Welcome to Sillery Gaon, named after the celery that used to grow here. Located in a remote part of Kalimpong district, the village grew out of what was once a small settlement of workers for the West Bengal Forest Department. Sillery Gaon has grown exponentially in recent years. Fields have been cemented over to build houses and to park cars. But these houses are not for the villagers. Instead, they’ve been built to meet a rapidly increasing demand for “homestay tourism”—in which villagers sell an agrarian experience to tourists who sleep and eat in their homes.

Tourism is pretty new in Kalimpong, at least in villages like Sillery. Twenty years ago, the rice paddies would have been awash in green during the monsoon. People even called Kalimpong the region’s “breadbasket,” noting a contrast between its food-producing fields and the monocultured tea plantations in neighboring Darjeeling. Today, the steps of once productive rice terraces have become overrun with weeds, and the invasive peacocks that eat anything the farmers plant. These national birds, however, cannot be harmed or even chased, lest retribution fall on you at the hands of the Forest Department or a Hindu nationalist neighbor.

To stimulate “rural development,” put failing Himalayan farmland to work, and stem out-migration from the hills, the government of West Bengal aggressively promotes homestay tourism. Bengali visitors from cities in the plains can stay in the “traditional” mountain homes of Nepali-speaking families to escape the heat below. Kalimpong now has, by an order of magnitude, the most homestays in the state. In Sillery Gaon, there are an estimated 250 homestay rooms in a village of roughly 40 families.

Sillery Gaon boasts spectacular views of Mt. Kanchenjunga (the world’s third-highest mountain) and the surrounding Himalayan range. It is located up a rough road. Homestay tourism here was made possible through state development initiatives. Foremost among these is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The work program, which promises one hundred days of annual employment to each rural household, employs hundreds of people in the hills each year on infrastructural projects. Over the past two decades, men in the hills have been choosing this guaranteed wage labor over the seasonal payouts of farming. These initiatives have led to the construction of hundreds of miles of new roads, connecting villages once only accessible by foot to main highways.

Thanks to the new roads, it is now possible for Bengali urbanites to leave Kolkata, escape the stifling pollution, and take refuge in the cleaner, cooler air of the mountains. And tourists can drive straight into villages that until recently were unconnected. Without this connectivity, there would be no homestay market.

Kalimpong’s value as a place of retreat comes from what people call its “openness”: the vistas, the agrarian landscape, the low population density.

Affordability is a quality that many tourists insist upon, and it is incumbent upon homestay operators to provide food and other comforts at the prices that visitors expect. In Sillery Gaon, a stay during the high season costs around Rs. 1,000 (about $12) per head per night for a room and three meals.

Even as homestays may have helped some families remain in Kalimpong and in their homes, the work of remaining provokes ambivalence. One older homestay operator in Sillery Gaon summarizes the economic situation in which she and her neighbors find themselves: “Earlier we used to graze the cows and goats, and farm. But now there are no fields. Homestays are the only way that we can make money.”

Residents have taken out loans and made deals with Bengali tour operators to finance the rapid construction of additional rooms and other enhancements. Retrofitting home interiors for budget tourism has given more urbanites access to climate retreat, even as it has deepened debt for villagers.

Despite the debts, homestay tourism is a means of avoiding the out-migration that has become a hallmark of family life across the region. As one woman explains while taking a break from turning over rooms in the middle of the day: “Earlier, people here used to go to cut the trees in the forest for two or three months. In those days, there were no mobile phones and no communication between those working in the forest and their families back in the village. Opening a homestay,” she says—making the home into a space where strangers were welcome, “has allowed everyone to stay together.”

Kalimpong’s villages are often described as “sleepy.” Sleepy villages have no history. They have no economy. They do things as they always have. But with homestays, villages aren’t really that sleepy. “The Bengalis don’t come here to sleep,” one homestay operator who also runs a small canteen out of her kitchen explains. Even though many tourists explain that they come for the peace and quiet, when they get here, they are often quite loud, with bonfires, music, singing, dancing, and drinking late into the night. Then they demand their “bed tea” at dawn.

“Food is especially important,” one homestay operator tells us. “We’ve learned that you must give food according to their palate. So, you must give them Bengali cuisine.” To feed tourists familiar food often requires traveling to distant markets to procure fish—a staple of Bengali cooking that is exponentially more expensive in the hills than in the plains.

A contradiction is built into this economic model. As tourists continue to come, looking for the next “open” space, the enclosed space of the interior becomes an intensified site of labor. Paradoxically, agrarian life in the face of climate crisis has moved inward, from the field into the house. ⦿