Cardamom and farm life in South Sikkim

The spice behind Sikkim's hill farms

Drive any road below Ravangla or around Yangang and Borong and look into the damp, shaded gullies. Under tall trees with pale bark you will see clumps of broad leaves, waist to head high, like a small banana or ginger plant. That is large cardamom, Amomum subulatum, called alaichi in Nepali, and for much of the twentieth century it paid for school fees, roofs and weddings across rural Sikkim.

It is a different spice from the small green cardamom of South India. The pods are large, dark brown and wrinkled, and they are dried over fire, which gives them a smoky, camphor-like flavour. Most of the crop goes to the plains, where it flavours garam masala, biryani and meat curries. According to a 2016 study in the journal Mountain Research and Development, Declining Large Cardamom Production Systems in the Sikkim Himalayas, Sikkim was the world's largest producer until the early 2000s, when production began to fall.

How it is grown: shade, alder and smoke

Large cardamom needs shade, moisture and cool air, which is why it grows in north-facing slopes, stream banks and gullies, typically between about 600 and 2,000 m. The classic shade tree is utis, the Himalayan alder (Alnus nepalensis), which fixes nitrogen in the soil and drops leaf litter that feeds the crop. Agricultural scientists often hold up the alder-cardamom system as a model of mountain farming that protects slopes and soil while earning cash. Growers in Sikkim recognise several local varieties, among them Ramsai, Golsai, Sawney and Varlangey, each suited to different heights.

Harvest runs from about August at lower farms to November higher up. Pickers cut the spikes at the base of the plant, strip the pods and carry them in baskets to the bhatti, a traditional kiln built of stone and mud, where they are dried over a slow wood fire for a day or more. The smoke is what gives Sikkim's cardamom its character, though improved kilns that dry more cleanly have been promoted in recent decades.

Boom, blight and what farmers face now

The decline after the early 2000s had several causes that the research literature names: viral diseases known locally as chirke and foorkey, fungal leaf blight, ageing plantations, lack of fresh planting material, and changing rainfall and temperature. Down To Earth magazine reported farmers whose harvests had fallen to a third of what the same land once gave, and many families shifted part of their land to vegetables, ginger, oranges or fodder, or sent younger members to work in towns.

Prices add to the uncertainty. Large cardamom is traded in a volatile market, and the price farmers receive has swung widely from year to year, sometimes by half. A good season can still bring in more than any other crop on the same land, which is why so many households keep at least a patch. When you see pods drying in a homestay courtyard, you are looking at much of that family's cash income for the year.

Beyond cardamom: the rest of the farm

A South Sikkim hill farm is rarely one crop. Around the house are terraces of maize, the staple of the middle hills, with finger millet and rice lower down; vegetable plots of squash (iskus), beans, mustard greens and radish; and orange trees, whose fruit ripens from November to January. Ginger and turmeric grow on the warmer slopes, and broom grass (amliso) on the steep edges, cut in winter for brooms sold in the plains. Most families keep a cow or two, goats and chickens.

Then there is dalle khursani, the small, round, fiercely hot red chilli that appears in pickles on every Sikkimese table. Sikkim has farmed without chemical fertilisers and pesticides as state policy since it was declared a fully organic state in January 2016, so most of what you eat on a village stay is grown a few steps from the kitchen.

• Large cardamom: August–November harvest
• Oranges (Sikkim mandarin): November–January
• Ginger: harvested late in the year, after the monsoon
• Maize: planted spring, harvested late summer
• Dalle khursani: picked from summer into autumn
• Broom grass: cut in winter

The fermented kitchen

Hill farms had to store food through long monsoons and cold winters, and the answer was fermentation. Gundruk is leafy greens, often mustard or radish leaves, fermented and sun-dried, then cooked into a sour soup; sinki is the same idea with radish roots. Kinema is fermented soybean with a strong smell and a sticky texture, cooked with onions, tomatoes and chilli. Chhurpi, made from buttermilk, comes soft and fresh for curries or hard and dried as a chew. These are everyday foods, not curiosities.

The food scientist Jyoti Prakash Tamang, who has studied them for decades at Sikkim University, describes them in his book Himalayan Fermented Foods: Microbiology, Nutrition, and Ethnic Values (2010), a good source if you want the detail. On a homestay, ask your host to show you the gundruk drying or the kinema in its basket; most are delighted to explain.

Seeing farm life on a village stay

The best way to understand all this is to stay with a farming family for two nights. Kewzing, Yangang and Borong near Ravangla all have homestays where hosts are happy to walk you through their fields, explain what grows where, and in season let you watch or help with the cardamom harvest and drying. October and November are ideal: harvest time, clear skies and the start of the orange season. Expect to pay about ₹1,200–2,000 per person a night with meals.

A few courtesies help. Ask before you walk into a field or photograph people working; stay on the bunds and paths; never pick fruit or pods without asking. If you want to buy cardamom, oranges, chilli pickle or local tea, buy directly from your hosts or at the Namchi market rather than at roadside stalls aimed at tourists, so the money goes to the people who grew it. Prices vary with the season.

Taking the flavours home

Large cardamom keeps well in an airtight jar for a year or more; crush a pod into rice, dal or a meat curry. Dalle khursani pickle travels well in a sealed jar, though airlines may ask you to pack it in checked baggage. Dried gundruk is light and easy to carry; soak it and cook it with potato, tomato and garlic for a sour soup. Temi tea, from Sikkim's own estate a short drive away, completes the set. All of these are sold in Namchi and Gangtok, and many homestays sell their own.