The local story
Raikat country, then a road through the forest
Before the British, the plains around Lataguri belonged to the world of the Koch and Rajbanshi kingdoms. The Raikats of Baikunthapur, a branch of the Koch royal family based near present-day Jalpaiguri, held much of this country from the 16th century, while Bhutan controlled the duars, the passes into the hills to the north. Jalpaiguri itself takes its name, by the usual account, from the jalpai, the wild olive trees that once grew here.
After the Duar War of 1864–65, the British took the Western Duars from Bhutan, and in 1869 joined them with the old Jalpaiguri area to form Jalpaiguri district. Forest was reserved, tea gardens were cut from the jungle from 1874, and railway lines and roads crossed the plain. Lataguri sat on the edge of what became Gorumara's reserved forest.
Its modern life began with the road. As Gorumara's reputation grew from the 1990s, the highway village turned into a strip of lodges and homestays, many run by Rajbanshi and Bengali families who had farmed and fished here for generations. Ask your host about his grandfather's fields; many will tell you about elephants raiding paddy long before tourists came.
