Dhankuta and Sipting

Dhankuta is a hill town on a ridge above the Tamur valley in eastern Nepal, at about twelve hundred metres, and it has a reputation within the country for being unusually tidy, whitewashed houses, stone-paved lanes, a bazaar that people from other districts mention approvingly. It was an administrative centre under the Ranas and it kept the look.

Foreign visitors are rare. There is no sight here in the sense of a monument to photograph, and that is the point of coming: this is a functioning eastern hill district where the interest is the daily life of it.

The town and the ridge

The bazaar runs along the ridge, busiest in the mornings. Newar shopkeepers, Limbu and Rai farmers coming in from the villages, and a market that sells what the district grows rather than what visitors buy.

Hile, about half an hour above the town at roughly 1,850 metres, is the more famous stop. A small bazaar on a cold ridge that was a trading post between the hills and Tibet, with Bhotiya and Tibetan-origin traders, tongba shops, and a view north to Makalu and the Kanchenjunga wall when the air is clear. Drinking tongba in Hile in the cold is a thing eastern Nepalis do on purpose.

Bhedetar, on the ridge between Dharan and Dhankuta, is the pass everyone stops at: the plains of the Terai on one side stretching into India, the hills on the other, and cloud usually coming up through the gap.

Sipting

A village outside Dhankuta with a community homestay programme, run by the households. Rooms in family houses, meals with the family, and days spent in the fields and orchards rather than on a schedule.

What you actually do depends on the season, which is how it should be, orange picking in December, planting or harvest at the right times of year, cooking, walking to the next village. There is no programme to speak of, and people who need one will find this frustrating.

Say in advance what you can and cannot eat, and how much walking you want. The households will build the days around it. Nobody will guess.

Oranges

Dhankuta district is one of the main citrus areas in Nepal, and the winter harvest is the district’s calendar. The orchards run down the slopes below the town, and in December and January the roadside is stacked with them.

The walking

Village-to-village on hill paths, at altitudes low enough that nothing is technical and warm enough that winter is comfortable. The Tamur river is below, and the long-distance route north towards Kanchenjunga starts from this side, which means the paths were walked for trade long before anyone came here for a holiday.

Practical things

• The road from Dharan climbs steeply to Bhedetar and then follows the ridge. It is tarmac and reasonable, and it fogs in most afternoons.
• Cold at night in Hile from November, and the buildings are not heated.
• Cash. ATMs in Dhankuta town; nothing in the villages.
• Very little English.
• Nothing here is set up for tourism, which is both the reason to come and the thing to be realistic about. Rooms are simple, bathrooms are shared, hot water is a bucket.