We reached the quaint Kalimpong city on 10th June just when many tourists were leaving for the plains and some like us were coming to the hills. We have been to Lava, Lolegaon, Rishap and other places within Kalimpong district but we never stayed or visited the city itself. We decided to explore this place which once belonged to Bhutan and is a home to Nepalese, Bhutanese, Chinese, Tibetan and other communities.

It was not easy to plan ahead as our experience often is better when we go without a plan and look for lesser known precincts of the city. So first place we went to on 11th was Bidyang Valley where quiet river Relli flows downstream to meet Teesta. There is an old wooden suspension bridge which has been repaired and restored. It was wonderful explore natural environment along the river. We found a lovely water fall. The place is known to backpackers who look for unexplored spots and has couple of homestays

Next we went to Delo Park but the sheer presence of large number of tourists visiting this beautifully maintained artificial park proved deterrent so we decided not to go inside and none of us wanted to explore paragliding so the place didn’t hold much interest to us. Instead we went to the renowned Graham’s Homes School which traces back its history to 1900. The place and its legacy deserves a separate blog.

On the way back to our picturesque Hill Top Resort we visited the famous Cafe Kalimpong and with a lucky coincidence, thanks to a reference by Soham Gupta, a well known upcoming photographer, we met Praveen Chettri also a photographer and the owner of the cafe who is also doing amazing work to build a repository of local people’s culture and oral narratives.

It has been great going so far…we don’t know what lies ahead and where our explorations will take us today and next two days. Here are the few clicks of our travel and explorations so far…