Proud to be a Sikkimese: Sikkim Travel, Culture & Local Heritage

Sir Basil Gould , Britain's Political Officer in Sikkim, was fond of Sikkim's wool . Those handspun wools used to be made into sea boots stockings . The press clip from the TIMES reads that Sikkim's wool was well appreciated. It is mentioned that the lamas had prayed during the last War (probably the WWI ) for the success of farming the wools. The wool suited the best gumboot stockings. The wool was such that it was said the wool kept the heart and the feet 'well' of the Britishers.   Sir Basil John Gould, CMG, CIE (1883–1956) was a British Political Officer in Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet from 1935 to 1945. An interesting sentence from Gould written by Anna Balikci Denzongpa in one of the articles published at Bulletin of Tibetology, Gangtok ; where in his memoirs " The Jewel in the Lotus ," he writes about the Raj Bhawan of Gangtok, the then British Residency as "perhaps the most attractive medium-sized home in the whole of India.

Sedongchen Dak Bunglow  1893 Sedongchen Dak Bunglow  2009

I have that grudge in my heart that i was not born in Independent Sikkim. So whenever i come across materials of Independent Sikkim i find a great pleasure. This time around i have come across two letters of the last recognised Chogyal of Sikkim on ebay. Those letters were send to Prof. JC Ghose at Calcutta. The years are of 1963 and 1965.

Today, Lingtam , a half-hour vehicle road from Rongli Bazaar , is a small, silent wayside village mostly forgotten by history. Today, it is remembered by the tourists for its small Lingtam Police Check Post , where the visitors and their vehicles need to submit their “ Permit Pass " to visit another side of the road to Changu . Towards the end of the 1880s, this place had continuous visitors in the army personnel related to  British Expedition Forces that marched towards Gnathang , the Sikkim-Tibet Border . The development of Sikkim had always evaded this small place for most of the decades. Despite the presence of exotic locales around this effortless landscape, one deserted house just along the way caught my fancied eye when I visited this place for the first time. Between modern days, concrete buildings lie small wooden houses that are empty from the inside with broken planks....

Photo shared by Anup Lama