Latpanchar looks like a regular hill-town but it is unlike any other settlement. It is surrounded by the sanctuary’s forests on one side and territorial reserve forests on the other, with no privately owned agricultural fields or community land at all. The town was settled because of a cinchona plantation established here in 1943, the youngest plantation that the Cinchona Directorate has in Darjeeling district. The grandparents – or great-grand parents – of everyone who lives here came to work at the cinchona plantation, and it is only through marriage that families are beginning to be related to each other. They own only the plots of land that their houses stand on. Their jobs are hereditary, so when someone retires, another member of the same family is offered a job, but not necessarily the same one.

The greatest attraction for tourists is the hornbill – especially the one hornbill nest a stone’s throw away from the nearest house. You walked down a steep slope dominated by Schima wallichii trees to find the nest in an old oak. The tree stands on a steep slope, so by staying uphill, You got an eye-level view of the nest. During nesting season, between March and July, up to 30 people at a time may come watch the nest. Sometimes, that amounts to more than a hundred a day.

Hornbills nest in natural cavities in trees that the female seals herself into for up to four months, leaving just a tiny slit through which the male passes her food, for her and the chicks. The guides try to keep a distance of about 40 m from the nest, and to keep the tourists’ noise away when the male comes in to feed the female. “But sometimes,” Sanjay admits, “you can tell that they get disturbed.