West Bengal
The best hotel in town has a wide variety of rooms. The cheaper options are a bit old-fashioned, while the pricier rooms are surprisingly sleek and stylish, though smaller. The restaurant-bar (mains ₹120 to ₹300) is easily the best in town, and serves excellent Indian thalis.
Big discounts on room rates are often available outside the October to November and April to May peak seasons.
4.87 MILES
If you like tea, you should visit this celebrated organic and biodynamic Darjeeling tea estate. Walk-in visits to the processing factory, with huge…
11.42 MILES
The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, known affectionately as the toy train, made its first journey along its precipice-topping, 2ft-wide tracks in 1881 and…
19.1 MILES
Singalila National Park covers the Indian side of the scenic Singalila Ridge, the Darjeeling region's finest trekking area, along the India–Nepal border…
24.13 MILES
This wobbly old temple is a peaceful, half-forgotten delight with appealingly naive paintings and an incredible 360-degree mountain panorama. There's no…
23.4 MILES
Visible for miles, this 45m-high statue of Padmasambhava (Guru Rimpoche) is painted in shimmering copper and gilt and sits on a lotus plinth high above…
20.62 MILES
This unmissable feast of colour is a remarkable Hindu religious theme park crowning Solophuk hilltop, 5km southwest of Namchi. It brings together replicas…
29.11 MILES
One of Sikkim’s oldest and most significant Nyingmapa monasteries, Pemayangtse (literally ‘Perfect Sublime Lotus’) is 500m off the Geyzing road – turn…
29.82 MILES
The ridge between Ralang and Yuksom ends with an upturned promontory (1450m) on which sits the multibuilding complex of Tashiding Gompa, an important…
4.05 MILES
The organic and biodynamic Ambootia Tea Estate, down in the valley on Kurseong's west side, welcomes visitors to its aromatic factory and is a good…
4.87 MILES
If you like tea, you should visit this celebrated organic and biodynamic Darjeeling tea estate. Walk-in visits to the processing factory, with huge…
9.09 MILES
Yiga Choeling Gompa, the Darjeeling area's most famous monastery, founded in 1850, houses up to 40 monks of the Gelugpa school. The serene temple has…
9.29 MILES
This fortress-style Sakya-school monastery, established in 1909 and with a big new temple consecrated in 2015, conducts prayer sessions between 5.30am and…
9.33 MILES
This museum inside Ghum station has a collection of memorabilia and photos from the bygone days of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. In an outer courtyard…
9.45 MILES
The active Tibetan-style Samten Choeling Gompa has the largest Buddha statue in West Bengal, a chorten containing the ashes of the German Buddhist mystic…
9.58 MILES
To watch the dawn light break over a spectacular 250km stretch of Himalayan horizon, including Everest (8848m), Khangchendzonga (8598m) and two more of…
9.68 MILES
If you’re travelling on the toy train, look out for this famous railway loop that goes around an open-air war memorial, erected in honour of the brave…