Our visit to Singalila was not just another trek. It was a preliminary reconnaissance (recce) survey that would guide the future red panda ecological survey. Before any field research could begin, it is important to understand the landscape itself. The recce became a lesson in slowing down, observing closely, and experiencing a familiar landscape in a completely different way.

Why walk before research?

The first morning began in Rimbik, where we fuelled ourselves with a warm bowl of taipo and soup before setting off on the 4 kilometre trek to Gurdum. Backpacks were checked one last time: camera traps, GPS, notebooks, water bottles, and enough warm layers for the unpredictable mountain weather. With everything in place, we took our first steps onto the trail, unaware of how quickly the forest would begin to reshape the way we looked at the landscape. Unlike the regular survey, our recce was not about recording data, it was to become familiar with the landscape, identifying potential survey routes and learning how the forest changes with every turn. It didn’t take us long to realise that this wasn’t going to be a walk measured in kilometres but in the moment of observation. Our journey would take us from Rimbik - Gurdum - Sandakphu - Molley - Ramam - Rimbik, over a week of walking through forests, ridges, and mountain settlements. Accompanied by forest guards, we let the landscape set the rhythm of our days. Every few minutes, something drew our attention- a dense patch of bamboo, a sudden change in vegetation, narrow animal trails disappearing into the thick forest understory, and the magical song of different birds. What might have seemed like an ordinary trail to most trekkers slowly unfolded into a landscape full of clues. Our pace was dictated by the forest; steep ascents demanded frequent pauses. The objective was not to reach the next viewpoint as quickly as possible, but to understand how the landscape unfolded beneath our feet. Each bend in the trail helped us build a mental map of the area. The recce allowed us to assess the access routes, recognise different habitat types, anticipate field challenges, and prepare for the work ahead.

What might have seemed like an ordinary trail to most trekkers slowly unfolded into a landscape full of clues.

Reading the forest 

Walking through Singalila with forest guards changed the way we looked at the landscape. What first appeared to us as a continuous stretch of forest slowly unfolded into a mosaic of habitats, each with its own story. Years of patrolling these trails had trained the forest guards to notice details that we would have easily overlooked. With camera traps packed into our backpacks, we followed their guidance to locations that showed signs of suitable habitat.

Whenever we came across habitat that appeared suitable for red pandas, we left from the trekking trail into the forest. One of the clues we looked for was red panda pellets or droppings. While the red panda itself remained hidden, the fresh pellets hinted that the area had recently been used. Around these feeding sites, we searched for suitable trees to install and test our camera traps, hoping to capture future activity. Every indirect sign became another piece of the puzzle, helping us understand how the species moved through the landscape.

With every few kilometres, the forest seemed to reinvent itself. Dense bamboo tunnels gave way to damp marshes where our boots sank slightly into the ground before opening into grassy meadows. The temperature shifted with elevation, the light filtering differently through each patch of forest. It reminded us that Singalila is not one continuous forest, but a collection of habitats stitched together across the mountains. These detours often made our days much longer than expected, but they also became some of the most rewarding parts of the journey.

It reminded us that Singalila is not one continuous forest, but a collection of habitats stitched together across the mountains.

As we continued walking, the landscape transformed around us. Near Gurdum, we stumbled upon a small waterfall tucked away beside the trail, its sound breaking the stillness of the forest. By the time we reached Sandakphu, we took a well-earned break overlooking the Sleeping Buddha range. With cold winds numbing our fingers and clouds drifting past, we discussed the day's observations, possible survey sites, and how dramatically the landscape had changed within just a few kilometres. Even while resting, the conversation kept returning to the forest.

Walking with those who know the forest 

Our first halt was at Gurdum, where conversation with local people quickly moved beyond greeting. Over cups of tea, they spoke about the wildlife they occasionally encountered-Red Pandas, Asiatic Black Bears, and Golden Jackals and what it meant to live alongside the forest. The conversations soon drifted from wildlife to everyday life. With only one vehicle making a couple of trips each day, children relied on it to travel to school, while trips to Manebhanjan or Darjeeling were necessary for most essential supplies. No formal interviews, just stories exchanged over tea that added another layer to understanding the forest.

As we continued our journey, we met forest guards stationed at different camps. Their knowledge came from years of walking these trails every day. They pointed out subtle signs, suggested areas where red pandas had been seen in the past, and helped us understand how the landscape changed with elevation and season. Along the way, they also introduced us to the forest itself. Trees that looked ordinary to us carried familiar local names and uses. We learnt about Timur, valued for its medicinal properties, and Angeri, traditionally used to relieve itching. These weren't facts from a field guide but knowledge passed down through years of walking these forests. Listening to the guards reminded us that every landscape can be understood in different ways-through scientific surveys, but also through the everyday experiences of those who call these mountains home.

One afternoon, while walking from Thakum towards Moley, our forest guard suggested we leave the main trail and follow him into a dense bamboo valley. We carefully made our way through the vegetation, scanning the trees as he quietly searched ahead. 

Then he stopped.

High up on a tree branch, we found our first red panda pellet. They were two to three inches long, with 20-30 pellets in one place. 

It wasn't the animal we had hoped to see, but it was enough to tell us we were in the right place. After days of walking, that small sign brought an excitement that is difficult to describe. There were smiles, happy tears, and a shared sense of relief. We scrambled through shoulder-high bamboo, trying not to lose sight of each other while following the forest guard. Finding our first sign of a Red Panda changed the rest of our walk. From that point onward, every bamboo patch, every conversation, and every bend in the trail felt different.

That evening, as the sun dipped behind the mountains, we walked towards Molley beneath an orange sky, with clouds rolling through the valleys below. Later, under a sky full of stars, conversations turned once again to the forest. Local trekking staff shared stories of past Red Panda sightings, changing weather patterns, and how they had seen parts of the forest change over the years. Those conversations reminded us that understanding a landscape doesn't come only from scientific surveys. It also comes from listening to the people who have lived and worked within it for years.

Beyond the view

We rested at Moley, discussed possible survey locations, and reflected on how dramatically the landscape had changed. The Sleeping Buddha stretched across the horizon, and on a clear day, Mount Everest stood proudly in the distance. It was a breathtaking view, but after days of walking through the forest, we found ourselves appreciating something beyond the mountains. Standing on the ridge, it was easy to understand why people remember Singalila for its mountains. For visitors, these paths offer unforgettable mountain views. It is easy to remember Singalila for its spectacular peaks, but the journey reminded us that the forests below are just as remarkable. Every bamboo patch, stream, and meadow supports species that many visitors may never notice, yet they are as much a part of Singalila's identity as the mountains themselves. For researchers, forest guards, and local communities, they are also routes through habitats that support an extraordinary diversity of life. Walking the same trail with a different purpose reminded us that conservation and tourism are not separate stories- they share the same landscape and indeed the same purpose.

For visitors, these paths offer unforgettable mountain views. It is easy to remember Singalila for its spectacular peaks, but the journey reminded us that the forests below are just as remarkable.

Reflection 

Perhaps this is what it truly means to walk beyond the trails-not simply to leave the path, but to see the landscape as more than a destination. Our recce may have been the first step towards a red panda survey, but it also gave us the opportunity to appreciate the quiet details that often go unnoticed. Sometimes, understanding a forest begins not with finding wildlife, but with learning how to observe the traces they leave behind.

Note from the Artist, Shreya Khadilkar

Representing a magical place like Singalila, Darjeeling Himalayas, on a digital screen is a brain-eye-wrist-racking task. Every scene has one specific unifying colour, the undertone. For this landscape, it was a light steel blue, from the fog that seeps into every nook and cranny. Every other colour was mixed into this blue, and the resulting shades form the finished work. The blue itself disappears, but only after it lends its misty, blurry personality to the image. 

The composition itself unfolds the process of discovering the elusive red panda. Researchers are about to embark on a trail. But unlike others, their road will wind far beyond streams and lakes, hills and houses, rocks and ravines. They are seeking an enigmatic creature, probably tucked away in a blanket of mist, on stocky bamboo, even at this very moment.  I hope the illustration pulls the reader OUT of the screen. This illustration is meant to reflect the landscape for those who haven’t visited yet, so they can yearn for it.

"आमा छ्या, कस्तो गनाएको!" ("Mom, yuck, it stinks!")

​I crinkled my nose, pulling my face back in immediate, dramatic disgust. My lips curled, my eyes watering slightly as the sharp, fermented smell hit my face the moment I stepped into the kitchen. There, in a shadowy corner near the mud Chulha (hearth), sat a dark, leaf-wrapped bundle. Standing beside it was my mother. Unbothered by the pungent cloud, she simply looked up at my theatrical display, her face softening into a warm, knowing smile. She reached down with steady, practiced hands, gently turning the warm leaves as if tending to a fragile secret, completely at home in an aroma that made me want to bolt back out toward the open veranda.

It was my early, dramatic introduction to Kinema. It was in a small, quiet moment in a single kitchen, in Kurseong, but like many childhood memories, its true meaning took years to settle. Standing years later, on a distant balcony, that memory unwinds into something far deeper than a childhood reaction. What felt like an unbearable stink, was, in reality, a reassuring proof that while the cold winter winds swept down the spurs of the hills, our Kitchen was alive. It was warm and working.

Across the Eastern Himalayas, this relationship between climate, home and survival forms a shared ecological baseline. The geography of these hills offers little room for waste. When the heavy monsoon recedes and cold winter settles over the mountains, fresh produce quickly becomes a luxury and thus to live on these slopes, the indigenous communities of the regions, including the Kirat (Rai and Limbu), Lepcha, and Bhutia, developed an intimate and long-lasting relationship with time, smoke and natural micro-flora.

Across the Eastern Himalayas, this relationship between climate, home and survival forms a shared ecological baseline.

Vernacular Science of the Hearth

The traditional Himalayan pantry is built on a deceptively simple ecological premise: when fresh greens and grains are abundant during brief harvest season, harvest them and when they are scarce, transform them so they outlast the season. In the high-altitude rural homes of Sikkim, Kalimpong and the Darjeeling Hills, this transformation was never achieved through the modern synthetic preservation or refrigeration. Instead, it relied on a localized alignment with natural microbial cycles, solar energy and wood smoke.

While urbanization across Darjeeling, Gangtok and Kalimpong has gradually replaced the traditional mud hearth (Chulha) with modern LPG stoves, the Chulha remains the ancestral prototype of these entire culinary systems, radiating heat to dry crops and creating the exact micro-climate needed to culture wild yeasts and fungi. Even in homes, where physical hearths have given way to modern counters, the lingering logic of the Chulha endures whenever a jar of Gundruk is set out to catch the sun or a warm bundle of Kinema is carefully insulated in a cozy corner. Tracing these foodways across Sikkim, Kalimpong and Darjeeling Hills reveals that the Chulha, whether as an active rural stove or an enduring urban memory, was a site of profound vernacular science.

Gundruk and Kinema

This essay follows two of the pantry’s most distinct techniques: Gundruk and Kinema, not as a complete inventory of the mountain kitchen but as two entry points into one shared ecological logic.

When the post-monsoon harvest yields its abundance of mustard greens (rayo ko saag) or radish leaves (mula ko saag), nothing goes to waste. Wilted in the sun, then packed tight into jars under heavy stones, the greens sour into gundruk as their pH quietly drops (Tamang, 2016). The real test comes at drying: late-autumn nights bring a damp cold that can undo days of careful curing, so the half-dried mats are carried back indoors each evening to rest near the Chulha's residual warmth. Buried and cured the same patient way, crushed radish root becomes sinki.

Kinema works the opposite chemistry. Soaked, boiled soybeans, crushed and mixed with a pinch of clean wood ash, are wrapped in oak or banana leaf and tucked into a warm nook against the Chulha's masonry- the ash nudging the mixture just alkaline enough for Bacillus subtilis to thrive, though no one making it has ever needed to know the bacterium's name to get it exactly right.

Fluid Geographies and the Politics of the Kitchen

The chulha does not recognize a border, and neither does the food that comes out of it. Modern cartography draws a firm administrative line between the states of Sikkim and the hill districts of Kalimpong and Darjeeling, but the ridges rising above the Teesta and Rangeet rivers were never drawn with those divisions in mind. Sikkim remained a separate Himalayan kingdom until its merger into the Indian Union in 1975 (Sinha, 1975; Lama, 1994), while Darjeeling and Kalimpong came under colonial administration across the nineteenth century- Darjeeling ceded in 1835, Kalimpong following in 1865 (Besky, 2014). A household in Kurseong or Mirik ferments its soybeans with the same underlying microbial logic and method as a kitchen in Namchi, Geyzing or Pedong, but rarely in identical form. The leaf a Kalimpong household reaches for to wrap its Kinema maybe Oak, a household two ridges over in West Sikkim may reach instead for fern or banana leaf, whatever grows nearest. Life in borderlands like this one has always run on networks more flexible than the territorial lines drawn across them, as the scholar Willem van Schendel has observed of the wider Himalayan margins (van Schendel, 2002).

The chulha does not recognize a border, and neither does the food that comes out of it.

This shared culinary grammar carries a political weight that the region's current reality makes hard to ignore, and it shows up in the same shape on both sides of the line. On the Darjeeling side, tea carries a Geographical Indication tag guaranteeing its origin and exclusivity (Geographical Indications of Goods [Registration and Protection] Act, 1999). On the Sikkim side, Large Cardamom and Dalle Khursani chili carry the same protection. Gundruk and Kinema, made and eaten identically on both sides of a border neither food recognizes, have never received anything comparable from either government.

This shared culinary grammar carries a political weight that the region's current reality makes hard to ignore, and it shows up in the same shape on both sides of the line.

On the Darjeeling side, that gap has a number attached to it. Tea plantation workers in the hills earn roughly ₹202 a day, a figure that sits starkly below the state's own minimum agricultural wage floor. Tea estate land itself isn't owned by the people who work it, held instead under a leasehold system dating back to the 1955 Land Reforms Act- the state retains ownership; the company merely leases the ground it grows on. Cultural standing offered from above, while the harder claim land a family can actually call its own - stays withheld: this is recognition without redistribution, to borrow the philosopher Nancy Fraser's phrase for exactly this kind of incomplete justice (Fraser, 1995).

That fragility compounds each time the hills go still. Decades of the Gorkhaland movement have brought recurring bandhs to these same tea estates - the kaman, as they're known here - total shutdowns, sometimes lasting weeks, once, in 2017, stretching to 104 days before it was called off (Associated Press, 2017). A pantry of fermented Gundruk and Kinema, laid in before the trouble starts, is one of the few things a called strike cannot touch. The politics of these hills may divide over what Gorkhaland should ultimately mean, but the hearth has never once waited to find out.

Sikkim's version of the same incomplete recognition looks different in its details but familiar in its shape. Limbu and Tamang communities already hold Scheduled Tribe status in both Sikkim and West Bengal, recognition secured under a 2002 constitutional amendment (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders [Amendment] Act, 2002). What remains outstanding is a separate list entirely: eleven sub-tribes in Darjeeling and twelve in Sikkim still petitioning for that same recognition, with Sikkim's chief minister personally coordinating with Darjeeling's representatives to press both sets of claims together ("Sikkim, N Bengal Leaders Unite," 2024). Two governments, two different mechanisms of withholding, the same underlying pattern.

If the state manages recognition from above while withholding welfare on both sides of this border, the region's haats are the countermove, and they always have been. Rangpo and Jorethang, both in Sikkim, and Kalimpong's own Thursday market on the Bengal side, moved hill produce between valleys long before any of them were formal state boundaries. The Sunday Gorkha Haat carries that legacy forward today, and increasingly through women's hands. Many of its stalls are organized through self-help groups, the same collective savings-and-credit model that has become the primary vehicle for rural women's economic participation across India (Raghunathan et al., 2019)  including, by some accounts, among tea garden women in this very district, women otherwise confined to wage labor on someone else's land. The kinema sold at a Sunday stall is, for many of them, the first income they have ever earned that no employer's ledger touches.

Unseasonal Rainfall and a Broken Season

Every technique described so far in this essay, this ecological logic, depends on a single,unspoken assumption, that the mountains would keep their appointments. 

None of this was guesswork, as the previous sections have argued. It was precision. But precision of this kind carries a hidden cost, it only works if the climate keeps its side of arrangement. It increasingly does not.

The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment found that the region has warmed at a rate nearly matching, and in places exceeding, the global average (Wester et al., 2019; Krishnan et al., 2019). The scale of what that warming can unleash was made brutally clear even as this essay was being written: in late August 2026, a glacier collapse near Nepal's border with Tibet killed hundreds and left well over a thousand people missing, a stark reminder that the instability in Sikkim and Bengal is not a local misfortune but a single, region-wide system coming under strain. At the household level, what a food microbiologist calls a viable range of temperature and humidity is, at the hearth, simply "the right week." When that week arrives wet, the biology does not forgive the delay. Greens left too long in unseasonal humidity rot before they can ferment.

“It was so sunny in the morning; by two in the afternoon, it was pouring," my mother told me over the phone. "केही त हुँदैन आजकाल," she said. Nothing goes right these days.

Her frustration points to something larger than one ruined batch of greens: a mountain climate that no longer keeps the rhythm this whole architecture was built around. Dashain, in my memory, was always a bright, cloudless thing - marigolds, kites, and monarch butterflies drifting lazily over the cosmos flowers my mother grew along the fence. And always, without fail, the dashain kira - the small, rust-red insect that seemed to arrive with the festival itself, appearing on grass blades. I haven't seen one in years. Somewhere in the last decade, Dashain started arriving wet instead - kites grounded and the butterflies simply absent. It is a small, personal instance of something ecologists have a colder name for: phenological mismatch.

Her frustration points to something larger than one ruined batch of greens: a mountain climate that no longer keeps the rhythm this whole architecture was built around.

In October 2023, a glacial lake outburst above North Sikkim killed fifty-five people, according to the state's own post-disaster assessment, and wiped-out vital infrastructure including the Teesta III dam (SSDMA, 2023). In October 2025, torrential rain across Mirik, Kurseong, and Kalimpong collapsed the Dudhia bridge and forced the closure of NH 10 - the very corridor that connects the hills to the plains ("West Bengal Floods," 2025).

This is where the climate disruption stops being a story only about a mismatched harvest and becomes the story of the market itself. A haat cannot open if the road to it has washed out. The disruption is not only ecological but economic, severing a household’s income from its harvest as surely as it severs one hill town from another. What is at risk, then, is not a single harvest but the archive this essay opened with, a knowledge that cannot be reprinted once its conditions change, only practiced back into existence against a climate, and a road network that no longer offer the cues they once did.

What the Hearth Remembers

When you stand beside the Chulha in a mountain kitchen, whether in a rain slicked village in West Sikkim, a terraced farmstead in Kalimpong, or a quiet wooden home in Kurseong, you realise that memory in the Eastern Himalayas is an active, living technology. The mud and stone Chulha was never merely a domestic stove, it was the heart of the mountain home. The logic of the Chulha was never confined to one household, or one state, it repeats itself, with local accents, across landscapes. And now, for the first time in generations, that inherited system faces a threat it was never built to negotiate, not human error, but a climate that no longer keeps the appointments this whole architecture of survival was calibrated against. What is at stake, together, is not nostalgia for a taste, but a distributed, hyper-local ecological literacy and the resilience of a people already relearning it under stress.

Even as sleek and modern cooktops have claimed their place in our kitchen, the Chulha is never cast aside, quietly tended, because some flavors and some warmth simply refuse to be cooked on a gas flame. So, when homesickness hits me in a far distant city, I find myself calling home, slightly embarrassed to want this badly and saying:

“आमा, किनेमा पठाइदिनु न?”

(Mom, please send me some Kinema.)

References 

Associated Press. (2017, September 27). Indian protesters end strike in Darjeeling after 104 days.

Besky, S. (2014). The Darjeeling distinction: Labor and justice on fair-trade tea plantations in India. University of California Press.

Fraser, N. (1995). From redistribution to recognition? Dilemmas of justice in a "post-socialist" age. New Left Review, 212, 68–93.

Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999.

Krishnan, R., Shrestha, A. B., Ren, G., et al. (2019). Unravelling climate change in the Hindu Kush Himalaya: Rapid warming in the mountains and increasing extremes. In P. Wester, A. Mishra, A. Mukherji, & A. B. Shrestha (Eds.), The Hindu Kush Himalaya assessment (Chapter 3). Springer International Publishing.

Lama, M. P. (Ed.). (1994). Sikkim: Society, polity, economy, environment. Indus Publishing.

Rai, D. C., & Sarkar, A. K. (2016). Traditional fermented beverages of the Himalayan region. Journal of Ethnic Foods, 3(2), 96–102.

Raghunathan, K., Kannan, S., & Quisumbing, A. R. (2019). Can women's self-help groups improve access to information, decision-making, and agricultural practices? The Indian case. Agricultural Economics, 50(5), 567–580.

Sikkim, N Bengal leaders unite to demand tribal status for 12 left-out communities. (2024, October 7). The Statesman.

Sikkim State Disaster Management Authority (SSDMA). (2023). Post disaster needs assessment: Glacial lake outburst flood, Sikkim 2023.

Sinha, A. C. (1975). Politics of Sikkim: A sociological study. Thomson Press. 

Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 2002 (Act No. 10 of 2003).

Tamang, J. P. (2016). Ethnic fermented foods and beverages of India. Springer India.

Thapa, N., & Tamang, J. P. (2015). Functionality and therapeutic values of fermented foods. In J. P. Tamang (Ed.), Health benefits of fermented foods and beverages (pp. 111–168). CRC Press.

van Schendel, W. (2002). Geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance: Jumping scale in Southeast Asia. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20(6), 647–668.

West Bengal floods: Death toll rises to 28. (2025, October). Outlook India.

Wester, P., Mishra, A., Mukherji, A., & Shrestha, A. B. (Eds.). (2019). The Hindu Kush Himalaya assessment: Mountains, climate change, sustainability and people. Springer International Publishing.

“The corn is ripe and ready to be harvested; the field needs to be mowed and ploughed again, yet he shows no interest in the field,” Anom Chekit lamented, cradling her youngest child while preparing a meal. “What kind of head of the house is he?! All he cares about is hunting and fishing. How long must I bear this burden alone?” On the other side of the kitchen, her three children huddled around a small fire, while their mother continued her grumbling, "Your father only knows how to hunt animals in the forest and catch fish from the rivers. Who taught him these useless skills? Working in the field feels like a curse, he says. God, must I always keep reminding him to tend to our lands?"

Anum Anga returned from the forest. His old gun slung over one shoulder, and a fox in his hand. He was covered in leaves and blood from leech bites. His clothes were caked with mud;  he most likely slipped on his way home in the rain. He hadn't had a meal in almost a week. So he ignored the chaos of his house and his wife's misery. Instead, he ravenously devoured the stale rice and chilli paste, his eyes red with hunger.

When Anom Chekit saw the fox, her eyes lit up, relieved at the thought of having meat for a meal. “Despite the monsoon season, you've managed to bring home meat!" she said. "I feared the forest spirits had finally come to claim you. Thanks to our neighbour Choda, who bought in some Chee yesterday. It helped ease my mind.”

She poured some tea into his cup.

“Didn’t you find any Dorbee? Not even Prongdong or Purmyak. It’s the perfect season; I am sure you must have found them in abundance?” she asked, hopefully.

With his mouth full, Anum Anga gave her a disapproving glare. "I brought this meat with all my hard work, and you still ask for vegetables? Next time, I'll only bring wild vegetables for you!" 

Angry, he pushed away his plate. Anom pacified her child in her lap and sighed. “But what about the cornfield? If we don’t harvest it soon, it will rot.”

Exhausted from his journey, he ignored her and went to sleep.

After his nap, he cooked the fox meat and shared it with his family, his pride glowing over the meal.

“Hah! The God of the Forest has blessed me with this powerful gun,” he bragged. “I am telling you, Anom, no animal can escape me!”

The next day, Anum Anga had his breakfast, packed his bag with his fishing gear along with a Tubhjyang (bamboo basket), and walked towards River Rungklong.

As he left, he sneered at Anom, “You housewives have no work. Get someone to help with the field, and get it done.” 

Heartbroken by his words, Anom thought of the life that she might have had if she had accepted the man her parents had chosen for her, rather than eloping with Anum Anga. Lighting the fire in the hearth, she thought, “Unlike my younger sister, who eventually married him, I'm not educated either. She's living in far greater comfort. As for me, comfort and wealth remain strangers." With a heavy sigh, she resigned herself to her chosen life.

She snapped out of her reverie as their neighbour, Regho Anue Ramit, arrived with a bag of ripe pears.

“Aye Kyong met song! Are you awake? Better wake up; your cornfield needs harvesting!” she called out.

Anom came out of her room to greet her. “Ah! Anue, what brings you here? You didn’t have to bring these!” she exclaimed as she accepted the pears and ushered Anue in. “Our home is a bit messy, Anue. I hope you don't mind”. Anom offered her the tea she had been warming. “And, oh! We have Chee too. Please have some while I prepare some snacks for you.”

Anue Rammit took off her headscarf and drank the Chee. “The Chee is strong! Quite bitter and sour. What snack are you making for me, by the way?” she asked, sniffing the air as Anom fried the meat with herbs. She suddenly recognised the smell and chuckled with joy, “Fox meat! That too in these rains. You are lucky to have a good hunter for a husband.” 

"Yes, Doma's father brought it yesterday. He considers household chores a burden; hunting animals and catching fish are his skills!" Anom replied.

The eldest child comes in with a Pogoreep, hands it to his mother, and says, “Today Appa is going to catch a lot of fish. I am so excited !”

“Aha! Is that right?” Anue asked as she sipped the Chee.

“I had a nightmare, Anom”, Anue Ramit said, suddenly looking worried. “I dreamt the street dogs were crying and our cows ran away! My children found them tied to their posts this morning, but the dream felt strangely ominous.”

Hearing this, Anom shared her own dream, “I too had one today! Then I woke up to find our daughter crying in her sleep, utterly inconsolable. Anum comforted her, promising to bring back fish. He’s on his way to the river now.”

They sipped their Chee in silence, each brooding over uneasy thoughts, hoping the nightmares were nothing more than fleeting fears.

Anue set down her plates and glasses. "I should head home now, Anom. I would like to catch Doma's father to discuss building a fence around our house. Maybe next time I see him”, she said with a shrug. 

"Yes, he's quite skilled with that," Anom replied, wrapping some guavas in a handkerchief. "Please take these for your kids." They exchanged farewell smiles, and Anue left with the guavas. Meanwhile, on the banks of the River Rungklong, Anum Anga, with his friends Aching and Angok, lounged on a big rock. Content with their day’s catch, their baskets were brimming with freshwater fish! 

Suddenly, Anum Anga broke the silence,

“Friends, let’s catch some more. We still have time. Last night, I dreamt that we caught a haul!”

They all agreed and went to a nearby pond, positioning themselves on a rock overlooking the river. Anum observed the waters and instructed his friends, “There! I see plenty of fish right there. Let's prepare our gear.”

The men wasted no time.

Aching hurried to gather Tuknyal* leaves known to have a numbing effect on fish. Meanwhile, Angok skillfully mashed the leaves into a paste and handed it to Anum. Anum swiftly positioned himself at the pond's opposite edge, reeling in fish with remarkable speed. Within moments, the trio had a bountiful haul.

 Then  Anum Anga saw a giant fish wedged under the pond's near end. Driven by greed, he waded into the water to free it. Meanwhile, atop the hill, his friends were pounding local leaves on a large rock balanced precariously on a small pebble.

Unfortunately, the pebble gave way, sending the massive rock crashing into the pond.

Angok and Aching heard a cry.

"AIYYYYYAAA!"

Both were startled and hurried down to search for Anum, shouting, "Doma Appa*, where are you?"
Anum Anga’s cry echoed far, even into the village, but he could not be found.
The water turned red, and a heavy stillness fell.  It was clear. Greed and neglect bring dire consequences, even in the bountiful forest.

That day, the villagers learned the importance of 'balance’, the true cost of forest meat, and the profound impact of hunting wild game. Anum Anga's fate served as a poignant reminder to only take what is necessary and maintain a harmonious equilibrium between tending our own fields and respectfully borrowing resources from the wilderness.

Written by Norden Sambomu Lepcha
Translated into English by Lungmying Lepcha

1st Edited by: It's Wild Out Here

GLOSSARY:

1. Doma Appa - Doma’s father.
2. Tuknyal - Mugwort.
3. Pogoreep - Also known as Totola ko phool (in the local language).
4. Chee - a locally brewed fermented drink.
5. Dorbee - mushroom in Lepcha.
6. Prongdong - A variety of bamboo shoot in Lepcha.
7. Purmyak - A variety of bamboo shoot in Lepcha.
8. Aye Kyong met song! - "Hey, neighbouring folks!"

Baba used to ask us to look up when walking, while Aama suggested that we look at our feet now and then lest we miss a step. Growing up in Gangtok, looking up for me meant looking up to the TV Tower, at it, sometimes through it. When I lived in 6th Mile¹, the Tower grew bigger as we approached the town². As I grew older and moved to the Development Area, it rejected the general rule of thumb: what appears big when we are small looks smaller as we grow up. My movement and relocation in Gangtok metaphorically and physically mirrored my parents’ class mobility that facilitated it- we moved from near the base of the hill to somewhere around the top. The TV Tower retained its size and magnanimity.

The TV Tower, once synonymous with Gangtok’s skyline and visible from across the neighbouring hills, stood for 31 years before it was dismantled in 2024. My early memories of Gangtok are flooded with its image. It no longer exists, but it lives on.

Now, I ask, what makes a city familiar? Where do I feel I belong? How do I engage with a city that changes constantly?

These questions are large and constitute a multitude of worlds within themselves, but they stem from an individual’s experience of the city. For me, that experience has been one that shifts before one recognises, collapses before it corrects, and mutates before it accommodates.

Gangtok and the Promise of the Smart City 

In 2015, the Government of India launched the National Smart Cities Mission (SCM). After several rounds of proposals, 100 cities were selected nationwide, Gangtok being one among them. The Ministry of Urban Development offers no clear definition of a “smart city”, however, it is supposed to be based on the needs of the people. Imagining a smart city entails changes in services and infrastructure, which are related to citizens’ aspirations (Appadurai, 2004). Aspirations, however, are never neutral; they are shaped by social and cultural context, and in Sikkim’s case, by the state’s promotion of tourism and the particular narratives it has built around Sikkimese culture.

Aspirations, however, are never neutral; they are shaped by social and cultural context..

The Gangtok SCM implemented numerous projects: the 14-storey West Point Tower, with its shopping complex, hotel, and parking lot; retrofitting of Lall Bazaar; work on the Ridge Park and Tsuklakhang Palace Complex; and improvements to pedestrian walkways, roads and junctions. While none of these signals a failure of implementation, there is a lack of a comprehensive view of development in the city.

For this essay, I take infrastructure to mean components of space that impress how people experience that space (Dourish & Bell, 2007) - the shifting boundaries between the material and the immaterial, the human and the non-human. Infrastructure also reveals power dynamics that interfere with the division between public and private, state and non-state. Furthermore, one must examine the making of these infrastructures: where are the resources drawn from, and to whom are these resources distributed? What role, if any, has public participation played in the planning of Gangtok’s urbanisation? A city has a life of its own, but that very life is infused by the people who live in that space, and the life that we imagine belongs to that city is also a relationship we have with it.

A landscape built for the present can become problematic later - when the needs of labour and capital shift (Harvey, 1985). Unfortunately, the Smart City Mission for Gangtok has taken this turn. It promises a secure public future even as the meaning of "public" is being contested. Habermas's (1991) prediction of the increasing privatisation of public spaces holds here: a space that becomes less public also becomes less democratic.

The Lives of Things Walk: Looking at What Usually Goes Unnoticed

Gangtok’s popular image conjures up landmarks like monasteries, viewpoints, markets and so on. But much of its everyday life unfolds through quieter, more intimate traces. On 18th April 2026, for World Heritage Day, I designed and led a walk with Sahapedia and Gangtok’s city-curator, Abhibyanjana Rubhi Thatal, built around a deliberate critique of “heritage”, shifting attention from the tangible to the intangible. Thirty-six participants, from Gangtok and outside it, moved through various points in the city, observing objects like signboards, plants, pathways, and even overt structures like the panda statue on MG Marg, pausing to observe details often ignored. Subtle modifications to shared urban spaces reveal how people continuously negotiate and remake Gangtok. Participants explored Gangtok through these material and sensory fragments. In doing so, it opened up new ways of imagining Gangtok as an evolving archive of lived experiences, shaped by the presence, absence, and, most importantly, the memory of everyday objects.

Structured as an exploratory walk, followed by an inconclusive discussion, this experience gave rise to the following points:

a. Public Space and Everyday Negotiations

The walk commenced at Denzong Cinema Hall in Lall Bazaar. Following a short debrief, we ascended Thaado Line toward MG Marg, dispersing across the old and new stretches, on to Hospital Darah, and ended at the Development Area. These points were chosen deliberately as an attempt to trace what remains of Gangtok’s public spaces.

Several participants identified the route simply as an everyday path: one they use to reach town for recreation and leisure, or to walk to and from work. Some pushed back on it as a more “commercial” portrayal of the city, saying they’d have preferred the shortcuts or “chor baato,” through which their actual negotiation with the space happens. Attention to these shortcuts isn’t incidental: it points to what people want from the spaces they move through daily, an attention to sociality and how these spaces draw people in rather than simply being passed through (Simone, 2004).

Additionally, many cited that this route requires no entry fee, unlike the Wellness Park near Old STNM, or even parts of the Ridge Park³. The once-open-for-all but now-unsafe parking lot near Sangram Hall in the Development Area came up often too, remembered for its sunsets, and valued as a place to rest between walks, runs, or long days.

About half the participants were first-time visitors to Sikkim, and without a guide to steer them toward heritage hotspots, several described the early discomfort of having to engage with the city on their own; by the end, most said it worked better for them. It pushed them into conversations with people they might otherwise not have spoken to, toward something closer to a "local" read on the place, and toward noticing things on the route a guided tour would have skipped past. Rather than a tourist gaze that takes back only images of monasteries and mountains, participants’ engagements with everyday objects open their imaginations to how people in these cities actually live, making them more cognisant of their position and contribution as a traveller.

b. The Hyperlocal and the Borrowed

One participant, from Gujarat, photographed signages across town and noted “hyperlocal” touches, like the Tibetan lettering in front of fixtures on MG Marg, as well as a mix of more “modern” elements, pointing to digitally-made signage, alongside signs that spoke to a recent flurry of café and shopping businesses. Signage in Gangtok rarely exists in isolation; it's in constant dialogue with the signage around it, communicating as much about a business's ideals as about nostalgia or preservation.

Another participant documented dragon imagery across roughly 20 points in town, carved into gates at Lall Bazaar, Denzong Cinema Hall, and the State Bank, painted on fridge magnets and thangkas in gift shops, in tattoo shops, sprayed as graffiti across town, making way into restaurants, most notably ‘The Dragon Wok,’ flown on the Bhutanese flag on MG Marg, and cast as statues outside the Thakurbaari temple.

This opened a debate about whether the dragon is even a "Sikkimese" motif, or one borrowed from Tibetan and Chinese trade during Sikkim's founding as a Buddhist kingdom- a question beyond the scope of this article, except to say that the term "Sikkimese" itself resists a single definition (Thatal, 2023), and I'd rather it unsettle the reader's own assumptions than mine. The same is true of "hyperlocal," a term borrowed from Media Studies to describe a relationship to place: if the walk's participants weren't all locals, what counts as local - let alone hyperlocal - to them? I leave that open, along with the larger question of trade routes and cultural exchange it gestures toward.

c. How Do People Live with What Has Been (Re)built?

Public spaces are not static. Cities are not only planned from above; they are continually produced from every rung of society. One participant observed Gangtok’s staircases-witnesses to their meanderings and negotiations with the city, meeting points for friends, spaces to avoid some people, and shortcuts to get to places quickly- and how their preservation is crucial to their retaining a sense of belonging in the city.

I have a similar relationship with Gangtok’s footpaths, the cornerstone of my memory, serving as a safe perimeter to walk around Gangtok, remade tirelessly over the years into what is now an almost-continuous stretch from Ranipool to Gangtok with a few disjointed points along the way. The changes began before the SCM arrived, first with new tiles, then a wholly redesigned railing, and continued into the overhead roofs that now punctuate parts of the stretch. In theory, these roofs shelter walkers from Gangtok’s sun and its incessant rain; in practice, built for straight-falling water, they do little against the slanting rain that actually falls here. Cross ducts at strategic points remain largely absent, so pedestrians often climb over the footpath railing to cross; the foot-over bridges, at least, still do their job. The stretch, between the New Sadar Police Station and the entry to the Development Area, was built at the cost of hundreds of trees, which makes the shade-giving roofs a bitter irony: shelter from a sun made harsher by the cutting of the trees where a new shelter is built.

The images that once existed in our minds have now been colonised by structures that do not belong here, geographically and ecologically challenging our sense of belonging in the city.

Several participants also spoke of the constant construction in Gangtok. They observed that the suggested route, which was once scenic with multiple viewpoints that offered not just aesthetics but also a respite from their daily lives, had now devolved into an urban jungle. This isn’t nostalgia so much as a changed relationship with the land: as the landscape shifts, so does the memoryscape. The images that once existed in our minds have now been colonised by structures that do not belong here, geographically and ecologically challenging our sense of belonging in the city.

Widely quoted and rightly so, change is inevitable, but only constructive and favourable when it takes into account those who experience that change. Change rooted in people’s experiences is the only kind that is palatable; otherwise, it risks becoming an unnecessary embellishment. Communities must feel responsible for change, and for one to assume that responsibility and accountability, they must be made part of the discourse around changes. Before one realises, our concerns are packed into small boxes and sold back to us as dreams and aspirations of rebuilding a place. Between windows, construction sheeting, shopfronts, labour, flags, motifs, lamp-posts, umbrellas, and posters, a city is experienced through its objects. And the removal, or worse, the dis-consideration of one’s experiences of the city from larger plans of city-planning suggests that things are being done to the city and not with it.

Concluding Thoughts: Gangtok as a Giant Construction Site 

It bears reiterating that what’s recounted here is drawn from a more extensive, and necessarily incomplete, archive of experiences. This essay is as much a critique of the SCM as an attempt to render visible the repository of memories and lived experiences that residents carry of their city. Also, how these are being reshaped in the process. Yet, this reshaping has rarely been a negotiated process. The SCM, in its execution, has largely proceeded without meaningful public deliberation, treating the city as a site to be optimised rather than a space to be collectively imagined.

Holston and Appadurai (1996) contend that citizenship relies on the notion of a community of shared intention and commensurable citizens, which assumes that this community is devoted to forming a shared life suited to the conditions of modernity. However, this also assumes that all people are similar. Here, the idea of shared culture topples over since, in the face of modernity, one realises that citizens are not commensurable. This incommensurability among citizens, then, is not merely a social or a political fact, but fundamentally also a spatial one. If citizens cannot be assumed to share a single, unified intention, then neither can the spaces they inhabit be understood as singular.

But as the walk participants’ accounts made clear, what is delivered instead is not exclusion in any overt sense, but a steady, almost imperceptible pressure to adapt, to find workarounds for what is built without them in mind.

Let's consider this space “under construction.” The objective of the SCM does not meet Massey’s (2005) description of space as ‘the sphere of coexisting heterogeneity’ influenced by the co-occurrence of multiplicity. Without multiplicity, no space really exists at all. Sikkim’s push for tourism as an engine of growth has shaped Gangtok’s image as much as the Mission has (Thatal, 2023).

Finally, the promise of infrastructure in Gangtok has been of inclusivity and convenience: spaces that would let Gangtokians become their fuller selves. But as the walk participants’ accounts made clear, what is delivered instead is not exclusion in any overt sense, but a steady, almost imperceptible pressure to adapt, to find workarounds for what is built without them in mind. This is not the inclusivity that was promised. I do not raise this to argue for keeping Gangtok as it is, or as it was, blindly challenging all development projects; the very idea of a ‘pristine’ place reeks of privilege, and anyone who has lived in one knows it means a constant negotiation between surviving and being seen. Rather, this is an attempt at recalibrating our aspirations, as a society, toward a better future for our city. Our identities are inherently attached to a place, and when a place changes faster than we can make sense of it, we lose facets of ourselves before we even recognise them. With urban redesign comes the redesign of the social fabric of the city we all share, actualised in how the everyday objects around us are transformed. Every beautification drive has a price, most often paid by the land we stand on and the air we breathe. The question was never whether development is happening, but who gets to imagine the city being built, and whether residents are made part of it, or merely informed of it after. If Gangtok is to keep becoming, it must do so with its people.

Perhaps, then, to truly see Gangtok for what it is, and not merely as the SCM envisions it, one must learn to do both: to look up, as Baba urged, and down, as Aama cautioned, holding together what is imagined and what is already underfoot.

Note:

Some of the images taken by participants of the walk can be accessed at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WTm73dvjboo4jTUaC8ZJMnIWmtz1jG7I?usp=sharing

All images have been uploaded by the makers with prior consent sought and the use of the images made aware. Do not use these images without consent, and without rightfully crediting the makers.

¹ A relatively busy, centrally located neighbourhood along the NH-10

²Gangtok Bazaar 

³ Vis-a-vis the Orchidarium

Bibliography: (217 words)

1. About the mission | Smartcities. (n.d.). Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India. Retrieved July 1, 2026, from https://smartcities.gov.in/about-the-mission
2. Anand, N., Gupta, A., & Appel, H. (Eds). (2018). The Promise of Infrastructure. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv12101q3
3. Appadurai, A. (2004). The capacity to aspire: culture and the terms of recognition. In V. Rao & M. Walton (Eds.), Culture and Public Action. Stanford University Press.
4. Dourish, P., & Bell, G. (2007). The Infrastructure of Experience and the Experience of Infrastructure: Meaning and Structure in Everyday Encounters with Space. Environment and Planning B Planning and Design, 34(3), 414–430. https://doi.org/10.1068/b32035t
5. Gangtok Smart City Development Limited. (n.d.). Gangtok Smart City Development Limited. Retrieved July 1, 2026, from https://smartcitygangtok.com/
6. Habermas, J. (1991). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. MIT Press (MA).
7. Harvey, D. (1985). The urbanization of capital. Johns Hopkins University Press.
8. Holston, J., & Appadurai, A. (1998). Cities and citizenship. Public Culture, 8, 187–204. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw70j
9. Massey, D. (2005). For space. SAGE Publications Limited.
10. Simone, A. (2004). People as infrastructure: Intersecting fragments in Johannesburg. Public Culture, 16(3), 407–429. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-16-3-407
11. Thatal, A. (2023). Café Culture: Exploring the roles of cafés in cultural production among the urban middle class in Gangtok, Sikkim. [MA Thesis]. Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Museums play a vital role in safeguarding and interpreting cultural heritage. Through museum collections, people gain insight into the objects used in everyday life, the artistic expressions of different periods, and the technological and cultural developments that have shaped human civilization. By preserving and displaying these collections, museums bridge the past and the present, allowing people to better understand how history continues to influence contemporary society.

Museums play a vital role in safeguarding and interpreting cultural heritage.

The long-term preservation of museum collections depends on effective conservation practices. In the context of museums, conservation refers to all measures and actions undertaken to safeguard cultural heritage. The conservation process is generally divided into three complementary approaches: preventive conservation, remedial conservation, and restoration. While remedial conservation and restoration involve direct treatment of damaged objects, preventive conservation focuses on avoiding or minimizing deterioration before it occurs. Its primary objective is to preserve an object's current condition, minimize the rate of deterioration, and reduce the need for costly and often irreversible restoration treatments. Preventive conservation, therefore, emphasizes creating and maintaining suitable environmental conditions rather than directly altering the object itself. By managing the environment surrounding museum collections, it is possible to significantly extend their lifespan while preserving their authenticity and integrity.

All cultural objects inevitably undergo deterioration over time. However, the rate and extent of deterioration are greatly influenced by external environmental and human factors, collectively known as the agents of deterioration. These agents represent the primary risks to museum collections and include physical forces, theft and vandalism, fire, water, pests, pollutants, light, incorrect temperature, incorrect relative humidity, and dissociation - the loss of information or separation of objects from their documentation. Understanding these risks is fundamental to the preventive conservation process because it enables museums to identify potential threats and take  appropriate measures before irreversible damage occurs.

An essential aspect of preventive conservation is understanding the materials from which objects are made. Different materials respond differently to environmental conditions and, therefore, require different methods of care. Museum objects are broadly classified into organic and inorganic materials. Organic materials, such as wood, paper, leather, textiles, bone, and ivory, originate from living organisms and are generally more susceptible to fluctuations in temperature, humidity, biological attack, and light exposure. In contrast, inorganic materials, including stone, ceramics, glass, and metals require different conservation strategies. Correctly identifying an object's material composition allows conservators to predict its vulnerabilities and develop appropriate preventive measures.

An essential aspect of preventive conservation is understanding the materials from which objects are made. Different materials respond differently to environmental conditions and, therefore, require different methods of care.

Preventive conservation is fundamentally a process of risk management, aiming to minimize the impact of the agents of deterioration before significant damage occurs. A widely accepted approach involves five progressive levels of risk management: avoid, block, detect, respond, and recover. These levels are arranged from the least to the most interventive, emphasizing that preventing damage is always preferable to treating its consequences. For example, the risk of fire can first be avoided by prohibiting smoking within museum buildings, blocked through the installation of fire-resistant doors and firefighting equipment, using smoke and heat detectors, responded to through well-planned emergency procedures, and, only as a last resort, recovered through conservation treatment after damage has occurred. Applying these principles to all agents of deterioration forms the foundation of preventive conservation, enabling museums to protect their collections in a systematic, sustainable, and cost-effective manner. 

The key measures of preventive conservation are monitoring the temperature, relative humidity and pollutants of the environment surrounding the artifact. The documentation of objects, proper handling, maintenance like dusting and cleaning, re-organization of the collection,  archival housing, integrated pest management, emergency preparedness and response; handling procedures and treating hazardous materials are important aspects of preventive conservation. 

Why is Preventive Conservation important in  Sikkim? 

Preventive Conservation preserves our cultural identity and heritage, protecting it from deterioration, restoring and stabilizing damaged artworks, and is an important process that ensures the long-term survival of cultural treasures. Sikkim has rare items like indigenous artifacts of different communities. Many items are irreplaceable, such as religious manuscripts,  thangkas, religious musical instruments, daily equipment, material culture and other indigenous objects. Some of these objects are no longer in use and are no longer produced. 

The problems faced in Sikkim are monsoon humidity, mold growth, pests, soot, high seismic and fire risk which threaten and damage to the collection. The people of Sikkim can use preventive conservation to care for their objects of cultural heritage by using simple steps like dry cleaning, maintaining them from time to time, documenting their objects, and protecting them from pests.  Well-preserved monasteries, museums, and heritage sites attract visitors and provide educational opportunities, contributing to the state's economy and cultural awareness. 

Sikkim is home to ancient monasteries, manuscripts, thangka paintings, sculptures, and traditional artifacts that are vulnerable to deterioration due to the region's humid climate, heavy rainfall, and changing temperatures. Preventive conservation involves maintaining proper storage conditions, controlling humidity, ensuring good ventilation, and regular cleaning and monitoring the collections to prevent damage from mold, insects and rodents. It also includes disaster preparedness measures to reduce the impact of earthquakes, floods, and landslides, which are common in the region. Preventive conservation is more cost-effective than restoration. 

Preventive Conservation practised in Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, Gangtok, Sikkim 

One of the important museums in Sikkim is the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology. It has a collection of old thangka paintings, sculptures, scriptures, coins amongst many historical artifacts. They are from the state as well as from the neighbouring countries like Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan. Preventive conservation is also used in the museum by regulating the relative humidity and temperature and monitoring. A dehumidifier is installed in the museum and is used on some days. The racks are placed  above one foot away from the ground.  Some of the boxes that have manuscripts have bags of natural herbs like clove to keep pests away. The thangkas are kept away from natural light as light  damages the paintings. The collection of the museum is well maintained and preserved. 

Conservation Workshops in Sikkim State Museum and Archives

The Sikkim State Museum and Archives has been conducting workshops in conservation in collaboration with conservation institutes like The National Research Laboratory for Conservation of Cultural Property (NRLC), Tata Trusts Art Conservation Initiative and Himalayan Institute for Heritage and Art Conservation (HIMSHACO). 

Recently, Tata Trusts Art Conservation Initiative, in partnership with the Kolkata Institute of Art Conservation and the Sikkim State Archives, the Government of Sikkim conducted a three month training workshop, between October 2024 to January 2025, in the Preventive Conservation of Cultural Material Heritage and Architectural Decorations. The workshop gave training to the staff of museums, scholars and various monks from different monasteries.

RE-ORG Method

Reorganisation also known as re-org method is a part of preventive conservation which is a step-by-step approach to help those who work with cultural and heritage collections to reorganize their current storage rooms, with the use of existing resources.

Reorganization of Reserve Storage of Sikkim State Archives

Prior to the reorg, the storage area had several issues that were harmful for the objects of cultural heritage and the overall condition of the space. It was in a state of significant disrepair. The combination of fungal and pest infestations, high humidity, improper storage practices, and lack of maintenance presented serious risks to the collection. Immediate action was necessary to restore the space, preserve the objects, and establish an organized, well maintained environment for the proper care of the collection.

Improvements Following the Reorganization of the Storage Area

All objects were thoroughly cleaned, packaged, and stored with appropriate support to prevent physical damage. The relative humidity was reduced from 90% to 60% following the installation of an exhaust fan. The storage is now organized in a way that allows objects to be easily accessed and identified.  The fungus and pest-infested wall has been disinfected, eliminating the source of contamination and ensuring a healthier storage environment. No objects are stored on the floor anymore. The storage room now looks clean and well-maintained. The storage area has been optimized for space, making more efficient use of available storage capacity. This has not only improved accessibility but also allowed for future addition of new items. Both temperature and relative humidity are now monitored daily to maintain optimal conditions for the collection. The re-org of the Reserve Storage Area of Sikkim State Archives and Museum has successfully transformed the storage area into a well-maintained, organized, and secure environment for the objects. 

Exhibition and Awareness

An exhibition on the workshop highlighted the preventive conservation steps taken during the training course creating awareness about the importance of preventive conservation. 

Reflections on the Training

In a region like Sikkim, which is rich in culture and tradition, material heritage plays a vital role in shaping our identity and preserving our history. This training course highlighted the importance of preventive conservation in protecting our cultural material heritage. We were introduced to the value of our heritage, the significance of documentation, and the various agents of deterioration that threaten our artifacts and its mitigation with disaster risk preparedness. More importantly, we learned practical measures to combat these threats.

The course equipped us with knowledge and skill to implement effective preventive conservation practices. Simple steps, such as dry cleaning, packaging, reorganizing, and environmental control, have contributed to the preservation of the artifacts of the State State Museum and Archives in Sikkim. Through the training programme we learned the basics of science, the history of Sikkim, environmental studies, preventive conservation of paper, photographic materials and textiles. We learnt the basics of photography and photographic documentation, handling of objects of the museum, the re-org process, disaster and risk preparedness, assessment, management and the setting up of an exhibition. We had field visits to the Directorate of Handicraft and Handlooms,  the Botanical Survey of India, Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, Enchey Monastery and Tsuklhakhang Royal Palace Monastery which deepened our knowledge and understanding of our heritage. At the end of the training, we all worked together as a team to reorganize the Reserve Storage at the Sikkim State Museum. The training ended with presentations and reflections from the participants and curating an exhibition to create awareness amongst the people of Sikkim. 

Preventive Conservation Strategies for Sikkim 

Preventive conservation strategies in Sikkim should combine scientific conservation methods with indigenous knowledge and active community participation to ensure the long-term preservation of the state's cultural heritage. Maintaining stable environmental conditions through proper ventilation, humidity control, and suitable storage materials is essential, particularly for manuscripts, textiles, paintings, and wooden artifacts that are highly vulnerable to Sikkim's humid climate and prolonged monsoon season. Low-cost preventive measures such as improved ventilation systems, dehumidifiers, exhaust fans, moisture absorbing materials like silica gel, regular monitoring of temperature and relative humidity, and seasonal maintenance schedules, including occasional sun-drying of objects when appropriate, can effectively reduce mold growth and moisture-related deterioration. Regular cleaning, integrated pest management, and periodic condition assessments further help prevent damage from insects, rodents, fungi, and other biological agents.

An important aspect of preventive conservation in Sikkim is the integration of indigenous and traditional knowledge systems with modern conservation practices. Traditional communities have long developed effective methods for preserving sacred objects, textiles, manuscripts, and religious artifacts despite challenging climatic conditions. These practices, including seasonal maintenance rituals and traditional methods of handling sacred objects, have been passed down through generations and continue to play a significant role in heritage preservation. Encouraging culturally rooted conservation practices while incorporating scientific approaches recommended by conservation professionals provide a balanced and sustainable strategy.

Community-based conservation is another key approach to preserving Sikkim's heritage. Monks, caretakers, local artisans, and surrounding communities serve as the living custodians of monasteries, temples, and other heritage sites. Their active participation in decision-making and preservation practices makes conservation more effective because they possess intimate knowledge of the collections, their materials, ritual significance, and traditional methods of care. Collaboration between conservation professionals, research institutions, conservation laboratories, and monastic communities can further strengthen preservation efforts. While conservation experts contribute scientific knowledge, technical guidance, and appropriate conservation methods, local communities provide valuable insights into traditional care practices, seasonal environmental changes, material use, and religious customs, all of which are essential for developing culturally sensitive conservation plans.

Capacity building is equally important for the sustainable preservation of heritage.

Specialized training programmes should be conducted for monks, museum staff, caretakers, artisans, and local communities to enhance their knowledge of preventive conservation techniques, proper handling methods, environmental monitoring, emergency preparedness, and documentation practices. Public awareness programmes highlighting the importance of cultural heritage and preventive conservation should also be encouraged to foster greater community responsibility for heritage preservation.

Digital preservation initiatives provide an additional safeguard for Sikkim's cultural heritage. Photographic documentation, digital cataloguing of collections, detailed documentation of murals, sculptures, manuscripts, and architectural features, as well as recording oral histories and traditional knowledge, create permanent records that can support research, restoration, and recovery in the event of disasters, theft, or material loss.

Disaster preparedness should form an integral component of preventive conservation in Sikkim, particularly because the state is highly vulnerable to earthquakes, landslides, floods, and fires. Many monasteries and heritage structures in the Himalayan region have suffered significant losses due to such disasters. Comprehensive documentation of collections before disasters occur is therefore essential. Heritage buildings should be regularly inspected and maintained to ensure their structural stability, while electrical systems should be checked frequently to prevent short circuits. Care should also be taken with the use of open lamps and candles inside monasteries and heritage buildings. Fire extinguishers, sand buckets, and other basic firefighting equipment should be readily available in museums, monasteries, and other heritage sites, and staff should receive training in emergency response procedures. Developing disaster preparedness and emergency response plans, together with proper maintenance of heritage buildings and secure storage and display systems, will greatly enhance the long-term protection of Sikkim's cultural heritage.

Bibliography 

• https://www.sikkim.gov.in/departments/forest-environment-and-wildlife-department/biodiversity 
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/vacuum-sealing
• ICCROM
• RE-ORG: A Method to Reorganize Museum Storage, ICCROM
• https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-art-reduces-stress-major-scientific-study 
• https://www.fieldmuseum.org/science/research/area/conserving-collections/preventive-conservation
• https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/agents-deterioration.html
• Preventive Conservation for Museums International Museum Academy Myanmar https://www.britishcouncil.org.mm/sites/default/files/toolkit_preventive_conservation_for_museums_final_web_english_372020.pdf
• https://www.unesco.org/en/query-list/c/cultural-heritage

This timeless Nepali proverb reminds us that genuine effort alone yields genuine rewards. Few livelihoods embody this wisdom more beautifully than beekeeping.

Across the Himalayan foothills, generations of beekeepers have worked in rhythm with nature's calendar, observing flowering cycles, reading weather patterns and nurturing bee colonies through changing seasons. Their relationship with bees is built not on domination but on cooperation. The harvest is more than honey; it is sustenance, healing, culture and memory. Each drop carries the taste of wildflowers, forest edges, village gardens, and the landscapes that sustain both pollinators and people.

Their relationship with bees is built not on domination but on cooperation.

In the tea-growing hills of Darjeeling, this enduring practice continues to buzz quietly beneath the shadows of sprawling tea estates. Here, amidst one of the world's most celebrated tea landscapes, a community of beekeepers is demonstrating how traditional knowledge, scientific innovation and conservation can come together to create a more resilient future.

A Livelihood Hidden in Plain Sight

The tea landscapes of Kurseong, Mirik and Darjeeling are often associated with mist-covered slopes, often shrouded with exotics like Camellia sinensis (tea plant) and Cryptomeria japonica (Dhuppi). Yet beneath this familiar story lies another one; that of beekeepers tending colonies of the indigenous Asian / Indian honeybee, Apis cerana indica.

Today, this story is becoming increasingly important. Darjeeling's tea industry, long the economic backbone of the hills, faces multiple challenges including but not limited to fluctuating global markets and climate variability. For thousands of tea garden workers and their families, these pressures translate into uncertain livelihoods and limited opportunities for income enhancement.

In this context, diversified livelihoods are no longer merely desirable; they are essential. Beekeeping offers one such opportunity. It requires relatively little land, modest investment and can be integrated seamlessly into the tea landscape without competing for productive space.

Unlike many agricultural enterprises, beekeeping requires remarkably little space.

A recent baseline assessment conducted among beekeepers from Ambootia Tea Estate, Makaibari Tea Estate and neighbouring villages revealed that beekeeping serves as an important supplementary livelihood for many households. Most participants were tea workers or depended on casual daily wage labour for their primary income. For these families, beekeeping offers an opportunity to diversify livelihoods without requiring large landholdings or substantial investments.

Unlike many agricultural enterprises, beekeeping requires remarkably little space. A few hives tucked beside a home or near a kitchen garden can produce valuable honey while simultaneously supporting pollination across the landscape.

The assessment also revealed that the average beekeeper manages only a small number of colonies. While some households maintain larger apiaries, most operate just one or two hives. This reflects the reality that beekeeping in the region remains largely small-scale and household-based, often integrated with other livelihood activities rather than functioning as a standalone enterprise.

Guardians of Indigenous Bees

The star of this story is not merely honey, but the bee itself.

The indigenous Apis cerana, commonly known as the Asian honeybee or Indian honeybee, has co-evolved with Himalayan ecosystems for centuries. Unlike imported honeybee species that are often promoted in commercial apiculture, Apis cerana is adapted to local climatic conditions, seasonal fluctuations and native flowering plants.

The indigenous Apis cerana, commonly known as the Asian honeybee or Indian honeybee, has co-evolved with Himalayan ecosystems for centuries.

Traditional beekeepers have long understood these relationships. Their knowledge encompasses where bees forage, which plants flower in different seasons, how colonies behave before swarming and when honey can be harvested without compromising colony survival.

Today, this knowledge remains invaluable. Yet modern challenges; including habitat simplification, declining floral diversity, changing weather patterns, and chemical use in horticulture and floriculture require additional skills and support.

This is where scientific apiculture enters the picture.

WWF-India has been supporting beekeepers across the Darjeeling tea landscape through a combination of training, supporting and monitoring. Since 2024, more than ninety beekeepers from Ambootia Tea Estate, Makaibari Tea Estate and neighbouring villages have been trained in scientific apiculture and improved colony management.

WWF-India has been supporting beekeepers across the Darjeeling tea landscape through a combination of training, supporting and monitoring.

The support extends beyond training alone. Beekeepers have been provided with ISI-standard bee boxes, protective equipment such as bee veils and gloves and access to community-owned honey extractors that enable hygienic and efficient post-harvest processing. WWF-India is also working closely with beekeepers to co-develop standard operating procedures (SOPs) for honey production, extraction, handling and storage. These measures aim to improve quality, consistency and traceability, much critical for establishing a premium community-owned honey enterprise.

Importantly, the objective is not to replace traditional wisdom. Rather, it is to combine generations of local knowledge with scientific understanding to create more resilient and productive beekeeping systems.

Tradition meets Innovation

For generations, many Himalayan beekeepers maintained colonies in traditional log hives crafted from hollowed tree trunks. These hives remain culturally significant and have played an important role in conserving indigenous bees.

However, modern frame hives such as the Newton Hive and adapted Langstroth-type systems offer several advantages. Unlike traditional log hives, frame hives allow individual combs to be inspected without disturbing the entire colony. This enables beekeepers to monitor colony health, detect disease or pest problems early and undertake timely management interventions.

Unlike traditional log hives, frame hives allow individual combs to be inspected without disturbing the entire colony.

Frame hives also facilitate non-destructive honey harvesting. Honey can be extracted from selected frames, without damaging the comb and allowing colonies to retain adequate food reserves. This reduces stress on the bees and supports stronger colony survival. Research from comparable Himalayan landscapes like Bhutan has shown that Apis cerana colonies managed in modern frame hives can produce higher honey yields than those maintained in traditional hives under similar conditions.

For many beekeepers in Darjeeling, the transition is therefore not a departure from tradition but an evolution of it. The bees remain the same, the ecological knowledge remains relevant and the relationship between beekeeper and colony endures. What changes are the tools that help keepers care for their colonies more effectively and harvest honey more sustainably.

Honey with a Story

For consumers, honey is often just another product on a shelf. For Himalayan beekeepers, however, honey is the reflection of a place.

The multifloral honey produced in Darjeeling's tea landscapes carries the signature of a diverse ecological mosaic; tea gardens, homestead gardens, forest edges, wild shrubs, flowering trees and native understory plants. Each flowering season contributes to the flavour, aroma and character of the harvest.

Each flowering season contributes to the flavour, aroma and character of the harvest.

Most beekeepers in the region harvest honey twice a year, during the spring and autumn flowering seasons. Their honey is typically sold directly within villages, neighbouring communities or local markets. Some producers travel to nearby towns such as Kurseong, Sonada and Sittong to find buyers.

Despite the high quality and unique origin of their product, many beekeepers receive relatively modest returns. The baseline assessment found that honey is commonly sold without branding, labelling or formal market positioning. As a result, producers often capture only a fraction of the value that consumers are willing to pay for premium indigenous bee honey.

This gap presents both a challenge and an opportunity.

Around the world, consumers are increasingly seeking products that are authentic, traceable, minimally processed and environmentally responsible. Darjeeling's Apis cerana honey possesses all of these qualities naturally. With appropriate quality assurance, branding and market access, community producers have the potential to capture greater value from their harvests while retaining ownership of the enterprise.

Pollinators and Landscapes

The future of beekeeping depends on far more than hive management.

Healthy bee populations require healthy landscapes. Pollinators need continuous access to nectar and pollen sources throughout the year. In landscapes dominated by monoculture plantations, this requirement can become a significant challenge.

Healthy bee populations require healthy landscapes. Pollinators need continuous access to nectar and pollen sources throughout the year.

Recognising this reality, the emerging vision for Darjeeling's honey enterprise should extend beyond production alone and seek to strengthen the ecological foundations that make honey production possible in the first place.

Reduced reliance on chemical herbicides and pesticides can create safer environments for bees while improving broader ecosystem health.

Native flowering trees, shrubs and herbs can help provide forage across seasons. Homesteads, community lands and farm boundaries can become important pollinator habitats. Reduced reliance on chemical herbicides and pesticides can create safer environments for bees while improving broader ecosystem health.

In this sense, every hive becomes more than a source of honey. It becomes an indicator of ecological wellbeing.

When pollinator populations thrive, it suggests that flowering resources remain abundant, landscapes retain diversity, and communities continue to maintain connections with their natural surroundings. When bee populations decline, they often signal deeper ecological challenges that require attention.

The Keepers of the Buzz

Perhaps the most important lesson emerging from the tea landscapes of Darjeeling is that conservation and livelihoods need not be competing priorities.

The beekeepers of Ambootia, Makaibari and neighbouring villages are demonstrating that economic opportunity can be aligned with ecological stewardship. By linking income generation to the health of pollinator populations, communities gain a direct stake in maintaining biodiversity and restoring habitats.

The beekeepers of Ambootia, Makaibari and neighbouring villages are demonstrating that economic opportunity can be aligned with ecological stewardship.

The success of this approach depends not only on bees but on people ‘the keepers’ who monitor colonies, share knowledge, observe flowering cycles and continue traditions that have endured across generations.

Their work often goes unnoticed. Yet every thriving colony, every successful harvest and every spoonful of honey tells a story of patience, care, and coexistence.

In the hills, honey has never been only about production. It is about sustaining relationships between people and pollinators, forests and farms, tradition and innovation.

As the buzz of Apis cerana continues across the tea landscapes of Darjeeling, it carries with it a hopeful message: that resilient livelihoods and thriving ecosystems can grow together, one hive at a time.

The future of these landscapes may well depend on preserving these sweet connections between the pollinators and their keepers.

Abstract

This is the second of a two-part article revisiting the Lhotshampa crisis. Part I traced the historical formation of the Lhotshampa community in southern Bhutan, its administrative unmaking through the 1985 Citizenship Act and the 1988-89 census, the testimonial archive through which the crisis has most often been narrated, and its place within a wider South Asian pattern of exclusionary citizenship politics. Part II picks up where that account left off, examining why fifteen rounds of bilateral verification between Bhutan and Nepal failed to produce a single repatriation; why the third-country resettlement of more than 113,000 refugees between 2007 and 2016, though a considerable humanitarian achievement, has been widely misread as a resolution of the underlying citizenship dispute rather than its geographic redistribution; and why that dispute reopened, with unusual clarity, in 2025-2026, when the United States began deporting Bhutanese-born refugees whom Bhutan itself refused to receive. A final section examines the continued detention, and in one recent case the death in custody, of Bhutan's remaining political prisoners, before closing with a modest, jointly directed recommendation for the institutions that oversaw resettlement as a supposedly durable solution.

Failed Repatriation and the Politics of Verification

For more than a decade after the camps in eastern Nepal filled in the early 1990s, repatriation - not resettlement-was the explicit and overwhelmingly preferred objective of both the refugees themselves and the government of Nepal, which lacks any domestic legal framework for refugee protection and is not a signatory to either the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol (Neikirk & Nickson 2024). Bhutan and Nepal conducted some fifteen rounds of bilateral negotiations over this period without producing a single repatriation (Human Rights Watch 2007). The most consequential of these negotiations, a Joint Verification Team established in 2001, spent roughly two years assessing the case files of refugees in a single camp, Khudunabari, sorting them into seven categories ranging from bona fide Bhutanese citizens forcibly evicted through several intermediate classifications to non-Bhutanese (Human Rights Watch 2007; Neikirk & Nickson 2024). In 2003, Bhutan announced that roughly 75 percent of those reviewed were found to have a legitimate claim to Bhutanese origin (Neikirk & Nickson 2024), a finding that, on its face, substantially undercuts the government's broader public position that the great majority of camp residents were not genuine citizens, and that ought to have provided a workable basis for at least a phased repatriation.

Bhutan and Nepal conducted some fifteen rounds of bilateral negotiations over this period without producing a single repatriation (Human Rights Watch 2007).

No repatriation followed. The reasons are best understood as a convergence of incentive failures rather than a single act of bad faith. For Bhutan, the political costs of admitting a precedent-setting return of even a partial refugee population-implicitly conceding the citizenship claims the state had spent the preceding decade denying-were substantial, particularly given the absence of any external mechanism capable of compelling compliance: Bhutan is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, or the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, and the international legal venues theoretically available-the International Court of Justice, which requires state consent to jurisdiction, and the International Criminal Court, whose jurisdiction in any case postdates the relevant events-offered the refugees no practical avenue of legal compulsion (Neikirk & Nickson 2024). For Nepal, hosting the camps for over a decade while declining to grant local integration created its own perverse incentive to treat resettlement, rather than repatriation, as the path of least resistance once it became available. For the wider international community, sustained diplomatic pressure on Bhutan-a small, strategically unthreatening, and reputationally cooperative state-never developed the urgency that comparable refugee-producing crises elsewhere generated, a disparity that refugee advocacy organizations have explicitly noted in their own policy submissions (Neikirk & Nickson 2024).

It would be a mistake to read this account as suggesting that verification and resettlement were morally equivalent paths, chosen with equal legitimacy by all parties. The shift from repatriation to resettlement as the international community's preferred "durable solution," formalized once UNHCR and the IOM began coordinated third-country resettlement in 2007, represented in practice an acceptance that the underlying citizenship dispute would not be resolved-only that its humanitarian consequences could be managed by relocating the people affected by it elsewhere. Whether that managed displacement should be understood as a genuine solution to the crisis, or merely as its geographic redistribution, is the question taken up in the following section.

Resettlement as Solution? The Politics of a "Successful" Humanitarian Programme

Between November 2007 and 2016, the coordinated resettlement of Bhutanese refugees from the camps of eastern Nepal became, by volume, one of the largest refugee resettlement operations the UNHCR and IOM had ever undertaken, eventually relocating more than 113,000 people to eight countries- the United States receiving the largest share, followed by Canada, Australia, and several European states (International Organization for Migration 2015; Sikkim Express 2025). By any conventional humanitarian metric, the programme was a substantial success: families who had spent fifteen to twenty years in bamboo-and-thatch camp housing, dependent on rationed food and without secure legal status, gained citizenship pathways, education, and employment in stable democracies. It is for this reason that most general-audience accounts of the Lhotshampa crisis written in the past decade treat resettlement as its effective conclusion.

The most rigorous recent fieldwork on the programme's reception among the refugees themselves complicates this conclusion considerably. Neikirk and Nickson's (2024) decade-long ethnographic study of Bhutanese refugees in Nepal and Australia found that a meaningful share of the population, particularly older refugees who had spent the most active years of their lives advocating for return, did not experience resettlement as a justice outcome at all, but rather as an alternative to one: durable and materially beneficial, but categorically different from the repatriation and citizenship restoration they had originally sought. Some refugees interviewed for that study described declining resettlement specifically because accepting it felt, to them, like forfeiting a claim to Bhutanese nationality that they considered more important than the material improvements resettlement offered; others who did resettle described the programme less as a right they had been legally empowered to pursue than as something closer to a lottery, granted for good conduct in the camps rather than secured through their own decades of advocacy (Neikirk & Nickson 2024). This is not a criticism of the resettlement programme's humanitarian value, which by any measure was considerable, but it is a necessary corrective to the assumption, common in retrospective journalism, that resettlement and justice were synonymous, or that the underlying citizenship dispute was resolved simply because most of its victims were no longer physically present in the camps where it had been most visible.

It is for this reason that most general-audience accounts of the Lhotshampa crisis written in the past decade treat resettlement as its effective conclusion.

That assumption also obscures who, precisely, resettlement left behind. By the time UNHCR formally ended direct camp assistance in 2016, an estimated 6,500 to 7,000 refugees- disproportionately elderly or medically infirm, and in many cases reluctant to leave family graves, ancestral claims, or simply the remaining hope of return-remained in two consolidated camps, Beldangi and Sanischare, in Nepal's Jhapa and Morang districts (Sikkim Express 2025; Neikirk & Nickson 2024). Without UNHCR's direct support, this residual population has been left dependent on informal and frequently exploitative labour, lacking the legal status that would allow either local integration in Nepal, which the Nepali government has consistently declined to extend, citing its own non-signatory status under international refugee law, or any renewed claim on Bhutan (Sikkim Express 2025). Their situation is, in the strict legal sense, indistinguishable from the situation of every Lhotshampa refugee in the early 1990s: stateless, without a recognized claim on any government, dependent entirely on the residual goodwill of a host state under no binding obligation to provide for them. The resettlement programme did not so much resolve this condition as reduce, by more than ninety percent, the number of people experiencing it- an achievement worth honouring without mistaking it for a closed case.

The Second Exile: U.S. Deportations and the Reopening of Statelessness, 2025–2026

The clearest evidence that the Lhotshampa crisis was never definitively closed by resettlement emerged not from Bhutan or Nepal but from an unrelated shift in United States immigration enforcement policy. Beginning in March 2025, U.S. immigration authorities deported a number of Bhutanese-born refugees-individuals who had been lawfully resettled in the United States under the UNHCR-coordinated programme nearly two decades earlier, most following criminal convictions for which they had already served their sentences-to Bhutan, treating them, for deportation purposes, as Bhutanese nationals (Kathmandu Post, 11 April 2025). Until that point, U.S. immigration enforcement records showed no completed deportations to Bhutan in years, precisely because the Bhutanese government had consistently declined to accept the return of people it did not recognize as its citizens. What changed in 2025 was not Bhutan's underlying position on the refugees' citizenship, which it has never altered, but the diplomatic leverage the U.S. government was willing and able to exert to compel a small number of third countries to accept deportees they had previously refused.

The clearest evidence that the Lhotshampa crisis was never definitively closed by resettlement emerged not from Bhutan or Nepal but from an unrelated shift in United States immigration enforcement policy.

The result was a sequence that exposes, with unusual clarity, the structural fragility of "durable solutions" achieved through resettlement rather than through resolution of the underlying citizenship dispute. At least eighteen individuals were deported from the United States to Bhutan in this period; Bhutanese authorities, on arrival, confiscated their travel documents, declined to register them as citizens, and transported a number of them to the Bhutan-India border, from where they crossed into India and ultimately into Nepal-the only country among the three with which they retained any prior residential connection, however informal (Kathmandu Post, 11 April 2025). Having entered Nepal without valid documentation, several of the deportees- including Ashok Gurung, Roshan Tamang, Ashish Subedi, and Sandeep Darji-were arrested by Nepali immigration authorities at or near the Beldangi camp on charges of illegal entry (Kathmandu Post, 17 April 2025). Nepal, as noted in Part I, is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and has no domestic refugee law; its government initially moved toward deportation or prosecution before a habeas corpus petition reached the Supreme Court.

The court's intervention, in a pair of orders issued in April 2025, is itself an instructive episode in regional jurisprudence on statelessness. An interim order by Justice Hari Prasad Phuyal on 17 April halted the deportations, citing Nepal's obligations under the Convention Against Torture and the customary international law principle of non-refoulement-obligations the court applied despite Nepal's non-membership in the refugee-specific conventions that would more directly govern the case (Kathmandu Post, 17 April 2025). A subsequent joint-bench ruling on 24 April, by Justices Bal Krishna Dhakal and Nitya Nanda Pandey, partially granted the petition, ordering that the individuals be transferred to their original refugee camps rather than held in immigration detention, while directing further investigation into their status. The practical effect of these rulings was neither repatriation, nor resettlement, nor formal recognition of any citizenship-merely a judicially supervised return to precisely the same stateless, camp-bound condition from which these individuals' families had been "durably" resettled nearly twenty years earlier.

It is worth being precise about what this episode does and does not demonstrate. It does not establish that the U.S. resettlement programme was poorly designed, or that resettlement as a policy instrument is inherently unstable; the great majority of resettled Bhutanese refugees, including the deportees' own extended families in most reported cases, remain settled and have in many instances acquired the citizenship of their resettlement country, which would ordinarily extinguish any renewed risk of statelessness. What it demonstrates is narrower but, we think, more analytically important: that for individuals whose legal personhood originates in a contested or denied national citizenship, the protection conferred by a "durable solution" achieved through a third country's domestic policy remains contingent on that country's continued willingness to extend it. When a resettlement country's own immigration enforcement priorities shift, as occurred in the United States after 2025, a person whose original statelessness was never formally resolved-merely relocated and overwritten by a second country's legal status-can find that underlying condition reactivated with very little warning and no remaining recourse to the country that first dispossessed them. Bhutan's refusal to accept its own former citizens in 2025, more than three decades after denaturalizing them, is among the clearest possible confirmations that the citizenship dispute at the heart of this crisis was never actually settled by anyone's resettlement, court order, or verification exercise; it simply went, for most of two decades, unobserved by an international community that had moved on to describing the matter in the past tense.

Political Imprisonment and the Persistence of the Past

A second, longer-running indication that the crisis remains open is the continued detention of Bhutanese political prisoners, almost all of them Lhotshampa, whose cases originate in the same period of unrest described in Part I. According to Human Rights Watch's most recent published accounting, at least thirty individuals remained imprisoned as of mid-2026 under sentences connected to the late-1980s and 1990s protests or to a smaller cohort arrested in 2008 for advocating refugees' right of return; most are serving life sentences with no possibility of parole, a sentencing structure under Bhutanese law that permits release only through a royal prerogative of clemency known as kidu (Human Rights Watch 2026). Several of the longest-held prisoners, among them seven former Royal Bhutan Army soldiers accused of joining pro-democracy demonstrations while in service, have been held since 1990 at Rabuna, a remote military facility that former detainees and human rights monitors have repeatedly described as marked by severe isolation and minimal medical provision (Human Rights Watch 2026).

According to Human Rights Watch's most recent published accounting, at least thirty individuals remained imprisoned as of mid-2026...

The death in custody of Sha Bahadur Gurung, a 65-year-old former soldier who had been imprisoned for thirty-five years on charges connected to a single demonstration he was alleged to have attended in 1990, drew international attention to these conditions in a way that years of slower advocacy had not. Gurung died at Chamjang (Chemgang) Central Prison near Thimphu on 15 December 2025; his family and Nepal-based human rights organizations reported that he was found unconscious that morning after years of what they describe as untreated chronic illness and inadequate medical response, and called for an independent investigation into the circumstances of his death (Amnesty International Nepal 2026; Human Rights Watch 2026). Notably, Rizal had already observed in his own memoir that Chemgang Central Prison had a longstanding reputation as a "death camp," its construction and operation marked by the torture and deaths of several Lhotshampa detainees (Rizal 2009: 49).

A joint communication from six United Nations human rights experts in 2025 had already raised concern, prior to Gurung's death, that Bhutan's political prisoners faced inadequate food, heating, and medical care, warning that this neglect may have contributed to the death of two detainees even before Gurung's case (Human Rights Watch 2026). The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention separately found, in opinions issued across 2025 and 2026, that the continued detention of several of these prisoners violated international legal standards on multiple grounds (Human Rights Watch 2026).

Set against this record, two developments complicate any reading of the situation as simply static or worsening. First, Bhutan's own democratic transition, formalized between 2007 and 2008, has not been entirely without consequence for the political prisoner question, even if its effects have been slow and partial: the country now has a constitutionally guaranteed, if so far rarely exercised, judicial avenue for rights claims, and successive governments have engaged, however reluctantly, with the European Union and UN human rights mechanisms that have raised these cases rather than dismissing them outright (Neikirk & Nickson 2024; Human Rights Watch 2026). Second, and more concretely, two of the remaining political prisoners- Chatur Man Tamang and Hasta Bahadur Rai, both arrested in 2008-were released by the Bhutanese government on 1 June 2026, shortly after the UN Working Group's opinion on their case was finalized (Human Rights Watch 2026). Human Rights Watch, in welcoming the release, was careful to describe it as a step in the right direction rather than a resolution, noting that at least twenty-eight prisoners remained and calling for their release in turn.

These releases do not erase the preceding thirty-five years, nor do they answer the calls from Amnesty International and Nepali rights groups for an independent inquiry into Gurung's death. But they are worth recording as evidence that the situation is not frozen: Bhutan has, under sustained but modest external pressure, taken at least incremental steps that a purely static narrative of unyielding repression would not predict. A balanced account of this dimension of the crisis - one that neither minimizes thirty-five years of imprisonment without parole nor forecloses the possibility of further, similarly incremental change - seems to us the most honest way of representing where matters currently stand.

Conclusion: Toward an Unfinished Reckoning

Part I of this article began by noting that Bhutan's international reputation and its citizenship record rarely appear in the same sentence, and across both parts we have tried to bring them into the same frame without collapsing one into the other. Gross National Happiness is not a fiction invented to disguise the Lhotshampa crisis, any more than the Lhotshampa crisis is the only fact worth knowing about Bhutan; both are true of the same small kingdom, and a serious account of either has to make room for the other.

What we hope these two parts have added to an already considerable body of writing is less a new moral verdict-readers will reach their own conclusions about where responsibility lies among the Bhutanese state, the government of Nepal, and an international community that for thirty years found bilateral talks, and then resettlement, easier than sustained pressure for repatriation-than a corrected sense of the crisis's shape in time. It is not a closed historical episode with a beginning in 1985 and an end in 2016, bracketed by legislation on one side and a resettlement programme on the other. It is better understood as a status: a category of contested or denied nationality that, once created, does not expire merely because most of the people who held it have since acquired a different, more secure status elsewhere. That status was reactivated in 2025 by a change in U.S. immigration enforcement that had nothing to do with Bhutan or Nepal, and it persists, in a different register, in the cells of Chemgang and Rabuna prisons, where men arrested as young soldiers in 1990 have grown old and, in at least one recent case, died.

Gross National Happiness is not a fiction invented to disguise the Lhotshampa crisis, any more than the Lhotshampa crisis is the only fact worth knowing about Bhutan; both are true of the same small kingdom, and a serious account of either has to make room for the other.

If there is a single recommendation this history supports, it is a modest one: that the institutions which oversaw resettlement as a "durable solution"-UNHCR, the IOM, the eight resettlement governments, and Bhutan and Nepal themselves - revisit, explicitly and jointly, what protection remains owed to people whose underlying statelessness was never resolved, merely relocated. This would include, at minimum, a clear bilateral or multilateral understanding about the status of resettled refugees who are later subject to removal proceedings in their country of resettlement, and continued, undiminished attention - diplomatic, not merely humanitarian - to both the residual camp population in Nepal and the remaining political prisoners in Bhutan. None of this requires treating Bhutan as an outlier among nations, or pretending its broader achievements do not exist. It requires only treating its unfinished citizenship question with the same seriousness that the kingdom has, for thirty years, successfully persuaded the world to extend to everything else about it.

References

Amnesty International Nepal. (2026, January 16). Mysterious death of prisoner Sha Bahadur Gurung must be independently investigated and accountability ensured. Amnesty International Nepal.

Human Rights Watch. (2007, February 14). Stateless refugee children from Bhutan living in Nepal. Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch. (2026, June 10). Bhutan: 2 political prisoners freed, but 28 remain. Human Rights Watch.

International Organization for Migration. (2015, November 19). Resettlement of refugees from Bhutan tops 100,000. IOM.

Kathmandu Post. (2025, April 11). As Bhutan disowns, Nepal in a fix over 4 US-deported refugees.

Kathmandu Post. (2025, April 17). Supreme Court stays deportation of four Bhutanese refugees.

Neikirk, A., & Nickson, R. (2024). Transitions without justice: Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 18(2), 267–280.

Rizal, T. N. (2009). Torture Killing Me Softly: Bhutan Through the Eyes of a Mind-Control Victim.

Sikkim Express. (2025, February 28). The uncertain future of Bhutanese refugees left behind in Nepal.

The Peruvian native tree was smuggled across malaria-plagued British colonies in search of  suitable location for the production of quinine. In the Eastern Himalayan foothills of Mungpoo, it took its deepest  root.

In 1862, under the direction of Dr. Thomas Anderson, a Scottish botanist and Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden Calcutta, cinchona flourished. The subtropical climate and sub-alpine hilly altitude (1200-6170 ft asl) of Mungpoo provided ideal conditions for the quinine-yielding Cinchona trees that were native to the Andes, South America. The success encompassed the hills of Munsong-1901, Rongo-1938 and Latpanchar-1943. The plantation provided British colonies with an economically vital steady supply of the anti-malarial drug. 

The land that hosted the plantation was a land plowed by geopolitical drills. It shaped the demography and ecological footprints of the landscape even before the colonial expansion could sow the seeds.

The land that hosted the plantation was a land plowed by geopolitical drills. It shaped the demography and ecological footprints of the landscape even before the colonial expansion could sow the seeds. The land that would later become plantations was once within the jurisdiction of the Chogyal who ruled the Kingdom of Sikkim. In 1718, the east of Teesta River including Munsong and Rongo was annexed by the Kingdom of Bhutan. Decades later, Mungpoo and Latpanchar too changed hands in 1780, the western stretches of Teesta River fell into the expanding Gorkha Kingdom of  Nepal.  

It was only after the Anglo-Gorkha War (1814-1816) and the subsequent Treaty of Sugauli (March 4, 1816),  the Darjeeling hills were ceded to British India, paving the way for the establishment of plantation. Furthermore, its expansion was further encouraged by the Treaty of  Sinchula (November 11, 1865) following the Anglo-Bhutan War (1864-1865). 

The colonial enterprise needed hundreds of hands to extract the bitter quinine. Soon, labourers were brought from the Kingdom of Nepal and the Kingdom of Sikkim under the Sardari system.

The colonial enterprise needed hundreds of hands to extract the bitter quinine. Soon, labourers were brought from the Kingdom of Nepal and the Kingdom of Sikkim under the Sardari system. The trusted workers, given the title of Sardars, were sent back home to fetch family and convince community members to work in the plantations. As the result of this, the communities are still predominantly engaged in the plantation. The Sardars earned a monthly commission of one anna for every hand that laboured the land.  

Like the cinchonas, the people who worked the land too were uprooted and planted.

The nature of their work was cyclic, the rhythm of “Badla”. An acre of land in exchange for a lineage of continuous toil. With time both the cinchona and the people adapted, leading to a seamless naturalization in the region. This influx of migratory kin not only carved the plantation with their toil but also created a tight-knit community still seen in Mungpoo today. 

They perished as nameless, numbered labourers but imprints of their footprints remained on the roads, factories, and settlements of Mungpoo. Their individual histories often remain quieter than the ruins they left behind. 

Mungpoo today lies in West Bengal, India. It is administered by The Directorate of Cinchona and other Medicinal Plants under the Department of Food Processing Industries and Horticulture, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration. But it was not always so. Mungpoo was originally under the Department of Commerce and Industries until 2006. 

1934 onwards, German synthetic alternatives like chloroquine and hydroxychoroquine entered the market. Hence the demand plummeted for the labour-derived, labour-intensive organic quinine. The World Wars also aided in the demise of the colossal colonial endeavour. Factories slowed and many structures were left to decay beneath the moss and monsoon rain.

This departmental shift marked the end of the era. The era of the grand colonial pharmaceutical history. A prudent pivot, a stark pivot, towards survival. Survival through diversification. 

Rubber. Cardamom. Kiwi. 

Lemongrass. Strawberry.  

This departmental shift also washed away the bleak traces of those nameless, numbered pioneers who woke up at 4 am, reached Ganti Ghar at 6 am and toiled on the land till 4 pm. Reminders of community, livelihood, and belonging erased - year by year. 

Today, these crumbling monuments of industrial decay serve as landmarks. Like landmarks that anchor memory and magnetic fields for the migratory birds returning innately. 

Season after season.  

The hills too have migrations. 

A syndicate seat. A train ticket. 

A flight overseas. 

Migrating- in search of Mughlan 

An oasis.

Fleeing economically parched hills. 

Stunted academic seeds. 

Healthcare, crumbling 

But like birds they return innately. 

Season after season- 

For festivals.  

For funerals.  

For home. 

For returning residents, Chamra Godam A lady-

Elegant. Poised. 

Wrapped rust-red. 

Where cinchona bark was laid to weather for quinine. Stood as a landmark in our emotional map.  

A glimpse from the car meant: “I am home.”

The Godam was like the Cinchona plantation-

weathering, but still standing.  

Like a mother awaiting her returning kin. 

The Godam was unlike the Indian monuments of tourism.  

But she was ours. 

 Our history.  

 Our heritage.  

 Our sense of belonging.

Today, on the 11th of May 2026, the Chamra Godam is being dismantled piece by piece. 

Today, do these crumbling monuments of industrial decay matter? It matters profoundly-to the local  plantation workers and their descendants. To them, these ruins represent not just a lost era of global significance, but also their generational heritage and cultural identity. A tangible proof against the recurring identity scrutiny.  

This history forms the foundation of their ongoing quest for World Heritage recognition, supported  by Kalimpong Krishak Kalyan Sangstha, which notes that the plantation actually precedes the iconic Darjeeling Toy Train (1881). Our antique factory machineries could be turned into a  museum.  

Alas!

From earth she came. To earth she departed. 

Among her ruins, I sat-

in silence-

Stillness.

Structures without spectacles are rarely deemed worth preserving. 

What remains now is the plein air painting from the sunny morning of 16th September, 2024.

REFERENCES: 

1. Antique machines of Mungpoo Cinchona Plantation. (2018, April 2). Get Bengal. 2. Chowdhury, K. D. (2022). Cinchona in Darjeeling: A Colonial Overview. Innovation The Research  Concept, 7(1).  

3. Middleton, T. (2021). Becoming-After: The lives and politics of quinine’s remains. Cultural  Anthropology, 36(2), 282-311. https://doi.org/10.14506.2.05 

4. Middleton, T. (2024). Quinine’s remains: Empire’s Medicine and the life thereafter. University of  California Press. https://doi.org/10.155/liminos.187 

5. Pradhan, U.M. (2020, October 8). Hydroxychloroquine and our cinchona. The Darjeeling  Chronicle.  

6. Rai, G. (2024). The changing narratives of Indian Gorkhas. Education India Journal: A Quarterly  Refereed Journal of Dialogues on Education, 10(2), 574-586. 

7. Safarkhani, M. (2025). Space to place, housing to home: A systematic review of sense of place in  housing studies. Sustainability, 17(15), Article 6842. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17156842 8. Sarkar, D. (2013, November 7). Cinchona plantation in Darjeeling is in shambles. The Economic  Times (7 November).