Why a small Indian town has so many classic Land Rovers – and how their owners’ livelihoods hang in the balance
- Around 300 early Land Rovers once plied the hills of Manebhanjyang, brought in by British tea planters to traverse the unforgiving terrain
- Later, enterprising locals snapped up the vehicles to use as taxis and to transport goods, but in 2018 a court ordered that their commercial use be phased out
The hens huddling in plastic crates on the roof express their displeasure, squawking as our shared taxi comes to a halt in Manebhanjyang, a small town in northern India on the border with Nepal. It’s been a bumpy ride through the predawn hours, the discomfort compounded by an icy wind rushing in through a broken window upfront.
As our driver, Shingo dai (“brother” in Nepali), busies himself with the luggage of those alighting here, I step out into the cold for a stretch. It’s been a tight squeeze in the back alongside three fellow travellers and I empathise with the unruly birds above us.
Manebhanjyang lies about an hour to the west of Indian tea town Darjeeling, below the long ridge that marks the boundary between India and Nepal. The border drops down and passes through the town. As I set off to locate it, my fellow travellers crowd around the dying embers of a wayside fire.
As I turn a corner, I see something else: amid a row of neatly parked vehicles is one that stands out as much for its individuality as its quaint charm. The aluminium body of the Series 1 Land Rover glows under the rising sun. A little ahead, there’s another.
I stare at the vintage beauties as townspeople amble past in the mountain freeze. I decide to spend some time in Manebhanjyang to find out more about the vehicles.
Designed by the Rover Car Company’s chief engineer, Maurice Wilks, Land Rovers were built in Solihull, near Birmingham, England, and launched at the Amsterdam Motor Show in 1948, a year after India’s independence from British rule.
