The local story
Mir-Yok, the place burnt by fire
Mirik's name is Lepcha. It comes from Mir-Yok, usually translated as 'place burnt by fire', which may remember an old clearing of the forest by burning for cultivation; no one now knows for sure. For a long time the valley was farmland and marsh, with tea estates such as Thurbo, Soureni and Gopaldhara planted on the slopes around it from the late nineteenth century and orange orchards in the warmer pockets below.
In 1974 work began on turning the marsh at the bottom of the valley into a lake as part of a plan to create a new hill resort. Sumendu Lake was opened in April 1979, with a 3.5 km road round it and a footbridge across, and hotels grew up at Krishnanagar on the far shore. A few years later, in 1984, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Bokar Rinpoche (1940–2004), a master of the Kagyu tradition, founded a small retreat centre on the hill above the town. It grew into Bokar Ngedhon Chokhorling, the monastery that now overlooks Mirik.
