The story of Gangtok
From Lepcha forest to a border state
The first people of these hills were the Lepcha, who call Sikkim Nye-mae-el, and the Bhutia, who came from Tibet and call it Denjong, the valley of rice. In 1642 Phuntsog Namgyal was consecrated the first Chogyal at Yuksom, and his dynasty ruled Sikkim for 333 years. For most of that time East Sikkim was a frontier of forest and high grazing grounds, crossed by a handful of passes: Nathu La and Jelep La above the Chumbi valley, where Tibet reaches south between Sikkim and Bhutan.
The British wanted those passes for trade. In 1888 a British force pushed Tibetan troops back from Lingtu and fought them again at Gnathang, and the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890 drew the Sikkim–Tibet border along the watershed and made Sikkim a British protectorate. In 1894 Chogyal Thutob Namgyal moved his capital to Gangtok, then a small hamlet on a ridge. Mule trains carried wool, salt and tea through Gangtok, Zuluk and Kupup, and in 1958 Jawaharlal Nehru opened the first motor road from Gangtok towards Nathu La.
Then the border closed. After the 1962 war the passes were sealed, and in September 1967 Indian and Chinese troops fought at Nathu La itself. In 1975 the monarchy ended and Sikkim became India's 22nd state. The high road became an army road, opened to Indian tourists at Nathu La in 1999, and border trade returned through the pass on 6 July 2006. Today East Sikkim lives on that history: soldiers, shrines, homestays on the old trade route, and a capital that grew from a hamlet into a town of about 100,000.
