Sikkim
Sikkim is a state in northeastern India. It borders Tibet in the north and northeast, Bhutan in the east, Nepal in the west, West Bengal in the south. Sikkim is located close to India's Siliguri Corridor near Bangladesh. Sikkim is the least second smallest among the Indian states. A part of the Eastern Himalaya, Sikkim is notable for its biodiversity, including alpine and subtropical climates, as well as being a host to Kangchenjunga, the highest peak in India and third highest on Earth. Sikkim's capital and largest city is Gangtok. 35% of the state is covered by the Khangchendzonga National Park. The Kingdom of Sikkim was founded by the Namgyal dynasty in the 17th century, it was ruled by a Buddhist priest-king known as the Chogyal. It became a princely state of British India in 1890. After 1947, Sikkim continued its protectorate status with the Republic of India, it enjoyed per capita income among Himalayan states. In 1973, anti-royalist riots took place in front of the Chogyal's palace. In 1975, the monarchy was deposed by the people.
A referendum in 1975 led to Sikkim joining India as its 22nd state. Modern Sikkim is a multilingual Indian state. Sikkim has 11 official languages: Nepali, Lepcha, Limbu, Rai, Magar and English. English is used in government documents; the predominant religions are Vajrayana Buddhism. Sikkim's economy is dependent on agriculture and tourism, as of 2014 the state had the third-smallest GDP among Indian states, although it is among the fastest-growing. Sikkim accounts for the largest share of cardamom production in India, is the world's second largest producer of the spice after Guatemala. Sikkim achieved its ambition to convert its agriculture to organic over the interval 2003 to 2016, the first state in India to achieve this distinction, it is among India's most environmentally conscious states, having banned plastic water bottles and styrofoam products. The origin theory of the name Sikkim is that it is a combination of two Limbu words: su, which means "new", khyim, which means "palace" or "house".
The Tibetan name for Sikkim is Drenjong, which means "valley of rice", while the Bhutias call it Beyul Demazong, which means'"the hidden valley of rice". According to the folklore, after establishing Rabdentse as his new capital Bhutia king Tensung Namgyal built a palace and asked his Limbu Queen to name it; the Lepcha people, the original inhabitants of Sikkim, called it Nye-mae-el, meaning "paradise". In historical Indian literature, Sikkim is known as the garden of the war god Indra; the Lepchas are considered to be the earliest inhabitants of Sikkim. However the Limbus and the Magars lived in the inaccessible parts of West and South districts as early as the Lepchas lived in the East and North districts; the Buddhist saint Padmasambhava known as Guru Rinpoche, is said to have passed through the land in the 8th century. The Guru is reported to have blessed the land, introduced Buddhism, foretold the era of monarchy that would arrive in Sikkim centuries later. According to legend, Khye Bumsa, a 14th-century prince from the Minyak House in Kham in eastern Tibet, received a divine revelation instructing him to travel south to seek his fortunes.
A fifth-generation descendant of Khye Bumsa, Phuntsog Namgyal, became the founder of Sikkim's monarchy in 1642, when he was consecrated as the first Chogyal, or priest-king, of Sikkim by the three venerated lamas at Yuksom. Phuntsog Namgyal was succeeded in 1670 by his son, Tensung Namgyal, who moved the capital from Yuksom to Rabdentse. In 1700, Sikkim was invaded by the Bhutanese with the help of the half-sister of the Chogyal, denied the throne; the Bhutanese were driven away by the Tibetans, who restored the throne to the Chogyal ten years later. Between 1717 and 1733, the kingdom faced many raids by the Nepalese in the west and Bhutanese in the east, culminating with the destruction of the capital Rabdentse by the Nepalese. In 1791, China sent troops to defend Tibet against the Gorkha Kingdom. Following the subsequent defeat of Gorkha, the Chinese Qing dynasty established control over Sikkim. Following the beginning of British rule in neighbouring India, Sikkim allied with Britain against their common adversary, Nepal.
The Nepalese attacked Sikkim. This prompted the British East India Company to attack Nepal, resulting in the Gurkha War of 1814. Treaties signed between Sikkim and Nepal resulted in the return of the territory annexed by the Nepalese in 1817. However, ties between Sikkim and the British weakened when the latter began taxation of the Morang region. In 1849, two British physicians, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker and Dr. Archibald Campbell, the latter being in charge of relations between the British and Sikkimese governments, ventured into the mountains of Sikkim unannounced and unauthorised; the doctors were detained by the Sikkimese government, leading to a punitive British expedition against the kingdom, after which the Darjeeling district and Morang were annexed to British India in 1853. The invasion led to the Chogyal of Sikkim becoming a titular ruler under the directive of the British governor. Sikkim became a British protectorate in the decades of the 19th century, formalised by a convention signed with China in 1890.
Sikkim was granted more sovereignty over the next three decades, became a member of the Chamber of Princes, the assembly representing the rulers of the Indian princely states, in 1922. Prior to the Indian independence, Jawaharlal Nehru, as the Vice President of the Executive Council, pushed through a resolu
Rhododendron
Rhododendron is a genus of 1,024 species of woody plants in the heath family, either evergreen or deciduous, found in Asia, although it is widespread throughout the highlands of the Appalachian Mountains of North America. It is the national flower of Nepal as well as the state flower of West Washington. Most species have brightly coloured flowers. Azaleas make up two subgenera of Rhododendron, they are distinguished from "true" rhododendrons by having only five anthers per flower. Rhododendron is a genus of shrubs and small to large trees, the smallest species growing to 10–100 cm tall, the largest, R. protistum var. giganteum, reported to 30 m tall. The leaves are spirally arranged, they may be either deciduous. In some species, the undersides of the leaves are covered with hairs; some of the best known species are noted for their many clusters of large flowers. There are alpine species with small flowers and small leaves, tropical species such as section Vireya that grow as epiphytes. Species in this genus may be part of the heath complex in oak-heath forests in eastern North America.
They have been divided based on the presence or absence of scales on the abaxial leaf surface. These scales, unique to subgenus Rhododendron, are modified hairs consisting of a polygonal scale attached by a stalk. Rhododendron are characterised by having inflorescences with scarious perulae, a chromosome number of x=13, fruit that has a septicidal capsule, an ovary, superior, stamens that have no appendages, agglutinate pollen. Rhododendron is the largest genus in the family Ericaceae, with as many as 1,024 species, is morphologically diverse; the taxonomy has been complex. Although Rhododendrons had been known since the description of Rhododendron hirsutum by Charles de l'Écluse in the sixteenth century, were known to classical writers, referred to as Chamaerhododendron, the genus was first formally described by Linnaeus in his Species Plantarum in 1753, he listed five species under Rhododendron. At that time he considered the known six species of Azalea that he had described earlier in 1735 in his Systema Naturae as a separate genus.
Linnaeus' six species of Azalea were Azalea indica, A. pontica, A. lutea, A. viscosa, A. lapponica and A. procumbens, which he distinguished from Rhododendron by having five stamens, as opposed to ten. As new species of what are now considered Rhododendron were discovered, if they seemed to differ from the type species they were assigned to separate genera. For instance Rhodora for Rhododendron canadense and Hymenanthes for Rhododendron metternichii, now R. degronianum. Meanwhile, other botanists such as Salisbury and Tate began to question the distinction between Azalea and Rhododendron, in 1836, Azalea was incorporated into Rhododendron and the genus divided into eight sections. Of these Tsutsutsi, Pogonanthum and Rhodora are still used, the other sections being Lepipherum and Chamaecistus; this structure survived till following which the development of molecular phylogeny led to major re-examinations of traditional morphological classifications, although other authors such as Candolle, who described six sections, used different numeration.
Soon, as more species became available in the nineteenth century so did a better understanding of the characteristics necessary for the major divisions. Chief amongst these were Maximovicz's Rhododendreae Asiae Planchon. Maximovicz used flower bud position and its relationship with leaf buds to create eight "Sections". Bentham and Hooker used a similar scheme, but called the divisions "Series", it was not until 1893 that Koehne appreciated the significance of scaling and hence the separation of lepidote and elepidote species. The large number of species that were available by the early twentieth century prompted a new approach when Balfour introduced the concept of grouping species into series; the Species of Rhododendron referred to this series concept as the Balfourian system. That system continued up to modern times in Davidian's four volume The Rhododendron Species; the next major attempt at classification was by Sleumer who from 1934 began incorporating the Balfourian series into the older hierarchical structure of subgenera and sections, according to the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, culminating in 1949 with his "Ein System der Gattung Rhododendron L.", subsequent refinements.
Most of the Balfourian series are represented by Sleumer as subsections, though some appear as sections or subgenera. Sleumer based his system on the relationship of the flower buds to the leaf buds, flower structure, whether the leaves were lepidote or non-lepidote. While Sleumer's work was accepted, many in the United States and the United Kingdom continued to use the simpler Balfourian system of the Edinburgh group. Sleumer's system underwent many revisions by others, predominantly the Edinburgh group in their continuing Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh notes. Cullen of the Edinburgh group, placing more
Blizzard
A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong sustained winds of at least 35 mph and lasting for a prolonged period of time—typically three hours or more. A ground blizzard is a weather condition where snow is not falling but loose snow on the ground is lifted and blown by strong winds. Blizzards can have an immense size and stretch to hundreds or thousands of kilometres. In the United States, the National Weather Service defines a blizzard as a severe snow storm characterized by strong winds causing blowing snow that results in low visibilities; the difference between a blizzard and a snowstorm is the strength of the wind, not the amount of snow. To be a blizzard, a snow storm must have sustained winds or frequent gusts that are greater than or equal to 56 km/h with blowing or drifting snow which reduces visibility to 400 m or 0.25 mi or less and must last for a prolonged period of time—typically three hours or more. While severe cold and large amounts of drifting snow may accompany blizzards, they are not required.
Blizzards can bring whiteout conditions, can paralyze regions for days at a time where snowfall is unusual or rare. A severe blizzard has winds over 72 km/h, near zero visibility, temperatures of −12 °C or lower. In Antarctica, blizzards are associated with winds spilling over the edge of the ice plateau at an average velocity of 160 km/h. Ground blizzard refers to a weather condition where loose snow or ice on the ground is lifted and blown by strong winds; the primary difference between a ground blizzard as opposed to a regular blizzard is that in a ground blizzard no precipitation is produced at the time, but rather all the precipitation is present in the form of snow or ice at the surface. The Australia Bureau of Meteorology describes a blizzard as, "Violent and cold wind, laden with snow, some part, at least, of, raised from snow covered ground." The Oxford English Dictionary concludes the term blizzard is onomatopoeic, derived from the same sense as blow, blast and bluster. It achieved its modern definition by 1859.
The term became common in the press during the harsh winter of 1880–81. In the United States, storm systems powerful enough to cause blizzards form when the jet stream dips far to the south, allowing cold, dry polar air from the north to clash with warm, humid air moving up from the south; when cold, moist air from the Pacific Ocean moves eastward to the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains, warmer, moist air moves north from the Gulf of Mexico, all, needed is a movement of cold polar air moving south to form potential blizzard conditions that may extend from the Texas Panhandle to the Great Lakes and Midwest. A blizzard may be formed when a cold front and warm front mix together and a blizzard forms at the border line. Another storm system occurs when a cold core low over the Hudson Bay area in Canada is displaced southward over southeastern Canada, the Great Lakes, New England; when the moving cold front collides with warmer air coming north from the Gulf of Mexico, strong surface winds, significant cold air advection, extensive wintry precipitation occur.
Low pressure systems moving out of the Rocky Mountains onto the Great Plains, a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie and grassland, can cause thunderstorms and rain to the south and heavy snows and strong winds to the north. With few trees or other obstructions to reduce wind and blowing, this part of the country is vulnerable to blizzards with low temperatures and whiteout conditions. In a true whiteout there is no visible horizon. People can become lost in their own front yards, when the door is only 3 m away, they would have to feel their way back. Motorists have to stop their cars as the road is impossible to see. A nor'easter is a macro-scale storm that occurs off Atlantic Canada coastlines, it gets its name from the direction. The usage of the term in North America comes from the wind associated with many different types of storms some of which can form in the North Atlantic Ocean and some of which form as far south as the Gulf of Mexico; the term is most used in the coastal areas of New England and Atlantic Canada.
This type of storm has characteristics similar to a hurricane. More it describes a low-pressure area whose center of rotation is just off the coast and whose leading winds in the left-forward quadrant rotate onto land from the northeast. High storm waves may cause coastal flooding and beach erosion. Notable nor'easters include The Great Blizzard of 1888, one of the worst blizzards in U. S. history. It dropped 100–130 cm of snow and had sustained winds of more than 45 miles per hour that produced snowdrifts in excess of 50 feet. Railroads were shut down and people were confined to their houses for up to a week, it killed 400 people in New York. The 1972 Iran Blizzard, which caused 4,000 reported deaths, was the deadliest blizzard in recorded history. Dropping as much as 26 feet of snow, it covered 200 villages. After a snowfall lasting nearly a week, an area the size of Wisconsin was buried in snow; the winter of 1880–1881 is considered the most severe winter known in parts of the United States. Many children—and their parents—learned of "The Snow Winter" through the children's book The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder, in which the author tells of her family's efforts to survive.
The snow arrived in October 1880 and blizzard followed bli
Nepal
Nepal the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas but includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. With an estimated population of 26.4 million, it is 48th largest country by population and 93rd largest country by area. It borders China in the north and India in the south and west while Bangladesh is located within only 27 km of its southeastern tip and Bhutan is separated from it by the Indian state of Sikkim. Nepal has a diverse geography, including fertile plains, subalpine forested hills, eight of the world's ten tallest mountains, including Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. Kathmandu is largest city. Nepal is a multiethnic nation with Nepali as the official language; the name "Nepal" is first recorded in texts from the Vedic period of the Indian subcontinent, the era in ancient India when Hinduism was founded, the predominant religion of the country. In the middle of the first millennium BCE, Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was born in Lumbini in southern Nepal.
Parts of northern Nepal were intertwined with the culture of Tibet. The centrally located Kathmandu Valley is intertwined with the culture of Indo-Aryans, was the seat of the prosperous Newar confederacy known as Nepal Mandala; the Himalayan branch of the ancient Silk Road was dominated by the valley's traders. The cosmopolitan region developed distinct traditional architecture. By the 18th century, the Gorkha Kingdom achieved the unification of Nepal; the Shah dynasty established the Kingdom of Nepal and formed an alliance with the British Empire, under its Rajput Rana dynasty of premiers. The country was never colonized but served as a buffer state between Imperial China and British India. Parliamentary democracy was introduced in 1951, but was twice suspended by Nepalese monarchs, in 1960 and 2005; the Nepalese Civil War in the 1990s and early 2000s resulted in the proclamation of a secular republic in 2008, ending the world's last Hindu monarchy. The Constitution of Nepal, adopted in 2015, establishes Nepal as a federal secular parliamentary republic divided into seven provinces.
Nepal was admitted to the United Nations in 1955, friendship treaties were signed with India in 1950 and the People's Republic of China in 1960. Nepal hosts the permanent secretariat of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, of which it is a founding member. Nepal is a member of the Non Aligned Movement and the Bay of Bengal Initiative; the military of Nepal is the fifth largest in South Asia. Local legends have it that a Hindu sage named "Ne" established himself in the valley of Kathmandu in prehistoric times, that the word "Nepal" came into existence as the place was protected by the sage "Nemi", it is mentioned in Vedic texts. According to the Skanda Purana, a rishi called. In the Pashupati Purana, he is mentioned as a protector, he is said to have taught there. The name of the country is identical in origin to the name of the Newar people; the terms "Nepāl", "Newār", "Newāl" and "Nepār" are phonetically different forms of the same word, instances of the various forms appear in texts in different times in history.
Nepal is the learned Sanskrit form and Newar is the colloquial Prakrit form. A Sanskrit inscription dated 512 CE found in Tistung, a valley to the west of Kathmandu, contains the phrase "greetings to the Nepals" indicating that the term "Nepal" was used to refer to both the country and the people, it has been suggested that "Nepal" may be a Sanskritization of "Newar", or "Newar" may be a form of "Nepal". According to another explanation, the words "Newar" and "Newari" are vulgarisms arising from the mutation of P to V, L to R. Neolithic tools found in the Kathmandu Valley indicate that people have been living in the Himalayan region for at least eleven thousand years. Nepal is first mentioned in the late Vedic Atharvaveda Pariśiṣṭa as a place exporting blankets, in the post-Vedic Atharvashirsha Upanishad. In Samudragupta's Allahabad Pillar it is mentioned as a border country; the Skanda Purana has a separate chapter, known as "Nepal Mahatmya", with more details. Nepal is mentioned in Hindu texts such as the Narayana Puja.
Legends and ancient texts that mention the region now known as Nepal reach back to the 30th century BC. The Gopal Bansa were one of the earliest inhabitants of Kathmandu valley; the earliest rulers of Nepal were the Kiratas, peoples mentioned in Hindu texts, who ruled Nepal for many centuries. Various sources mention up to 32 Kirati kings. Around 500 BCE, small kingdoms and confederations of clans arose in the southern regions of Nepal. From one of these, the Shakya polity, arose a prince who renounced his status to lead an ascetic life, founded Buddhism, came to be known as Gautama Buddha. By 250 BCE, the southern regions had come under the influence of the Maurya Empire of North India and became a vassal state under the Gupta Empire in the 4th century CE. There is a quite detailed description of the kingdom of Nepal in the account of the renowned Chinese Buddhist pilgrim monk Xuanzang, dating from about 645 CE. Stone inscriptions in the Kathmandu Valley are important sources for the history of Nepal.
The kings of the Lichhavi dynasty have been found to have r
Rice
Rice is the seed of the grass species Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima. As a cereal grain, it is the most consumed staple food for a large part of the world's human population in Asia, it is the agricultural commodity with the third-highest worldwide production, after sugarcane and maize. Since sizable portions of sugarcane and maize crops are used for purposes other than human consumption, rice is the most important grain with regard to human nutrition and caloric intake, providing more than one-fifth of the calories consumed worldwide by humans. There are many varieties of rice and culinary preferences tend to vary regionally. Rice, a monocot, is grown as an annual plant, although in tropical areas it can survive as a perennial and can produce a ratoon crop for up to 30 years. Rice cultivation is well-suited to countries and regions with low labor costs and high rainfall, as it is labor-intensive to cultivate and requires ample water. However, rice can be grown anywhere on a steep hill or mountain area with the use of water-controlling terrace systems.
Although its parent species are native to Asia and certain parts of Africa, centuries of trade and exportation have made it commonplace in many cultures worldwide. The traditional method for cultivating rice is flooding the fields while, or after, setting the young seedlings; this simple method requires sound planning and servicing of the water damming and channeling, but reduces the growth of less robust weed and pest plants that have no submerged growth state, deters vermin. While flooding is not mandatory for the cultivation of rice, all other methods of irrigation require higher effort in weed and pest control during growth periods and a different approach for fertilizing the soil; the name wild rice is used for species of the genera Zizania and Porteresia, both wild and domesticated, although the term may be used for primitive or uncultivated varieties of Oryza. First used in English in the middle of the 13th century, the word "rice" derives from the Old French ris, which comes from the Italian riso, in turn from the Latin oriza, which derives from the Greek ὄρυζα.
The Greek word is the source of all European words. The origin of the Greek word is unclear, it is sometimes held to be from the Tamil word, or rather Old Tamil arici. However, Krishnamurti disagrees with the notion that Old Tamil arici is the source of the Greek term, proposes that it was borrowed from descendants of Proto-Dravidian *wariñci instead. Mayrhofer suggests that the immediate source of the Greek word is to be sought in Old Iranian words of the types *vrīz- or *vrinj-, but these are traced back to Indo-Aryan. P. T. Srinivasa Iyengar assumed that the Sanskrit vrīhí- is derived from the Tamil arici, while Ferdinand Kittel derived it from the Dravidian root variki; the rice plant can grow to 1–1.8 m tall more depending on the variety and soil fertility. It has long, slender leaves 50–100 cm long and 2–2.5 cm broad. The small wind-pollinated flowers are produced in a branched arching to pendulous inflorescence 30–50 cm long; the edible seed is a grain 5–12 mm long and 2–3 mm thick. The varieties of rice are classified as long-, medium-, short-grained.
The grains of long-grain rice tend to remain intact after cooking. Medium-grain rice is used for sweet dishes, for risotto in Italy, many rice dishes, such as arròs negre, in Spain; some varieties of long-grain rice that are high in amylopectin, known as Thai Sticky rice, are steamed. A stickier medium-grain rice is used for sushi. Medium-grain rice is used extensively in Japan, including to accompany savoury dishes, where it is served plain in a separate dish. Short-grain rice is used for rice pudding. Instant rice differs from parboiled rice in that it is cooked and dried, though there is a significant degradation in taste and texture. Rice flour and starch are used in batters and breadings to increase crispiness. Rice is rinsed before cooking to remove excess starch. Rice produced in the US is fortified with vitamins and minerals, rinsing will result in a loss of nutrients. Rice may be rinsed until the rinse water is clear to improve the texture and taste. Rice may be soaked to decrease cooking time, conserve fuel, minimize exposure to high temperature, reduce stickiness.
For some varieties, soaking improves the texture of the cooked rice by increasing expansion of the grains. Rice may be soaked for 30 minutes up to several hours. Brown rice may be soaked in warm water for 20 hours to stimulate germination; this process, called germinated brown rice, activates enzymes and enhances amino acids including gamma-aminobutyric acid to improve the nutritional value of brown rice. This method is a result of research carried out for the United Nations International Year of Rice. Rice is cooked by boiling or steaming, absorbs water during cooking. With the absorption method, rice may be cooked in a volume of water equal to the volume of dry rice- plus any evaporation losses. With the rapid-boil method, rice may be cooked in a large quantity of water, drained before serving. Rapid-boil preparation is not desirable with enriched rice, as much of the enrichment additives are l
Cooch Behar
Cooch Behar or Koch Bihar is a city and a municipality in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is the headquarters of the Cooch Behar district, it is in the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas at 26°22′N 89°29′E. Cooch Behar is the only planned city in North Bengal region with remnants of royal heritage. One of the main tourist destinations in West Bengal, it is the location of the Cooch Behar Palace and Madan Mohan Temple and has been declared a heritage city, it is the maternal home of Maharani Gayatri Devi. During the British Raj, Cooch Behar was the seat of the princely state of Koch Bihar, ruled by the Koch dynasty of Assam. After 20 August 1949, Cooch Behar District was transformed from a princely state to its present status, with the city of Cooch Behar as its headquarters; the name Cooch Behar is derived from the name of the Koch or Rajbongshi tribes indigenous to this region for many centuries. The word behar is derived from Sanskrit: विहार vihara. Cooch Behar formed part of the Kamarupa Kingdom of Assam from the 4th to the 12th centuries.
In the 12th century, the area became a part of the Kamata Kingdom, first ruled by the Khen dynasty from their capital at Kamatapur. The Khens were an indigenous tribe, they ruled till about 1498 CE, when they fell to Alauddin Hussain Shah, the independent Pathan Sultan of Gour; the new invaders fought with the local Bhuyan chieftains and the Ahom king Suhungmung and lost control of the region. During this time, the Koch tribe became powerful and proclaimed itself Kamateshwar and established the Koch dynasty; the first important Koch ruler was Biswa Singha, who came to power in 1510 or 1530 CE. Under his son, Nara Narayan, the Kamata Kingdom reached its zenith. Nara Narayan's younger brother, was a noted military general who undertook expeditions to expand the kingdom, he became governor of its eastern portion. After Chilarai's death, his son Raghudev became governor of this portion. Since Nara Narayan did not have a son, Raghudev was seen as the heir apparent. However, a late child of Nara Narayan removed Raghudev's claim to the throne.
To placate him, Nara Narayan had to anoint Raghudev as a vassal chief of the portion of the kingdom east of the Sankosh river. This area came to be known as Koch Hajo. After the death of Nara Narayan in 1584, Raghudev declared independence; the kingdom ruled by the son of Nara Narayan, Lakshmi Narayan, came to be known as Cooch Behar. The division of the Kamata Kingdom into Koch Behar and Koch Hajo was permanent. Koch Behar aligned itself with the Mughal Empire and joined the India as a part of the West Bengal, whereas remnants of the Koch Hajo rulers aligned themselves with the Ahom kingdom and the region became a part of Assam; as the early capital of the Koch Kingdom, Cooch Behar's location was not static and became stable only when shifted to Cooch Behar town. Maharaja Rup Narayan, on the advice of an unknown saint, transferred the capital from Attharokotha to Guriahati on the banks of the Torsa river between 1693 and 1714. After this, the capital was always near its present location. In 1661 CE, Maharaja Pran Narayan planned to expand his kingdom.
However, Mir Jumla, the subedar of Bengal under the Mughal emperor Aurangazeb, attacked Cooch Behar and conquered the territory, meeting no resistance. The town of Cooch Behar was subsequently named Alamgirnagar. Maharaja Pran Narayan regained his kingdom within a few days. In 1772 -- 1773, the king of Bhutan captured Cooch Behar. To expel the Bhutanese, the kingdom of Cooch Behar signed a defence treaty with the British East India Company on 5 April 1773. After expelling the Bhutanese, Cooch Behar again became a princely kingdom under the protection of British East India company; the Victor Jubilee Palace was based on Buckingham Palace and built in 1887, during the reign of Maharaja Nripendra Narayan. In 1878, the maharaja married the daughter of Brahmo preacher Keshab Chandra Sen; this union led to a renaissance in Cooch Behar state. Maharaja Nripendra Narayan is known as the architect of modern Cooch Behar town. Under an agreement between the kings of Cooch Behar and the Indian Government at the end of British rule, Maharaja Jagaddipendra Narayan transferred full authority and power of the state to the Dominion Government of India, effective 12 September 1949.
Cooch Bihar became part of the state of West Bengal on 19 January 1950, with Cooch Behar town as its headquarters. A geopolitical curiosity was that there were 92 Bangladeshi exclaves, with a total area of 47.7 km² in Cooch-Behar. There were 106 Indian exclaves inside Bangladesh, with a total area of 69.5 km². These were part of the high stake card or chess games centuries ago between two regional kings, the Raja of Cooch Behar and the Maharaja of Rangpur. Twenty-one of the Bangladeshi exclaves were within Indian exclaves, three of the Indian exclaves were within Bangladeshi exclaves; the largest Indian exclave was Balapara Khagrabari which surrounded a Bangladeshi exclave, Upanchowki Bhajni, which itself surrounded an Indian exclave called Dahala Khagrabari, of less than one hectare. But all this has ended in the historic India-Bangladesh land agreement. See Indo-Bangladesh enclaves. Cooch Behar is in the foothills of Eastern Himalayas, at 26°22′N 89°29′E in the north of West Bengal, it is the largest town and district headquarters of Cooch Behar District with an area of 8.29 km2.
The elevation of the town is 48 meters above mean sea level The Torsa river flows by the western side of town. Heavy rains cause strong river currents and flooding; the turbulent water carries huge amounts of sand and pebbles, which have an adverse effect on crop production as well as on the hydrology of the region. Alluvi
Protectorate
A protectorate, in its inception adopted by modern international law, is a dependent territory, granted local autonomy and some independence while still retaining the suzerainty of a greater sovereign state. In exchange for this, the protectorate accepts specified obligations, which may vary depending on the real nature of their relationship. Therefore, a protectorate remains an autonomous part of a sovereign state, they are different from colonies as they have local rulers and people ruling over the territory and experience rare cases of immigration of settlers from the country it has suzerainty of. However, a state which remains under the protection of another state but still retains independence is known as a protected state and is different from protectorates. In amical protection, the terms are very favorable for the protectorate; the political interest of the protector is moral or countering a rival or enemy power. This may involve a weak protectorate surrendering control of its external relations.
Amical protection was extended by the great powers to other Christian states and to smaller states that had no significant importance. In the post-1815 period, non-Christian states provided amical protection towards other much weaker states. In modern times, a form of amical protection can be seen as an important or defining feature of microstates. According to the definition proposed by Dumienski: "microstates are modern protected states, i.e. sovereign states that have been able to unilaterally depute certain attributes of sovereignty to larger powers in exchange for benign protection of their political and economic viability against their geographic or demographic constraints". Examples of microstates understood as modern protected states include Andorra, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Niue, the Cook Islands, Palau. Conditions regarding protection are much less generous for areas of colonial protection; the protectorate was reduced to a de facto condition similar to a colony, but using the pre-existing native state as an agent of indirect rule.
A protectorate was established by or exercised by the other form of indirect rule: a chartered company, which becomes a de facto state in its European home state, allowed to be an independent country which has its own foreign policy and its own armed forces. In fact, protectorates were declared despite not being duly entered into by the traditional states being protected, or only by a party of dubious authority in those states. Colonial protectors decided to reshuffle several protectorates into a new, artificial unit without consulting the protectorates, a logic disrespectful of the theoretical duty of a protector to help maintain its protectorates' status and integrity; the Berlin agreement of February 26, 1885 allowed European colonial powers to establish protectorates in Black Africa by diplomatic notification without actual possession on the ground. This aspect of history is referred to as the Scramble for Africa. A similar case is the formal use of such terms as colony and protectorate for an amalgamation, convenient only for the colonizer or protector, of adjacent territories over which it held sway by protective or "raw" colonial logic.
In practice, a protectorate has direct foreign relations only with the protecting power, so other states must deal with it by approaching the protector. The protectorate takes military action on its own, but relies on the protector for its defence; this is distinct from annexation, in that the protector has no formal power to control the internal affairs of the protectorate. Protectorates differ from League of Nations mandates and their successors, United Nations Trust Territories, whose administration is supervised, in varying degrees, by the international community. A protectorate formally enters into the protection through a bilateral agreement with the protector, while international mandates are stewarded by the world community-representing body, with or without a de facto administering power. Han dynasty: Protectorate of the Western RegionsTang dynasty: Protectorate General to Pacify the West Protectorate General to Pacify the North Protectorate General to Pacify the EastYuan dynasty: Goryeo Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten Various sultanates in the Dutch East Indies Trumon Sultanate, Langkat Sultanate, Deli Sultanate, Asahan Sultanate, Siak Sultanate and Indragiri Sultanate in Sumatra Jogjakarta Sultanate, Mataram Empire and Surakarta Sunanate, Duchy of Mangkunegara and Duchy of Paku Alaman in Java.
Sumbawa Sultanate and Bima Sultanate in Lesser Sunda Islands. Pontianak Sultanate, Sambas Sultanate, Kubu Sultanate, Landak Sultanate, Mempawah Sultanate, Matan Sultanate, Sanggau Sultanate, Sekadau Sultanate, Simpang Sultanate, Sintang Sultanate, Sukadana Sultanate, Kota Waringin Sultanate, Kutai Kertanegara Sultanate
This article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress document: Robert L. Worden (September 1991). Andrea Matles Savada (ed.). Bhutan: A country study. Federal Research Division. Climate.
This article incorporates 
