West Sikkim Pelling Lepcha Orange Orchid Cardamom Heritage

West Sikkim district centred on Pelling (the Kanchenjunga viewpoint town) is the homeland of the Lepcha people — Sikkim's indigenous Rong people (Rongkup) who consider themselves children of Kanchenjunga. Lepcha villages in the Dzongu reserve (a protected Lepcha homeland in North Sikkim) maintain traditional animist practices alongside Buddhism. West Sikkim's forests support a remarkable concentration of wild orchids (600+ species in Sikkim make it the "Orchid Paradise of India"), epiphytic ferns, and the red panda in bamboo-forest ecotones. The district grows orange, mandarin, and large cardamom on the mid-altitude slopes, and the Rinchenpong-Yuksom trail passes through some of Sikkim's most intact oak-rhododendron forest.