Kalimpong Nurseries, Crafts and Markets: What to Buy

A market town by history

For about a century after the British took Kalimpong from Bhutan in 1865, the town lived by trade. Mule caravans came down from Lhasa and Gyantse over Jelep La and through Pedong, loaded with Tibetan wool, and went back with cloth, grain, sugar, kerosene and factory goods. Marwari, Tibetan, Bhutanese and Nepali trading families settled around the bazaar, and their warehouses and shopfronts still stand in the older lanes. The 1962 war closed the pass and the wool trade ended almost overnight.

Kalimpong found other things to sell. Its mild climate, at about 1,250 m, suited flowers, and nurseries began shipping orchids, gladioli and cacti across India. Tibetans who arrived after 1959 brought carpets, thangka painting and metalwork. Mission schools and their workshops taught weaving and embroidery. A morning's walk through town still takes you past all of these, and buying a few things here puts money straight into family businesses.

Orchids, cacti and the nursery town

Around 300 species of orchid grow wild in the hills around Kalimpong, and the town's nurseries have grown and sold plants for decades. Most are family businesses with a few greenhouses and terraces, spread along the roads around town, towards Rinkingpong and down the lower roads towards Siliguri. Some charge a small entry fee of ₹20–100; others let you look if you ask politely.

Pine View Nursery is the best known for cacti and succulents, greenhouses of spines from deserts on the other side of the world, odd and rather wonderful in one of India's wetter hill towns. Orchid growers are at their best from March to May, with a smaller show in October and November. Gladioli and amaryllis bulbs are sold in season, often by post.

If you plan to buy, ask the nursery to pack plants for travel. Orchids do not like heat, so a long, hot train journey can harm them, and airlines have their own rules about plants in cabins. Carrying plants abroad usually needs phytosanitary papers. Bulbs and seeds travel better than flowering plants.

• Best months for orchids in bloom: March to May.
• Allow 2–3 hours for two or three nurseries by taxi, about ₹1,500–2,000 for a half day.
• Do not touch plants or enter greenhouses without asking.

The haat bazaar on Wednesday and Saturday

The haat, the weekly village market, is the liveliest place in town. On Wednesdays and Saturdays farmers from the surrounding villages lay out their goods on sheets near the Motor Stand: squash shoots, ningro fern tips, bamboo shoots, dalle khursani chillies, dried fish, churpi, oranges in winter and plums in summer. Next to the food you will find bamboo baskets, doko carrying baskets, brooms, sickles, khukuri knives, cheap clothes and plastic buckets.

Go before 10 am, when the best produce is still on the ground and the light is good for photographs, and ask before photographing people. Bargaining over vegetables is not expected; prices are already low. A bamboo basket or a small doko makes a fine, if bulky, souvenir for ₹200–800. Confirm haat days locally, as they can shift around festivals.

Tibetan crafts and Buddhist objects

Tibetan shops along Main Road, around the Motor Stand and near the monasteries sell prayer flags, incense, butter lamps, singing bowls, prayer wheels, thangka paintings, malas of wood, bone or seeds, and woollen goods. Quality and price vary enormously. Hand-painted thangkas by trained artists take weeks and cost many thousands of rupees; printed ones cost a few hundred. Ask how a piece was made, and do not be shy about asking whether a singing bowl is handmade or machine-made.

Woollen goods are a quieter link to the old trade. Shops in the bazaar sell hand-knitted caps, socks, gloves and shawls, and a few sell Tibetan-style carpets with dragons, lotuses and geometric borders. A small carpet or a hand-knitted cap is a better reminder of a town that once lived on Tibetan wool than any fridge magnet. Check the knots on the back of a carpet: hand-knotted pieces show each knot clearly and cost far more than machine-made ones.

Prayer flags are a good, cheap buy at ₹100–400 a string, and buying them near a monastery is a small act of respect. If you want something special, ask at the monasteries on Durpin and in town whether they can point you to a local thangka painter. Treat religious objects with care: do not put them on the floor, and do not hang prayer flags as party decorations.

Lepcha weaving, handmade paper and mission crafts

The Lepcha, the first people of these hills, have their own weaving tradition, with striped cloth in red, black, white and green used for the traditional dress: the dumpra for men and the dumvun for women. Woven bags, shawls and table runners in these patterns are sold in some shops in Kalimpong and in Lepcha villages such as Lolegaon. Start at the Lepcha Museum on the edge of town to learn what you are looking at, and buy from the weavers themselves if you can.

Kalimpong also has a long-standing small industry in handmade paper, made from the inner bark of the Daphne shrub, known as argeli in Nepali, which grows in the hills. The paper is tough and fibrous and is used for notebooks, cards, lampshades and Buddhist prints. Ask in town whether a workshop is open to visitors; some welcome a short look at the soaking, beating and drying.

The workshops connected with the Scottish mission and Dr Graham's Homes, founded in 1900, have taught weaving, embroidery and woodwork to generations of students and local women. Ask locally which outlets are open, and expect fair, fixed prices.

What to buy, and what it costs

These prices are indicative for 2025–26 and assume small, independent shops, not hotel boutiques. Quality varies, so look at several pieces before you buy.

How to shop well here

Kalimpong is a relaxed place to shop and seldom pushy. Prices in grocers and the haat are fixed by custom; in craft shops, a polite request for a better price on several items is normal, but hard bargaining over a few rupees with a village weaver is not. Carry cash, as small shops and haat sellers rarely take cards, though UPI payments are common in town.

Plan your shopping morning around a Wednesday or Saturday, start at the haat, walk Main Road and the bazaar lanes, and visit nurseries in the late morning. Leave fragile and perishable buys for your last day. If you are heading on to Lava or the villages, shop in town first: village shops sell mostly daily needs.

A last word on what not to buy. Do not buy wild orchids dug from the forest, animal skins, bear or musk products, or anything made from protected species, whatever the seller claims; it is illegal and it strips the forests around Neora Valley of what makes them worth visiting. Antique-looking religious objects may be genuinely old, and old cultural objects can need permission to take out of India. When in doubt, buy something new, made by a living craftsperson, and ask for a receipt.