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Sikkim, squeezed between Nepal and Bhutan, tucked under the belly of Tibet, is one of India’s smallest and most remote states. Once an independent Buddhist Kingdom, this hidden land used to encompass the towns of Darjeeling and Kalimpong. It was the principal thoroughfare of the Old Tibet Tea Trail, launching pad of British expeditions of the Great Game, and holy grail for keen botanists such as JD Hooker. That road is now lost. But Sikkim remains.
Our journey starts in Darjeeling, where Jamling will lead us to the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute before taking lunch at his family residence. Here we will hear stories about Jamling’s father and the heritage of Sherpas and the Himalayas. We will be given access to the family’s private museum and that evening over drinks Jamling will present a screening of his movie “Everest”.
We will next journey to Kalimpong, described by Indian Prime Minster Nehru in the 1950s as a “nest of spies.” In the years between the British left and the Indian annexation of Sikkim, during the crux of the Cold War, Kalimpong was home to a cast of colourful characters, including the Dalai Lama’s brother and Foreign Minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, Gyalo Thondup.
We will then enter Sikkim – described as a “beyul” or “hidden land” by early Tibetan travellers. After exploring Gangtok and learning how Sikkim came to be annexed by India in 1975, we will spend three nights trekking through the quiet woods of Sikkim, visiting monasteries and staying overnight in small Sikkimese cottages.
Our tour will end at the Glenburn Tea Estate. Overlooking the hills of Tukdah, the Glenburn Tea Estate is at the pinnacle of hospitality in the Darjeeling area. Our final two nights will be spent in the lap of luxury, sipping “silver tips” in porcelain cups.
“I climbed Everest so that you wouldn’t have to.”
Those were the words said to 19-year-old Jamling by his father Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, when he asked for his support to climb Everest. However, Jamling was destined to trek the Himalayas, and was driven to reach the mightiest of them all. When Tenzing died, Jamling felt that much had been left unsaid. He was determined to discover what had driven his father to be the first man, alongside Edmund Hillary, to summit Everest.
Following in his father’s formidable footsteps, Jamling embarked on his own Himalayan adventure, summiting Mount Everest in 1996. This journey was the captured in the awe-inspiring IMAX documentary “Everest”. Here Jamling showcased the physical challenges of the mountain but also explored how Himalayan trekking expeditions can become mental odysseys. This is especially true for Sherpas for whom Everest (“Chomolungma”) is holy.
The year Jamling summited Everest, was also the year of one of the great disasters on the mountain, when on the 10-11 May 1996, eight climbers caught in a blizzard died while attempting to descend from the summit. Jamling’s team, at that point further down the mountain on their way up, were instrumental in the rescue efforts. The 1996 Everest disaster is also topic of Hollywood’s 2015 “Everest” movie.
Sikkim was a protectorate of the British Empire. After the British left, it came under the suzerainty of India. The young crown prince of Sikkim, Palden Thondup Namgyal, and his glamorous American wife Hope Cooke, were determined to sustain Sikkim’s independence.
It was in the bar at the Windamere Hotel in Darjeeling in 1959, where New Yorker Hope Cooke had met Thondup Namgyal. She was an adventurous 19-year-old dressed in a dirndl, on holiday in India. He was 36, endearingly shy, wearing a cream-coloured Bakku, the Sikkimese national dress. To Hope, the crown prince was “truly, truly handsome.” The attraction was mutual. Despite an ignominious first visit to the Sikkimese royal palace in Gangtok (not accustomed to the strong Sikkim liquor, Hope ended the night by vomiting all over the entrance hall floor) the two were married in 1963 and later ascended to the throne together.
The charismatic couple drew the gaze of the world upon this hidden part of the Himalayas, at a time when Sikkim’s geographical position made it a flashpoint between the rival powers of the region: Pakistan and the USA on one-side, India and the USSR on the other. Thondup and Hope believed they could revive the ancient kingdom and in doing so prevent it being swallowed up by either of its gigantic neighbours.
However, Indira Gandhi ultimately brought that dream to a close. After years of political wrangling and plenty of underhand skullduggery, Indian troops surrounded the palace in May 1975 and the kingdom was annexed to become the 22nd state of India.
The kingdom’s demise is captured wonderfully in Andrew Duff’s book, Sikkim: Requiem for a Himalayan Kingdom. Duff relates the drama of the story, hopping from the twinkling lights of Gangtok to the “nest of spies” in Kalimpong; from Mrs Gandhi scheming in New Delhi to Nixon and Kissinger grumbling in the White House.
The story of Sikkim brings into the fold not only the towering political figures of the day, but also a colourful cast of lesser-known characters, including “the Kazini, a shadowy Scottish woman who orchestrated events on behalf of her husband, the leading politician in Sikkim who harboured a lifelong grudge against the king [and] the improbably named Princess Coocoola, the king’s sister, who Heinrich Harrer (of Seven Years in Tibet fame) believed to be the most beautiful woman in the world.”
All this and more we shall explore in The Hidden Road – teasing out the hidden history of Sikkim.
In 2025, Sikkim celebrated 50 years of statehood. The Sikkimese live without income tax, and quality of life is relatively high. What happened in 1975 is very much seen as history, and most people appear to hold the opinion that Delhi’s real politik has, in the long-term, worked out well for the people of Sikkim.
During The Great Game of the 1800s, due to the expansion of Tsarist Russia, London feared a grab at India. Lord Curzon’s “forward policy” resulted in the British invasion of Tibet in 1904. This in turn alerted China to the possibility of an invasion of the mainland through its backyard. In a pre-emptive strike, Chinese troops marched into Lhasa in 1910.
In 1950, when the British had left India and the Communist Party were in control of China, the People’s Liberation Army invaded Tibet. After almost a decade of harsh rule, in 1959 Tibetans rose up against the occupying force. As Tibetans were slaughtered and with fears of the Potala Palace in Lhasa being attacked, the young Dalai Lama and a small entourage escaped to India.
The Dalai Lama eventually settled in the north Indian town of Dharamshala. His elder brother, Gyalo Thondup, became the foreign minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile. Thondup based himself between Darjeeling, where his wife set-up the Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Center, and Kalimpong. Thondup dedicated the rest of his life to achieving freedom for Tibet, liaising with the governments of India, the USA (co-ordinating covert CIA-backed operations for Tibetan resistance fighters), Russians and, of course, the Chinese Communist Party.
What happens in Tibet reverberates in Sikkim. It was largely due to fears of Chinese influence over Sikkim that Indira Gandhi annexed the small Himalayan state in 1975. In his memoirs, The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong, Thondup writes that “India has stepped in where the British left off, instigating all sorts of complicated political intrigues and plots to overthrow one ruler or another.”
Thondup died in February 2025. Today outside his family house in Kalimpong, a discreet plaque at the entrance identifies the residence as Taktser House, named after the family’s village in Amdo, Tibet.
In 1953, with the world still punch-drunk from WW2, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, a Tibetan who’d grown up tending yaks, and Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand beekeeper, were selected to take part in the 1953 British Everest Expedition.
Jan Morris described them as an “oddly assorted pair”.
“They were not heroes of the old epic kind. Hillary was tall, lanky, big-boned and long-faced, and he moved with an incongruous grace, rather like a giraffe. Tenzing was by comparison a Himalayan fashion model: small, neat, rather delicate, brown as a berry, with the confident movements of a cat.”
The expedition passed with little drama and no injuries. Norgay and Hillary reached Everest’s 29,028-foot summit at 11:30 AM on 29 May 1953. True to the temper of their journey, Hillary’s first words when he returned from the summit, to his fellow New Zealander George Lowe, were “Well, George, we’ve knocked the bastard off!”
Norgay and Hillary were showered with worldly honours and both became the most celebrated citizens of their respective countries. Hillary ended up spending years in Nepal supervising the building of schools making the Sherpas’ existence better known. Norgay became the charismatic champion and a living model of Sherpa potential.
Jan Morris concludes:
“I liked these men very much when I first met them on the mountain nearly a half-century ago, but I came to admire them far more in the years that followed. I thought their brand of heroism far more inspiring than the gung-ho kind. Did it really mean much to the human race when Everest was conquered for the first time? Only because there became attached to the memory of the exploit, in the years that followed, a reputation for decency, kindness and stylish simplicity. Hillary and Tenzing fixed it when they knocked the bastard off.”
In the heart of Kolkata, this is an escape from the city … and a love-letter to it.
Gentle treks between villages in Sikkim, staying overnight in exquisitely renovated cottages.
A lovingly restored planter’s bungalow overlooking the hills of Tukdah near to Darjeeling.
