FROM Journal American Rhododendron Society Britt Smith, Kent, Washington This paper was prepared for and presented at the national meeting of The American Rhododendron Society in San Francisco May 1972. Unfortunately, the color slides which illustrated the paper cannot all be included here. Interest is renewed at this time because a group of members of the ARS departed on April 21 for a six-day trek through the rhododendron forests of Southwest Sikkim. Future issues will present the story of that trek. If we were to journey half way around the world to Calcutta and thence northward approximately 450 miles we could arrive at Darjeeling, India. There the British established in about 1850 a rest (R and R) station at 7,000 feet elevation on a Himalayan ridge. For us as foreign tourists, this is the gateway to Himalaya as it has been through the intervening one hundred twenty years. Another sixty miles aboard a jeep, nearly a full day spent, and after registration at three ...
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