Gyalshing District or Geyzing District is a

district A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municip ...

of the

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

n state of

Sikkim Sikkim ( ; ) is a States and union territories of India, state in northeastern India. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China in the north and northeast, Bhutan in the east, Koshi Province of Nepal in the west, and West Bengal in the ...

. Its headquarter is

Geyzing Gyalshing (also Geyzing, ) is a city, located in Gyalshing district, in the Indian state of Sikkim. It is administrative headquarter of district. The town is connected to the capital Gangtok by a metalled road. Geyzing is also connected to t ...

, also known as

Gyalshing Gyalshing (also Geyzing, ) is a city, located in Gyalshing district, in the Indian state of Sikkim. It is administrative headquarter of district. The town is connected to the capital Gangtok by a metalled road. Geyzing is also connected to the ...

. The district is a favourite among trekkers due to the high elevations. Other important towns include

Pelling Pelling (པད་གླིང་། ) is a hill station in ( རྒྱལ་ཤིང་རྫོང་།) Gyalshing district of Sikkim, India. Pelling is nestled at an altitude of . The town is located at a distance of 10 km from G ...

and

Yuksom Yuksom () is a historical town 40 km north of Gyalshing in the Gyalshing district in the northeast Indian state of Sikkim. It was the first capital of Kingdom of Sikkim established in 1642 AD by Phuntsog Namgyal, the first Chogyal of Sikkim. ...

. Local people also call it as ''Pallo-Sikkim'' and ''Sano-Sikkim'' commonly.

History

Gyalshing district is the site of the ancient state capital

. It served as Sikkim's capital beginning in 1642 for almost 50 years until it was shifted to

Rabdentse Rabdentse was the second capital of the former Kingdom of Sikkim from 1670 to 1814. The capital city was destroyed by the invading Gurkha army and only the ruins of the palace and the chortens are seen here now. However, the ruins of this city ...

. The district was under the occupation of the

Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...

ese for 30 years in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After

Anglo-Nepalese War The Anglo-Nepalese War (1 November 1814 – 4 March 1816), also known as the Gorkha War or Nepal-Company War, was fought between the Gorkhali army of the Kingdom of Nepal (present-day Nepal) and the forces of the British East India Company ...

(1814–16), the district was returned to Sikkim.

Geography

Gyalshing district covers an area of . Attractions include the

Khecheopalri Lake Khecheopalri Lake, originally known as Kha-Chot-Palri (meaning the heaven of Padmasambhava), is a lake located near Khecheopalri village, west of Gangtok in the West Sikkim district of the Northeast India, Northeastern Indian state of Sikkim. ...

, where, according to legend, not a leaf is allowed to fall on the surface of the lake and the

Dubdi Monastery Dubdi Monastery, occasionally called Yuksom Monastery, is a Buddhist monastery of the Nyingma sect of Tibetan Buddhism near Yuksom, in the Geyzing subdivision of West Sikkim district, in eastern India. The Chogyar Namgyal established the fi ...

, the first monastery of the state.

Assembly constituencies

The district was previously divided into 5 assembly constituencies. * Yoksam-Tashiding (BL) * Yangthang * Maneybung-Dentam * Gyalshing-Barnyak * Rinchenpong (BL)

National protected area

Khangchendzonga National Park Khangchendzonga National Park, also Kanchenjunga Biosphere Reserve, is a national park and a biosphere reserve located in Sikkim, India. It was inscribed to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list in July 2016, becoming the first " Mixed Heritage" ...

(Part)

Economy

The economy is mainly agrarian, despite most of the land being unfit for cultivation owing to the precipitous and rocky slopes.

Transport

Roads are in poor condition owing to the frequent landslides.

Demographics

According to the 2011 census Gyalshing district has a

population Population is a set of humans or other organisms in a given region or area. Governments conduct a census to quantify the resident population size within a given jurisdiction. The term is also applied to non-human animals, microorganisms, and pl ...

of 136,435, roughly equal to the nation of

Grenada Grenada is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea. The southernmost of the Windward Islands, Grenada is directly south of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and about north of Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad and the So ...

. This gives it a ranking of 608th in India (out of a total of

640 Year 640 ( DCXL) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 640 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming y ...

). The district has a population density of . Its

population growth rate Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 8.2 billion in 2025. Actual global human population growth amounts to around 70 million annu ...

over the decade 2001-2011 was 10.58%. It has a

sex ratio A sex ratio is the ratio of males to females in a population. As explained by Fisher's principle, for evolutionary reasons this is typically about 1:1 in species which reproduce sexually. However, many species deviate from an even sex ratio, ei ...

of 941

females An organism's sex is female (symbol: ♀) if it produces the ovum (egg cell), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete (sperm cell) during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Females and male ...

for every 1000 males, and a

literacy rate Literacy is the ability to read and write, while illiteracy refers to an inability to read and write. Some researchers suggest that the study of "literacy" as a concept can be divided into two periods: the period before 1950, when literacy was ...

of 78.69%. After bifurcation the district had a population of 71,675. 5.60% of the population lives in urban areas. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes made up 3,391 (4.73%) and 31,847 (44.43%) of the population respectively. The people are mainly of

Limbu Limbu may refer to: * Limbu people, an indigenous tribe living in Nepal, Sikkim (India) and Bhutan ** Limbu language, their Sino-Tibetan language *** Limbu script **** Limbu (Unicode block) * Rambahadur Limbu Rambahadur Limbu, (; 8 July 1939 � ...

descent. Other ethnic groups include the Lepcha and

Bhutia The Bhutias (exonym; Nepali: भुटिया, "People from Tibet") or Drejongpas (endonym; , THL: dre-jong pa, "People of the Rice Valley") are a Tibetan ethnic group native to the Indian state of Sikkim who speak Drejongke, a Tibetic ...

communities. Nepali is the most widely spoken language in the district.

Religion

Hinduism Hinduism () is an Hypernymy and hyponymy, umbrella term for a range of Indian religions, Indian List of religions and spiritual traditions#Indian religions, religious and spiritual traditions (Sampradaya, ''sampradaya''s) that are unified ...

is followed by majority of the people in the district.

Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

followed by a considerable population. The Kirateshwar Mahadev Temple, a major Hindu pilgrimage centre in Sikkim, is situated in

Legship Legship is a small town in Gyalshing district of the Indian State of Sikkim. Legship is the gateway to Gyalshing City. It is located on the main road connecting Gyalshing with the rest of the state, on the banks of the river Rangit. The place ...

in the district.

Languages

At the time of the 2011 Census of India, 51.85% of the population in the district spoke Nepali, 22.61%

, 8.68% Lepcha, 7.05% Bhotia, 2.69%

Sherpa SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access) is an organisation originally set up in 2002 to run and manage the SHERPA Project. History SHERPA began as an endeavour to support the establishment of a number of open ...

, 1.55%

Rai (), commercially styled as since 2000 and known until 1954 as (RAI), is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many terrestrial and subscription television channels a ...

and 1.48%

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

as their first language.

Flora and fauna

Gyalshing district houses a great diversity of flora and fauna, many of which are used by Indigenous and local communities. Since most of the district is hilly it enjoys a

temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (approximately 23.5° to 66.5° N/S of the Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ran ...

climate. Above 3,800 m (12,000 ft) the slopes are full of

rhododendron ''Rhododendron'' (; : ''rhododendra'') is a very large genus of about 1,024 species of woody plants in the Ericaceae, heath family (Ericaceae). They can be either evergreen or deciduous. Most species are native to eastern Asia and the Himalayan ...

forests. In 1977, the district became home to

, which has an area of . It shares the park with

North Sikkim district North Sikkim (now officially named as Mangan District) is a district of the Indian state of Sikkim. Its district headquarters is Mangan. It is the seventh least populous district in the country (out of 640). Geography Mangan is the largest o ...