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo, in the 7th century, set out to build temples across the Himalaya to pin down a …

Bhutanese tradition holds that in the 8th century Guru Rinpoche, also called Padmasambhava, flew to the cliff above the Paro valley on the back of a …

People in Phobjikha say that when the black-necked cranes arrive in autumn they circle Gangtey Goenpa three times before landing in the marsh, and that they …

Until the early 1960s there was no motor road into Bhutan. Traders and officials going from the Dooars plains to Paro or Thimphu walked or rode …

Drukpa Kunley was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, remembered in Bhutan as the Divine Madman. He taught through outrageous …

For three centuries Bhutan had no fixed capital in the modern sense. Government moved with the seasons between dzongs, wintering in warm Punakha and spending summers …