Birpara

Birpara lies in the Dooars, the alluvial floodplain that runs along the foot of the Himalayas between the Teesta and the Dhansiri rivers, close to the Bhutanese border. Rivers come down from the Himalayan foothills across the low, forested ground, and the Dooars formed the gateway between the hills and the plains. The Dooars belonged to the Kamata kingdom under the Koch dynasty and served as a trade route between Assam and Bhutan. Goods such as woollen cloth, rock salt, musk and ponies came south from Bhutan, while Assamese silk and cloth went north. In the later eighteenth century Bhutan took control of much of the Dooars and administered it through officials called subahs, who answered to Bhutan's provincial governors.