{"id":380,"date":"2022-07-25T13:18:43","date_gmt":"2022-07-25T13:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mahendraindiatravel.com\/blog\/?p=380"},"modified":"2022-07-25T13:18:43","modified_gmt":"2022-07-25T13:18:43","slug":"darjeeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mahendraindiatravel.com\/blog\/darjeeling\/","title":{"rendered":"Darjeeling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Darjeeling<\/a> is a town and municipality in the Eastern Himalayas in India, lying at an average elevation of 2,045 metres (6,709 ft) in the northernmost region of the state of West Bengal. Kangchenjunga<\/strong>, the world’s third-highest mountain, rises in north and is prominently visible on clear days. Darjeeling tea is grown on the slopes below the town and the steam-powered Darjeeling Himalayan Railway attracts tourists for the experience of late 19th-century travel. Darjeeling is also the headquarters of the Darjeeling district, a semi-autonomous region governed by the Gorkhaland<\/strong> Territorial administration.<\/p>\n

In the early 19th century during East India Company rule in India, Darjeeling<\/a> <\/strong>was identified as a potential summer retreat for British administrators and soldiers. The narrow mountain ridge was leased from the Kingdom of Sikkim and eventually annexed to British India. Thousands of labourers were brought in from the neighbouring Himalayan kingdoms to clear the forests and build British-style cottages. The tea plant was experimented with and found to flourish in the Darjeeling soil. Darjeeling tea came to be known the world over, and was the source of large revenues. In 1881, the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway\u2014a narrow-gauge mountain railway connecting the town to the North Bengal plains\u2014was completed in order to carry freight and to enable easier access by the summer residents. A large number of private schools were established in the region for the education of children of the domiciled British in India. In the later years of British rule, Darjeeling became a staging ground for Himalayan expeditions, and after India’s independence, a town resident, Tenzing Norgay, was among the first to summit Mount Everest. As the British left Darjeeling, its cottages were purchased by wealthy Indians from the plains and its tea plantations by out-of-town Indian business owners and conglomerates. After 1959, refugees from Tibet poured into the Darjeeling area, establishing Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the region. Darjeeling and nearby Kalimpong were the centres of movements for political and administrative autonomy for the region, the most notable of which was the Gorkhaland movement of the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Darjeeling’s population today is constituted largely of the descendants of labourers that were employed in the original development of the town\u2014the Lepcha, Khampa, Kirati, Gorkha, Newari, Sherpa<\/strong>, and Bhutia people. Although their lingua franca, the Nepali language, was declared an official language of the state of West Bengal in 1961 and of the Republic of India in 1992, their economic condition has not improved as much as that of other ethnic groups in the town. Some Darjeeling residents have sought seasonal or permanent economic opportunities in other parts of India. Like out-migrants from other regions of northeastern India, they have been subjected to discrimination and racism in some Indian cities. Darjeeling’s British-era schools, most of which remain in existence, attract children from India’s upper classes and also from abroad. Darjeeling tea, grown in the higher reaches of its hills, continues to be among the world’s most expensive, but at the bottom of Darjeeling’s hills<\/strong>, some of India’s cheapest teas are also grown. These upon being marketed domestically in “instant” versions in the 1950s, transformed India into a nation of tea drinkers. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway remains fully operational and has some of the few steam locomotives in service in India. After an international and national campaign for its support, the railway was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999. The quest for statehood for the region continues to prove elusive.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Darjeeling is a town and municipality in the Eastern Himalayas in India, lying at an average elevation of 2,045 metres (6,709 ft) in the northernmost region of the state of West Bengal. Kangchenjunga, the world’s third-highest mountain, rises in north and is prominently visible on clear days. Darjeeling tea is grown on the slopes below […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahendraindiatravel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahendraindiatravel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahendraindiatravel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahendraindiatravel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahendraindiatravel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mahendraindiatravel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":382,"href":"https:\/\/mahendraindiatravel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions\/382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahendraindiatravel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahendraindiatravel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahendraindiatravel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahendraindiatravel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}