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

For a stamp sized state of Sikkim, 6 th  November 2006 hold a moment of glory and recognisation in terms of world philately. Indian Postage had featured a postal stamp on Changu Lake in a group of five lakes from different part of India. The Changu Lake stamp with Rs 5 denomination features among the five Himalayan Lakes of India that include Roop Kund, Sela, Tsomo Riri and Chandra Tal. The stamp and First Day Cover had been designed by Bharati Mirchandani and Cancellation designed by Alka Sharma. The stamp is printed in photogravure process and printed at India Security Press, Nasik. It was for the first time in the history of Indian Postage, an individual theme from Sikkim got introduced in Indian postage stamp. For the last few years efforts were made on to feature individual theme from Sikkim. Along the lines various tourist destinations including Rumtek Monastery, Changu (Tsangu) Lake, Guru Dongmor Lake, Nathula Pass and cultural diversity of Sikkim were discussed but it...

I had a wonderful experience two days back at the Archives Department at Gangtok. I came across a personal file of Stephen Smith about how he proposed his 1935 Sikkim Rocketmail Experiment. The files contain letters and the process of his permission to the small kingdom of Sikkim. Right now, I am going through them, and those letters are really interesting to read. Myself with the Stephen Smith's personal file in the Archives Department In one instance, after the Sikkim Rocketmail Experiment 1935, Stephen Smith had sent three photographs of the event to Chogyal Sir Tashi Namgyal, the King of Sikkim, but for some unknown reason, those three photographs were returned back to Stephen Smith. There is a letter in the file from an American stamp collector asking the Chogyal about the items of Sikkim Rocketmail, to which the Chogyal had directed to talk straightly to Stephen Smith. A Letter from the file According to the letters in the file, two separate events were held at Sikkim...

This is a photograph of Sikkim Rocketmail Experiment 1935 that was conducted in Sikkim. I had this photograph from ebay.

With an article on Sikkim’s Rocket Mail Experiment 1935, I joined Weekend Review, noted a weekly newspaper published by Gangtok, and debuted in the print media. So the story of Sikkim's Rocket mail is, in fact, very close to me. When I first received feedback for the article on Sikkim Rocketmail in 2003, the small note read 'lost in 1935 discovered in 2003’; true to the words, the Sikkim Rocketmail Experiment in 1935 had been long lost and nowhere to be found in Sikkim itself. Today, the Western world acknowledges the great achievement of the effort of a single man, Stephen Hector Taylor-Smith, promptly called the pioneer of Indian Rocketmail. More than seven decades of the historical experiments that set forward the early days of the world airmail invention today are long forgotten in this part of the world. Forgotten is the World's first parcel dispatch over the river that was conducted at Rani Khola, near Ranipool, and one of the outstanding accomplishments in Sikkim s...

At Kavi BY SHITAL PRADHAN Last month I was on a visit to the ruins of Tumlong, the third capital of Sikkim and the view to that site and the half done repairing work made me feel are we, I hear say are we Sikkimese really concern about our prime past. When I was going through the different pages of Sikkim's history, I believe there are many things we still do not know about Sikkim, or I can say we know very little about it. The time has come for the account of Sikkim's history to be re-written from its initial stages, though we know that we have limited resources along with us. I am sorry to say that I find many things missing and vacant spaces that need to be filled up. Just to say that we know little of Sikkim's prime is more of a layman's excuse. If the effort is made, we can make the most of it. Until recently, we have looked back at Sikkim's earliest record dating back to the 9th century when Guru Padmasambhava had mystically flown to Tibet via Sikkim. Well...