Nep: गान्तोक gāntōka ‘Snow Temple’ -City/District/Capital, Sikkim From Tib: gangs, ‘snow’; Sik: tok, ‘temple’. Gangtok’s name is commonly explained from Tibetan gangs ‘snow’ and tok ‘temple’, an etymology that neatly captures both its altitude and its religious...
‘Great Pass’ -Town, Sikkim From Tib: la ‘mountain pass’ and chen ‘big’ Lachen sits at the northern edge of Sikkim, close to the Tibetan frontier, and was historically one of the last inhabited settlements on the old trade routes into the Chumbi Valley. Long before...
‘Little Pass’ -Town, Sikkim From Tib: la ‘pass’ and chung ‘small’ A few kilometres from Lachen lies Lachung, its linguistic twin and historical counterpart. Together the two names map a mountain logic of scale and movement rather than fixed settlement. Lachung later...
(Tibetan Buddhist monument; name from Tib chörten, ‘reliquary, stupa’) — Town, Sikkim The Naga Chorten stands on the old route east from Gangtok towards the Nathula Pass and the Tibetan frontier. Chorten is the Tibetan form of Sanskrit caitya, a reliquary...
‘Sky-high’-Town, Sikkim From Skt: nam ‘sky’ and chi ‘high’ Namchi lies in southern Sikkim and represents a different strand of the state’s identity. More accessible than the northern valleys, it has become a centre for Hindu pilgrimage, dominated by large modern...
The ‘Seven Sisters’ are a family of seven states on the North Eastern Region (NER) of India: Arunachal Pradesh (ArP), Assam (Asm), Manipur (Man), Meghalaya (Meg), Mizoram (Miz), Nagaland (Nag), Tripura (Tri). Sikkim is usually included as a brother state....
‘Valley of Flowers’ — Town, Sikkim From Tib: yum ‘meadow’ and thang ‘plains’ The broad alpine valley of Yumthang, now marketed as the “Valley of Flowers”, is a reminder that Himalayan place names often describe terrain with great precision. In spring, the...
