The local story
A plant's name and a quinine hillside
Sillery Gaon takes its name, the villagers say, from the sillery, a plant that once grew thickly on these slopes; gaon simply means village. We have not found a botanical name for it that we can confirm, so take it as the local story. What is certain is the village's position: a pine-and-cardamom ridge above Pedong, on the side of the hills that looked towards the old trade road to Tibet.
The British left a different plant here. The slopes around Sillery Gaon carry cinchona plantations, introduced in the region during the colonial period as a source of quinine against malaria. Some of the village's families have worked on the plantations for generations.
For most of the 20th century Sillery Gaon was a quiet farming village. Homestays came much later, and travellers began calling it 'New Darjeeling' for its views, a nickname that says more about marketing than about the place, which has no town and almost no traffic. Below the ridge, at Ramitey Dara, you can look down on the Teesta winding through its valley in a long series of bends.
