Sikkim

Steamed dumplings of thin wheat-flour wrappers filled with minced meat or vegetables, served with a fiery tomato and chilli sauce.

A warming noodle soup with chicken and vegetables in a clear, spiced broth, eaten across Sikkim in the cold months.

A sour, warming soup of gundruk, the fermented and dried leaves of mustard, radish and cauliflower, cooked with tomato and chilli.

A sour soup of sinki, fermented and sun-dried radish roots, a winter food of Sikkim’s farming families.

Strips of pork fat cooked with radish, dried chillies and ginger, without much oil or spice, a classic Bhutia dish.

A ring-shaped, deep-fried sweet bread of ground rice, sugar and ghee, crisp outside and soft inside, made for Tihar and Dasain.

Tender fiddlehead ferns gathered from forest streams, cooked with chhurpi, the soft local cottage cheese, and green chillies.

A curry of kinema, sticky fermented soybeans with a strong aroma, cooked with onion, tomato and chilli and eaten with rice.

Half-moon breads stuffed with spiced minced meat and cabbage and deep-fried until golden, a Tibetan and Bhutia snack.

A fiery pickle of Sikkim’s GI-tagged dalle chillies preserved in mustard oil with fenugreek, mustard and salt.

A thick green soup of young stinging-nettle leaves cooked with cornmeal or rice flour, garlic and chilli.

A dark, thick flatbread of finger millet flour cooked on a griddle, a traditional food of farming families in the Sikkim hills.

A Bhutia dance in which performers in a furry costume play the snow lion, a guardian symbol linked to Mount Khangchendzonga.

Masked monastic dances performed for Pang Lhabsol, a festival unique to Sikkim that honours Mount Khangchendzonga as the State’s guardian deity.

A colourful Nepali folk dance performed during Tihar (Deepavali), in which dancers in women’s finery go from house to house with music and songs.

A lively song and dance of the Tamang community performed to the beat of the damphu, a small round frame drum.

The Sikkimese New Year at the end of the harvest, celebrated by the Bhutia community as Losoong and the Lepcha community as Namsoong, usually in December.

The seat of the Karma Kagyu school in Sikkim.

A vast high-mountain park around Khangchendzonga, the world’s third-highest peak, with glaciers, lakes and forests sacred to the people of Sikkim.

Sikkim’s capital on a ridge facing the Khangchendzonga range, known for its clean streets, monasteries and the pedestrian MG Marg.

A large monastery of the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism on a hillside near Gangtok.

One of the oldest and most important monasteries of Sikkim, of the Nyingma school, on a hilltop near Pelling.

A glacial lake high in the mountains on the road from Gangtok to Nathu La, frozen in winter and ringed by flowers in spring.

A high mountain pass on the India–China border, once part of an old trade route between India and Tibet.

One of the highest lakes in India, in the cold desert of North Sikkim, held sacred by Buddhists and visited by pilgrims of several faiths.

India's first 'mixed' site: sacred mountains and outstanding nature.