"The Hidden Valley of Rice" - as the local call. Once the tiny Kingdom but now the 22nd state of India . Situated in the Eastern Himalayas , is protected by Mt. Khanchendzonga (8534mtrs), the third highest mountain of the world and reverted by the Sikkimese as their protective deity, whose benign watchfulness ensure peace & prosperity for the land. Sikkim shares its border with Tibet in the north, Bhutan in the east, Nepal in the west and the state of West Bengal in north.
With an area of 7,300 sq.Kms , the elevation ranges from 244 mts to over 8540 mts above sea level . Within hours one can move from sub-tropical heat of the lower valley to the cold of the rugged mountain slopes of perpetual snow.
A naturalist paradise, Sikkim is noted for its floral & fauna wealth where over 4000 varieties of flowering plants and shrubs are found along with 6000 species of birds and 600 varieties of Butterflies. Sikkim is very well known mainly for its orchids of which there are more than 400 species and rhododendrons numbering more than 35 species. The forest of Sikkim have well known animals like the Snow leopard, The Blue sheep, Kiang the Tibetan Wild Ass, Musk deer and barking deer's, Red panda. The rivers have trout, carp and many other varieties of fishes.
Lepcha, Bhutias and Nepalese make up the major population of Sikkim . Lepchas are considered to be the original inhabitants of Sikkim . The people of Sikkim are by nature simple, polite and docile. Their culture and customs are as fascinating as the surrounding in which they live.

By J.R. Subba

The legendary account of “The Prehistoric Greater Sikkim” reveals that there were no establishments of settled governments. A number of Petty Rulers or Chiefs or Kings were ruling over these areas in different period of time. By around 4,000 B.C. (Neolithic Age of 5,000 - 2,000 B.C.) the Neolithic humans developed the art of land cultivation due to scarcity of food available for hunting and gathering. Agriculture required people to stay in one spot and so fixed settlement emerged. According to the legend of the Kiratas (Mundhum - oral tradition of the Limboos), the black soybean was the first crop, domesticated and cultivated by the Kiratas (Limboos) in this part of the country. The lone cultivated crop was thus eaten in a variety of ways to avoid monotonousness of eating. Thus, they ate it as raw, boiled with pods, dry frying, crushing, fermenting inclusive of the famous “Kinema”. The area was very rich in flora and faunal diversity. Later on a number of crops were added up through domestication of wild plants and through plant introduction. Thus, the people of the Greater Sikkim adopted eating of tender shoots, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, roots and tubers of a variety of plant and animal species available in the areas (Subba, 1999: 49-52, 159-160; Subba, 2002:48-187; Tamang, 2005).

The present area of Sikkim is 7096 sq. km. lying between 270 04' 46" and 280 07' 48" north latitude and 880 00' 58" and 880 55' 25" east longitude in the eastern Himalayas. It extends approximately 114 km from north to south and 64 km from east to west with altitude ranging from 250 m to 8,598 m. To its north lay the vast stretches of Tibetan plateau, with Nepal on the west, Bhutan and Chumbi Valley of China (Tibet) on the east and Darjeeling district of West Bengal in the south.
The Lepchas are the earliest aboriginal inhabitants of the present area of the Greater Sikkim. The next aboriginal inhabitant tribes are the Limboos. They are living in this part of Sikkim from time immemorial. After the Blood Brotherhood treaty between Khye-Bumsa and Thekong-Tek in 1275 AD the Bhutias also slowly migrated to the present area of Sikkim. (Note: many claim that the Treaty was written down in both Tibetan and Lepcha script but both have been lost now while others say that there was no script either of Tibetan or of Lepcha that time and hence there is no written evidence available of this treaty so far. No historical evidence is yet available so far of this event). The Maharaja’s History (Namgyal and Dolma translated by Dawa Samdup in 1908) the only available source of the ancient people of present Sikkim, has described the ancient people of Sikkim.