Archive · 6 Aug 2026
Rabindranath Tagore's Boyhood Himalayan Journey with His Father
When Rabindranath Tagore was a boy of eleven, his father Debendranath took him on a very big adventure.
It was the first time the two of them spent so much time together.
Before they left, Rabindranath went through a special ceremony called upanayan, which marked him as a “grown-up” boy in his community.
Then they rode a train from Calcutta to a quiet place called Shantiniketan, where there were almost no buildings — just red soil and wide-open sky.
Rabindranath said that here he was free to move about as he chose.
Next, they went to Amritsar, where they lived near the beautiful Golden Temple for about a month, and Rabindranath wrote his very first song.
Finally, they climbed high into the mountains at Dalhousie and stayed in a house called Bakrota.
Every morning his father taught him lessons, but he also let Rabindranath explore the mountains all alone with just a staff in his hand.
Rabindranath never forgot that gift of freedom, and it later shaped the school and university he built at Shantiniketan.
In 1873, an 11-year-old Rabindranath Tagore left the family home at Jorasanko in Calcutta by train with his father, Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, on his first major expedition.
After the upanayan ceremony — the sacred-thread investiture marking a Brahmin boy's adulthood — the pair stayed at Shantiniketan, where Tagore was “free to move about as I chose.”
Father and son then spent about a month in Amritsar, Punjab, near the Golden Temple of the Sikhs, where Rabindranath composed his first song at age 11.
In mid-April, they trekked to Dalhousie in the Himalayas, 7,500 feet up, taking a house on the Bakrota hilltop.
At Bakrota, Debendranath supervised his son's lessons in Sanskrit, English and astronomy while letting the boy wander the mountains alone — a freedom Tagore always honoured.
- Who
- Rabindranath Tagore, then aged 11, and his father, Maharshi Debendranath Tagore.
- What
- Tagore's first major expedition — a months-long journey from Calcutta to Shantiniketan, Amritsar and the Himalayas, combining travel, education and spiritual observance.
- When
- 1873, leaving Calcutta on February 14 and heading for the Himalayas in mid-April.
- Where
- From Jorasanko in Calcutta by train to Bolpur station in Birbhum district (Shantiniketan), then to Amritsar in Punjab, then to Dalhousie at 7,500 feet in the Himalayas, on a railway line Dwarkanath Tagore had once hoped to build.
- Why
- Debendranath brought his son along on his travels, giving him lessons, a prime lesson in religious tolerance — Tagore later called Sikhism, Buddhism and Brahmoism reforming movements within Hinduism — and the freedom that shaped his lifelong ideals.
- Year of journey
- 1873
- Travellers
- Rabindranath Tagore (age 11) and Maharshi Debendranath Tagore
- Departure
- By train from Calcutta on February 14
- First stop
- Shantiniketan, Bolpur, Birbhum district (land purchased in 1863)
- Second stop
- Amritsar, Punjab — about a month near the Golden Temple
- Himalayan destination
- Dalhousie, at 7,500 feet, house at Bakrota
- First song
- Composed at age 11 in Amritsar
- 1937 letter
- Tagore wrote to Gandhi that Sikh religious practices never hurt his human dignity