Kalimpong History: Wool Trade, Missions and Monks

A town whose name is still argued over

Ask three people in Kalimpong what the name means and you may get three answers. One reading is Tibetan: kalon, the king's ministers, and pong, a stockade, so the stockade or assembly of the king's ministers. A Lepcha reading gives the hillock of assemblage. A third ties the name to the kaulim plant that grows on these slopes. Explanations differ, and we would rather tell you that than pick one and pretend it is settled.

What is not in doubt is who came first. The Lepchas are the oldest people of these hills, and their names for rivers, ridges and villages still sit under the Nepali and Tibetan ones. The town itself, at 1,247 m on a saddle between Deolo and Durpin hills, grew much later, out of a market, a mission and a trade road to Tibet.

Sikkim, Bhutan and the fort at Damsang

For a long time these ridges east of the Teesta changed hands between Sikkim and Bhutan. Bhutanese influence reached Kalimpong early. Thongsa Gompa, also called Jangsa Dechen Choling, was built by the Bhutanese in 1692 and is the town's oldest monastery. The area is said to have come under Bhutanese control in 1706, and at Pedong, 20 km east, the Sangchen Dorjee Monastery went up in the early 1700s under Bhutanese rule, in the Drukpa Kagyu tradition.

The Lepchas did not accept this quietly. Near Pedong stand the ruins of Damsang Gadi, the fort of the Lepcha chief Gaeboo Achyok, built in the late 17th century (1690 is the date most often quoted) to hold off the Bhutanese Drukpas. Lepcha lore says spirits carried smooth round stones up from the Reshi river to build its walls; that is folklore, but the ruins are real, and every 20 December Lepchas gather there to mark the chief's birth anniversary.

1865: the Treaty of Sinchula

The map changed after the Anglo-Bhutan War of 1864–65, also called the Duar War. Under the Treaty of Sinchula, signed in November 1865, Bhutan ceded its territory east of the Teesta to the British, and Kalimpong was joined to Darjeeling district in 1866. The fort at Damsang, already a relic of an older contest, fell to ruin after 1864.

Kalimpong stayed part of Darjeeling district for more than 150 years. It became a district of its own on 14 February 2017, carved out of Darjeeling, which is why older books and maps place every village in this guide under Darjeeling.

The wool road over Jelep La

What made Kalimpong a town was trade. For roughly a century after the British arrived it was India's main market for Tibetan wool. Mule caravans came down from Lhasa, Gyantse and Phari, through the Chumbi valley and over the Jelep La pass, then via Rhenock and Pedong to the godowns and markets of Kalimpong. From Kalimpong the bales went on to the plains by road and rail.

You can still trace the route. Pedong, at 1,240 m and 20 km east of town, sat on the old trade road to Jelep La, and from the ridge above Sillery Gaon you look across to the Sikkim side, where the old Silk Route ran from Rhenock up through Zuluk towards the pass.

Missionaries and travellers used the same road. At Pedong, the French missionary Father Auguste Desgodins raised a cross on a hill in 1882 as a memorial to missionaries who had died or disappeared trying to reach Tibet; it is still called Cross Hill. In Kalimpong, David Macdonald, who had been interpreter on Younghusband's 1904 expedition to Tibet and later a British trade agent, turned his home into the Himalayan Hotel after he retired in 1924. Everest climbers and Tibet travellers stayed there. Today it is run by Mayfair as a luxury spa resort, so we mention it for its history, not as a budget stay.

The 1962 Sino-Indian war closed Jelep La, and the wool trade collapsed almost overnight. Border trade between India and Tibet reopened in a limited way only in 2006, and through Nathu La in Sikkim, not through Kalimpong. The old caravan route through Pedong and the Sillery Gaon ridge is now a road for homestay guests.

Scottish schools and Dr Graham's Homes

The other force in Kalimpong's making came from Scotland. The Reverend William Macfarlane of the Scottish mission set up the first schools here in the early 1870s, and the Scottish connection shaped the town's churches and schools for the next century.

In 1900 the Reverend Dr John Anderson Graham founded the St Andrew's Colonial Homes for Anglo-Indian children. It began with six children in a single cottage. Today it is Dr Graham's Homes, a large school spread across the slopes at the foot of Deolo hill.

Tibet drew missionaries of other churches too. In the 1950s a Swiss Jesuit, Father André Butty, was refused entry to Tibet, stayed on in Kalimpong instead, and set up the Swiss Welfare Dairy. Its gouda-style cheese and hand-rolled milk lollipops made the town's name in kitchens across India until the dairy closed in 1990, when his visa was not renewed. Our food guide tells that story in full.

Tagore, Morgan House and the hill houses

Rabindranath Tagore came to Kalimpong late in life and stayed at Gauripur House between 1938 and 1940. His poem Janmadin was broadcast from Kalimpong on his birthday in 1938. Another house in town, Chitrabhanu, belonged to his daughter-in-law Pratima Devi. Both are reminders that Kalimpong was a hill retreat for Bengal's writers and families, not only a trading post.

On Durpin hill, the jute baron George Morgan built Morgan House in the 1930s. It is now a WBTDC heritage lodge, and the ghost stories told about it are folklore, though they are told with real enthusiasm by drivers on the way up.

1959 and the monasteries on Durpin

In 1959, after the Dalai Lama left Tibet, Tibetan refugees and monks settled in Kalimpong, joining trading families who had known the town for generations. Their arrival is why so many momo shops, monasteries and prayer flags fill the town today.

The best-known monastery of that era sits on Durpin, a hill whose name local people explain as durbin, the Nepali word for binoculars or a telescope. Zang Dhok Palri Phodang was established there in 1957 by Dudjom Rinpoche and consecrated by the 14th Dalai Lama in 1976. It holds the 108 volumes of the Kangyur. Further east, beside the Neora reservoir at Lava, the Kagyu Thekchen Ling Monastery opened on 6 June 1990, founded by the 3rd Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche.

A half day is enough to walk this history in order. Start at Thongsa Gompa in town, the Bhutanese foundation of 1692, then take a car or the long uphill road to Durpin for Zang Dhok Palri, and finish at the viewpoint near the army golf course, where the Teesta valley opens below. Monasteries ask only for quiet and a donation.

A timeline you can carry

Dates for the oldest events come from local and monastic sources and are quoted as such.