West Sikkim Food: Churpi, Gundruk, Tongba and More

The short answer

Food here is shaped by the people who farm these hills: Lepcha, Bhutia, Limboo, Rai, Gurung, Tamang and Chettri-Bahun families, each with their own dishes, all sharing a kitchen garden of mustard greens, radish, squash, beans, maize, millet and fierce little chillies. Much of what you eat is fermented, dried or smoked, because for centuries households had to make the summer harvest last through winter.

Restaurants in Pelling and Ravangla lean towards North Indian and Chinese-style menus for visitors. To eat what local families eat, stay at least one night in a homestay at Hee Bermiok, Dentam, Uttarey, Kaluk, Rinchenpong or Kewzing, and ask for a local dinner a day ahead. It usually costs nothing extra.

A typical homestay dinner is rice, a dal, a vegetable from the garden, a fermented side such as gundruk or kinema, a bowl of pickle and, if you eat meat, a chicken or pork curry. Breakfast may be puri and potato, sel roti, or bread with eggs. Meals are cooked on wood or gas in the family kitchen, and guests often end up eating there beside the fire.

Cheese, greens and ferments

Sikkim was declared India's first fully organic state in 2016, and many of these vegetables come from fields a few minutes from the kitchen.

Fermenting is a household skill rather than a restaurant one. In autumn and winter you will see gundruk and sinki drying on bamboo mats in courtyards, and many families keep jars of chilli and bamboo-shoot pickle on the shelf. If your homestay is making a batch, ask to watch; it is the quickest way to understand how these villages eat through the lean months.

• Churpi: Sikkim's cheese. Soft churpi is fresh and crumbly, cooked into curries, soups and pickles; hard churpi is dried until it is chewed slowly for hours, like a sweet that never ends.
• Ningro: young fiddlehead ferns picked in the monsoon, stir-fried or cooked with soft churpi. Ningro with churpi is a classic homestay side dish.
• Gundruk: leaves of mustard, radish or cauliflower, wilted, packed tight to ferment, then sun-dried. Gundruk soup is sour, warming and eaten with rice in winter.
• Sinki: the same idea applied to radish roots, cut, fermented and dried; it goes into soups and pickles.
• Kinema: soybeans boiled and fermented until sticky, with a strong smell and deep savoury flavour; closely linked to Limboo and Rai kitchens, often fried with onion, tomato and chilli.
• Sisnu: stinging nettle, picked with tongs, boiled and turned into a thick green soup that is mild and comforting; it loses its sting in the pot.

Breads, momos and noodle soups

Sel roti is a ring of sweet rice-flour batter deep-fried until crisp outside and soft inside. It is made in quantity for Dasain and Tihar in October and November, and you will find it with tea at small stalls in Jorethang and Namchi. Finger-millet flatbread, eaten with butter or pickle, turns up in homestays too.

Momos are everywhere: steamed or fried, with pork, chicken, beef in some places, or cabbage and cheese, served with a fiery tomato chutney. A plate costs ₹80–150. Thukpa is a bowl of noodles in broth with vegetables or meat, and thenthuk is its Tibetan cousin with hand-pulled flat noodles; both cost a little more than momos and make a full meal on a cold evening. In Bhutia homes, look for phagshapa, strips of pork fat stewed with radish and dried chilli.

Shapale, a Tibetan fried pie stuffed with minced meat or cabbage, is a popular snack in Ravangla and Pelling. For breakfast on a jeep day, the stalls at Jorethang and Geyzing sell puri with potato curry, boiled eggs and sweet milk tea before the first vehicles leave.

Chhang, tongba and Temi tea

Chhang is the local fermented millet brew. The best-known way to drink it is tongba, a Limboo tradition: fermented finger millet packed into a tall bamboo or wooden mug, topped with hot water and sipped slowly through a bamboo straw that filters the grain. You top it up with more hot water two or three times as the evening goes on. It is mild but adds up; homestays sometimes offer it, and a few bars in Jorethang and Pelling serve it.

Temi Tea Garden, set up by the Sikkim government in 1969 on the slopes of Tendong Hill, was long Sikkim's only tea estate. Its tea is certified organic, and the first flush, picked in March and April, is light and floral. You can buy packs in Namchi, Ravangla and Gangtok shops, or at the garden itself; factory visits depend on the season and rules, so check current status before you travel.

If you do not drink alcohol, ask for butter tea in Bhutia homes, a salty, buttery tea churned in a wooden cylinder, or simply sweet milk tea, which every stall makes.

Large cardamom and dalle khursani

The smoky black pods of large cardamom are Sikkim's great cash crop, and Sikkim is India's largest producer. The plants grow in the shade of alder trees in damp ravines below the villages around Dentam, Hee Bermiok, Rinchenpong and Kaluk. The pods are harvested in late monsoon and autumn and dried over wood fires, which gives them their smoky taste. Buy a small pack from a farming family rather than a souvenir shop.

Dalle khursani is the small round red chilli of Sikkim, one of the hottest you will meet in India. It goes into pickles, chutneys and almost every homestay dinner. Taste a little before you take a spoonful.

Maize and finger millet still grow on the higher terraces, and you will see cobs of maize hanging to dry under the eaves of village houses in autumn. Oranges ripen from November around Rinchenpong, Kaluk and the lower Rangeet valley, and are sold by the roadside in winter for small change.

Where to eat and what it costs

All prices are indicative for 2025–26 and change with season and place.

• Thali houses near the Geyzing and Jorethang jeep stands are cheap, quick and refill rice and dal.
• In Pelling, eat in the small family places on the main road of Upper Pelling rather than hotel restaurants.
• Yuksom's few cafés serve trekkers big plates of thukpa and dal-bhat at fair prices.

A day of eating in West Sikkim

• Dawn: sweet milk tea or butter tea while you wait for the Kanchenjunga view, often with a biscuit or a piece of sel roti.
• Breakfast: puri and potato curry at a Geyzing or Jorethang stall, or eggs and bread at your homestay.
• Lunch: a thali in town, with rice, dal, two vegetables, pickle and papad, or a plate of momos on the road.
• Afternoon: a bowl of thukpa or a cup of Temi tea in Ravangla or Namchi while the clouds roll in.
• Dinner: a homestay meal with gundruk soup, kinema, ningro with churpi or nettle soup, and perhaps a tongba by the stove.
• Take home: a pack of Temi tea, a bag of large cardamom from a farm family and a block of hard churpi.

Eating well and respectfully

• Order a local dinner from your homestay a day ahead so they can prepare gundruk, kinema or nettle soup.
• Many Buddhist households avoid meat on certain holy days; vegetarian food is always available.
• Hard churpi is very hard; soften it in your mouth and never bite down hard on it.
• Carry a refillable bottle; Sikkim restricts packaged water in some places, so check current status before you travel.
• Ask before photographing people in their kitchens, and wash your hands before eating with them.