Told in the hills
Netaji's months at Giddapahar
In the 1920s Sarat Chandra Bose, a leading Calcutta lawyer and the elder brother of Subhas Chandra Bose, bought a house at Giddapahar on the edge of Kurseong as a family hill retreat. Subhas stayed there more than once. In 1936, after returning to India from Europe, he was arrested by the British and later kept under house arrest at this house, cut off from politics but able to write.
From Giddapahar he wrote letters and worked on his ideas for India's future, and the house remains the place in the hills most closely tied to the man Indians call Netaji. Today it is the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Museum, run by the Netaji Institute for Asian Studies, with photographs, letters, and the bed and furniture of the Bose family. It is small, simple and free to enter, and it gives Kurseong a place in the story of India's freedom struggle.
Pinned to the board
Did you know
Kurseong is commonly explained as coming from the Lepcha 'Kharsang', usually translated as the land of the white orchid.
The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway shares Hill Cart Road through Kurseong bazaar, so the train passes within a few feet of shop counters.
Victoria Boys' School on Dow Hill was founded in 1879, two years before the toy train reached Darjeeling.
