Tagore at Mungpoo: four visits to a quinine village

A village made by a fever

To understand why a Nobel laureate spent his last summers in a hill village with no bazaar to speak of, start with malaria. Through the 19th century it killed and weakened people across British India, soldiers and labourers alike, and the only effective medicine was quinine, extracted from the bark of the cinchona tree. Cinchona grows wild in the Andes of South America, and its bark was costly to import. Around 1860 British expeditions, led by the geographer Clements Markham, collected seeds and young plants in South America so the trees could be grown in India.

The warm, wet slopes above the Teesta valley suited them. In 1864 the government began planting cinchona at Mungpoo, the first government plantation of its kind in India, and a quinine factory followed. Mungpoo became a company village: long sheds and chimneys, rows of workers' lines, bungalows for the chemists and managers. The plantation never closed. It is still run today by the West Bengal Directorate of Cinchona and Other Medicinal Plants, though synthetic medicines have long since replaced bark quinine for most uses.

placeMungpoo

Maitreyi Devi and the invitation

In the late 1930s the chemist in charge at the Mungpoo factory was Dr Manmohan Sen. His wife, Maitreyi Devi, was a writer and the daughter of the philosopher Surendranath Dasgupta, and she had known Rabindranath Tagore since she was a child. Tagore was then in his late seventies, often unwell, and tired of the heat of the plains in summer. She invited him to come and stay in the factory bungalow, in a place where the air was mild and few people would trouble him.

He accepted, and then came back. Over two years he made four visits, staying for weeks at a time. By Maitreyi Devi's own account, the house filled with conversation in the evenings, and the poet kept writing, painting and dictating letters through the days. Village people and factory workers came to see him; children from the plantation lines were part of the life of the house.

The four visits, in order

The dates below follow the commonly cited record of his stays. Exact days differ slightly between sources, so treat them as a close guide rather than a register.

Two things stand out. He came back within a year of the first visit, and then twice in the same year, which says more about how he felt about the place than any quotation could. And three of the four visits fell in May and June, the hottest weeks on the plains, when Calcutta and Santiniketan are hardest on an old man's health.

Walking the cinchona slopes

Tagore's Mungpoo was a working estate, and it still is. The slopes around the village are planted with cinchona and other medicinal plants, and public roads wind between them, past nurseries, factory buildings and long rows of workers' quarters. Many families in those lines have worked on the plantation for generations, and the village has its own schools, small shops and temples.

The cinchona tree is evergreen, with glossy, deeply veined leaves and, in season, clusters of small pale flowers with a faint scent. If you are not sure which trees are which, ask someone on the road; people are used to the question. The bark was stripped from the trunks and branches, dried and sent to the factory, where quinine was extracted.

A morning walk of an hour or two on these roads is gentle by hill standards, at about 1,100–1,200 m, warmer than Darjeeling and usually quiet. Stay on the roads, do not pick plants or strip bark, and ask before photographing workers or buildings. The factory is a government unit, and visits inside are not a routine tourist service.

A birthday in the hills, and a last journey

Tagore was born on 25 Baishakh in the Bengali calendar, which falls in early May, and in 1940 that date found him at Mungpoo. His 79th birthday was celebrated in the bungalow, with the household and people of the village. For a man whose birthday was by then marked across Bengal, it was a small, domestic occasion in a plantation house, and that seems to have been the point.

It was close to the end. In September 1940 Tagore fell seriously ill while staying in Kalimpong and was taken down to Calcutta. He did not come back to the hills, and he died in Calcutta on 7 August 1941. Mungpoo, then, holds some of the last quiet months of his working life, and the people who knew him there carried the memory for decades.

Maitreyi Devi wrote about those months in Bengali in Mongpute Rabindranath, later published in English as Tagore by the Fireside. It is the best preparation for a visit: she describes the rooms, the routine, the talk at dinner and the poet's moods. She is also remembered for Na Hanyate (1974), her reply to the Romanian writer Mircea Eliade's novel Bengal Nights, which had drawn on her youth in Calcutta.

festivalRabindra Jayanti at MungpooplaceKalimpong

Rabindra Bhavan today

The bungalow is now Rabindra Bhavan, a small museum. Its rooms keep furniture Tagore used, photographs from his stays, some of his paintings and letters. It takes about an hour, and much of the pleasure is the setting: a hillside garden looking out over green slopes that have changed little since 1940. Read the captions slowly, keep your voice low, and ask the caretaker before taking photographs inside.

The house has closed for repairs at times, and opening days and hours vary. Do not assume it will be open on a public holiday or late in the afternoon. Ask your driver, a Darjeeling agent or a Mungpoo homestay to confirm a day or two ahead, and check current status before you travel.

Every year around 25 Baishakh, usually 8 or 9 May, the village marks Tagore's birth anniversary at the house with Rabindrasangeet, poems in Bengali and Nepali, and garlands at his portrait. It is a local commemoration rather than a staged festival. If you want to be there for it, book a room early, because the few homestays fill.

journeyDarjeeling tea and Tagore's Mungpoo

Getting there and what it costs

Mungpoo is about 33 km from Darjeeling, roughly 1.5–2 hours each way by hill road. Most visitors hire a car for the day from Darjeeling, about ₹3,000–4,000, and combine it with Takdah or Tinchuley. Shared jeeps run for local people but are few, at roughly ₹150–250 a seat; ask at the Darjeeling or Siliguri stands the day before.

From Siliguri the direct way follows NH10 up the Teesta to Rambi and then climbs to the village, about ₹2,500–3,500 for a reserved car. NH10 has had long closures since the October 2023 Teesta flood, so check current status before you travel; drivers often go via Darjeeling instead. A few family homestays in and around Mungpoo charge about ₹1,500–2,200 per person with dinner and breakfast.

• Go between October and May; the monsoon brings leeches, mist and slips.
• Walk the public plantation roads in the morning, but do not enter the factory without permission.
• Carry cash; shops are few and cards are rarely taken.
• Read Tagore by the Fireside, or a handful of Tagore's late poems, before you go.

placeTakdahplaceTinchuley