[17][21][22] Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General of India, to whom Lloyd communicated his notion, concurred, recommending a small presence of the army in addition for monitoring the frontier.

The botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, who visited Darjeeling in the 1840s, noted that carts and pack animals on these roads were bringing fruit and produce from Nepal, wool and salt from Tibet, and labourers looking for work from just about everywhere.

[27] By the last decades of the 19th century, large numbers of administrative officials of the imperial and British Raj provincial governments had begun to travel to hill stations during the summers.

[51] Darjeeling had a sizeable community of Sherpas, an ethnic group, originally from eastern Tibet whose ancestors had moved to some villages in Nepal below Mount Everest.

[58] After the annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China in 1950–1951, many Tibetans emigrated to India, with some settling in the Darjeeling area, including the 14th Dalai Lama's older brother Gyalo Thondup.

[62] A decade later, during Rajiv Gandhi's prime ministership, small regions in Assam to the east of Darjeeling, which had been riven by violent ethnic separatism, were granted statehood.

[68] In 2017, Mamata Banerjee, the West Bengal chief minister, appointed a moderate Morcha politician to leadership in a reconstituted GTA, marginalizing and eventually ousting the founder of the movement, Bimal Gurung.

[73] They are accelerated by extensive deforestation, defective drainage, poorly built revetments and the presence of steep slopes that have been undercut to make shelves for paths, roads, and houses.

[72] The continual tectonic activity of Darjeeling's ancient past can be inferred from the surrounding landscape in such features as terraces that dip in their middle as a result of earlier horizontal pressure.

[82] Darjeeling's altitude—which is greater than some other regions of the Eastern Himalayas at the same latitude (27° N), such as the Assam hills—and its rarified air causes its UV radiation levels to be correspondingly higher.

[88] For its water the Darjeeling municipality and the surrounding hills depend to a large extent on perennial or seasonal jhora springs (see Map 1), especially during the pre-monsoon months from February to May.

[91] Darjeeling's explosive population growth in the period 1961–2011, and extensive deforestation even within the protected catchment area for the lakes, have caused many springs to have vastly reduced yields during the dry months from February to May.

[92] By 2006, land records in Darjeeling showed that foodgrain-producing farmland had decreased proportionally, caused by accelerated levels of urbanisation and by subsistence farming giving way to commercial cropping, especially of tea.

[95] According to a 2014 study, the influx of the excess population in the tea plantations around Darjeeling into "marginal areas of town—on backfill, slopes, septic tanks, and jhorās (springs)—has strapped the town’s colonial-era infrastructure.

[110] The accelerated growth of the town's population and the tightly packed living conditions in which different ethnicities mixed created syncretic cultures in Darjeeling which evolved away from their historical roots.

[112] Both groups have experienced racism and economic and social discrimination in India's big cities, caused by their distinctive, more East Asian, physical appearance.

As of 2017, workers maintain their two or three-bedroom homes which they do not own, become attached to their upkeep, and eventually hope to retire in them when an adult child who also works on the plantation inherits the house.

According to a 2017 study, "India has pursued the recognition of iconic brands, not only to create market share but also to recognise the value of the GI system to encourage development in poor, rural regions with high unemployment rates.

[37] Although the service was begun in the 19th century to move humans and freight efficiently, its primary clients today are tourists who are availing themselves of the opportunity to experience the mobilities of travel of a bygone era.

As the railway climbs, so the flora changes and its upper sections are dominated by enormous Himalayan pines, which in misty weather give a surreal quality to the landscape.

[146] According to the author, "The majority of the employees and almost all of the top ranking officers in West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation are Bengalis; locals generally get employed as photographers, drivers, and guides.

[147] The steep slopes of the surrounding ridges (at inclines of between 20° and 48°) can lead to high surface run-off, subsequent absorption, and collection of water in partially confined spaces.

[149] Once in Darjeeling, the water is distributed along the colonial pattern, first serving more expensive and sought-after uphill neighbourhoods and then the low-income downhill ones, which have more restricted access to the supply.

[152] In 1897 Darjeeling became the first town in India to be supplied by hydroelectricity, which was generated at the nearby Sidrapong Hydel Power Station; it was primarily for use in street lighting and private houses.

[170] A literary culture has matured in the Nepali-speaking population of the Darjeeling region; in 2013, Asit Rai, a resident and Nepali-language writer, was elected to the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, the highest honour of India's National Academy of Letters.

[172] By the early 1990s, a common middle-class western popular music culture was much in evidence among the young people of Kathmandu, Nepal and the Nepalese-speaking youth in Darjeeling.

[180] Popular alcoholic beverages sold in Darjeeling town include tongba, Jnaard (pronounced as Jaar) and chhaang, variations of a local beer made from fermenting finger millet.

[181][182] A popular food in Darjeeling is the momo, a steamed dumpling containing pork, beef, chicken or vegetables (cabbage or potatoes) cooked in a doughy wrapping and served with watery soup.

[183] In fields such as engineering and computer science, the local colleges, however, were less able to offer the professional training or career placement facilities of India's growth centres, which had caused some students to leave Darjeeling after high school.

[191] Some families have raised chickens or livestock or opened a corner shop to make more money; their children have gone to nearby towns to study in private schools in which the medium of instruction is English, which is thought to offer better career opportunities.