Gorkha conquest of western Sikkim

01Rabdentse falls

Tenzing Namgyal, Chogyal from 1780, ruled a small hill kingdom wedged between Bhutan and the new Gorkha state. In 1788 the Gorkha army, sent by the regent Bahadur Shah, came over the hills from the Limbu country. It took Limbuwan and stormed Rabdentse, the ridge-top capital above Pelling, which the Sikkimese kings had held since the late 1600s. The Chogyal went into exile in Tibet for the second time, and the Dalai Lama’s government settled him in the Chumbi valley.

02Holding the west

Through the following years Gorkha garrisons held the country west of the Teesta, and the quarrel with Sikkim’s Tibetan protectors fed into the Nepal–Tibet war of 1791–92. When Tshudpud Namgyal came back in 1793 with Tibetan help, he found Rabdentse too close to the Nepalese line and moved the capital east to Tumlong. Western Sikkim stayed in Nepal’s hands until the Anglo-Nepalese war. The Treaty of Sugauli and the Treaty of Titalia in 1817 gave the land back to Sikkim.