Women planting rice seedlings in well-tended terraces in the Himalayan foothills near the capital, Gangtok. - - Rice Cultivation. Sikkim lies on the southern slopes of the Himalayas between Nepal and Bhutan. It was formerly a kingdom but in 1975 became a state of India. Rice, a principal crop of the almost entirely agricu1tura1 population, is cultivated on foothill terraces.