Gangtok & Darjeeling Classic, 5 Nights

You are met at Bagdogra airport and driven up the Teesta gorge — about four and a half hours with a chai stop above the river and the ID check at the Rangpo border post, where Sikkim begins. By evening you are on MG Marg, Gangtok’s pedestrian-only boulevard, which is the right place for your first plate of momos. Your driver collects photocopies of everyone’s ID tonight to file the Tsomgo permit for tomorrow.

A local union 4x4 takes over for the day — the rule at Tsomgo — and climbs 2,000 metres in forty kilometres to the glacial lake, frozen white in winter and steel-blue in spring, with yaks in embroidered saddles waiting for riders on the shore. When the army opens the higher road the excursion extends to Baba Mandir. Back in Gangtok by late afternoon; go gently this evening — you have been at serious altitude today.

The morning crosses the valley to Rumtek, the largest monastery in Sikkim and the Karmapa’s seat-in-exile — time it right and the courtyard fills with young monks debating in claps and lunges. Back in town, the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology holds a serious collection of manuscripts and thangkas, and the Deorali ropeway hangs you over the whole city for ten minutes. The evening ends where all Gangtok evenings end, on MG Marg.

The road drops back to the Teesta, crosses into West Bengal and climbs again through cardamom terraces and the flag-strung viewpoint at Lamahatta — about four hours door to door, and the state line adds its own unhurried pace. Darjeeling arrives as a wall of tin roofs stacked on a ridge. The evening is Chowrasta and the Mall, where the town has promenaded since the 1880s, with the bells of the Mahakal temple above.

A 4 am start for Tiger Hill, where the whole Kanchenjunga massif catches first light — and on the clearest mornings a white speck on the horizon is Everest. Ghoom monastery and the Batasia Loop follow on the way down, then breakfast, then the gentler half: the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute and zoo, and a factory walk with tasting at the Happy Valley tea estate. The steam toy-train joyride slots in this afternoon if you booked it with us in advance.

Breakfast at leisure, a last look at Kanchenjunga if the morning allows, and the three-hour descent through the tea gardens to Bagdogra for your flight home. Book an afternoon departure and we add a stop at the Tibetan Refugee Self Help Centre for hand-knits and one final pot of first flush.