The local story
Where the railway tops out and the roads divide
Ghoom sits on a saddle of the ridge, and that is the whole reason for it. Here the roads split four ways: back to Darjeeling, down to Kurseong and Siliguri, east to Peshok and the Teesta, and west to Sukhia Pokhari and Mirik. Jorebunglow, the market town next door, runs into Ghoom so closely that most visitors cannot tell where one ends. When the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway reached Darjeeling in 1881, Ghum station, at 2,258 m, became the highest point on the line and one of the highest railway stations in India.
Three decades before the trains, in 1850, Lama Sherab Gyatso founded Yiga Choeling, a monastery of the Gelug school, the tradition most associated with the Dalai Lama, on the slope below the saddle. Its main image is Maitreya, the Buddha who is to come, about 4.6 m (15 ft) tall. Ghoom also has the Samten Choling monastery and a Sakya monastery, so on one short walk you can visit three Tibetan Buddhist houses of prayer. At Losar, the Tibetan New Year in February or March, the monasteries hold prayers and the town fills with families in their best clothes.
Between Ghoom and Darjeeling the line loses height around Batasia Loop, a spiral built in 1919 to ease the gradient. In the middle of the loop stands the Gorkha War Memorial, which honours Gorkha soldiers of the Indian Army who died in service after independence. On a clear day Kanchenjunga rises directly behind it, which is why the joyride trains pause here. Up at the station, a small railway museum keeps photographs and objects from the line's early years, a reminder of how much work it took to bring trains this high.
