Kalimpong Silk Route Festival begins on a colourful note

NIRMALYA BANERJEE, EOI, KALIMPONG, NOV 3, 2022: With colourful folk dances, songs and a three-kilometre-long heritage walk, the Kalimpong Silk Route festival was off to a flying start on Thursday morning. 

The venue of the event is the Regulated Market near Topkhana in Kalimpong town. Food stalls have been set up, selling the local delicacy. Coffee cultivated in the hills of Kalimpong and processed locally are also on sale, as well as handicrafts from the hills. 

The cognoscenti of the hills were there to tell the assembled people the story of olden days of glory of Kalimpong, when the town was the centre of Tibet trade, how Kalimpong had fallen back in the race since the closure of the trade across Jelep La border in 1962.

They also held out the prospects for the future; how Kalimpong had become the hub of eco-tourism and home-stays which were spread mostly along the silk route of yore.

Kalimpong faced an uphill task in making the authorities sit up and reopen the trade route with Tibet across Jelep La, they said, the way the Nathu La trade route from Gangtok had been opened.

Recalling the glory of Kalimpong in the days of Tibet trade, Chairman of Mani Trust Subash Mani Singh, the main organizer of the event, said those were the days when Kalimpong was a centre of international trade.

Foreign vehicles would be dismantled and carried on the backs of mules across the border to Tibet and reassembled there. Mules laded with Rolex watches would move up along the silk route and cross Jelep La pass to enter Tibet. Pointing out how the proximity of Kalimpong to international borders still helped, he said at Today–Tangta, which was the border of India and Bhutan in the Kalimpong district, famous American brands like Pepsi and Lays were available in shops. 

“We are becoming losers. We are failing to realize the importance of the silkroute. Pointing out that both Sikkim and Kalimpong were the stakeholders in Tibet trade, he said in recognition of the importance of Sikkim in border trade one of the events in the five-day-long Kalimpong Silk Route festival would be a 50-km Eastern Himalaya Hill Marathon that would begin at Aritar in Sikkim and end at the venue of the festival in Kalimpong on June 5.President of Jelep La Trade Route Demand Committee Sebastian Pradhan who is the pioneer in home-stays in these hills, said Kalimpong was hub of Tibet trade from 1905 to 1962, “Now we are trying to bring back trade, and along with it cross-border tourism also.” 

Tourism would flourish in Kalimpong if tourists could go to Tibet and pilgrims to Kailash Mansarovar route from Kalimpong across Jelep La and the home-stays would also get a boost. 

 There would be foreign tourists too and the economy of Kalimpong would again boom. It was unfortunate that sandwiched between the two main tourist destinations of Darjeeling and Sikkim Kalimpong was not getting its due share of tourists now.

He said stalls selling various specialties of Kalimpong district were being set up at the regulated market, the venue of the festival. It would be convenient for tourists visiting Kalimpong getting things of their choice under one roof.

Being away from the main market of Kalimpong in the Haat Bazaar area, it would also be easy for tourists to park their vehicles while visiting the shops.