Travel in Darjeeling

One tour in our India range reaches Darjeeling. We sell 15 India routes, and only Colourful Rajasthan & Himalayas comes here: 12 days, from EUR 1,910, private and guided like everything else we run. If you have read that Darjeeling belongs on an India itinerary, fair enough, but on our list it is the tail end of one Rajasthan trip. This page is about the four days that tail end actually contains.

The first seven days are somewhere else entirely. Delhi, then the painted havelis of Alsisar and Mandawa in the Shekhawati region, a camel ride at sunset, Jaipur with the Amber Fort and Jantar Mantar, the Abhaneri stepwell on the road east, and Agra. Day 7 is the Taj Mahal before sunrise, Agra Fort after breakfast, and the Taj again at sunset from across the Yamuna. The Taj is shut on Fridays, so that one closure sets the start date for the whole trip, Darjeeling included.

Day 8 is long and you should know its shape before you book. Early breakfast in Agra, drive back to Delhi, fly Delhi to Bagdogra. That domestic flight is written into the itinerary, so it is included; international flights are not. From Bagdogra the road climbs in switchbacks to Kalimpong, once the main trading post between the Himalayan regions, and you sleep there rather than in Darjeeling.

Day 9 is Kalimpong in the morning: the commercial flower nurseries around the town, then a local Buddhist monastery. In the afternoon you drive on to Darjeeling and stay. The town sits at 2,134 metres. Kangchenjunga is the peak you are looking at.

Day 10 is the one full day here. It starts before dawn with the 13-kilometre drive to Tiger Hill for sunrise, when the horizon changes colour and the range turns gold, with Everest visible along with Kangchenjunga when the air is clear. Back to the hotel for breakfast, then the narrow-gauge railway up to Ghoom. The line opened in 1881, the locomotive is tiny, the pace is around 10 km/h. At Ghoom you visit the oldest monastery in the area, built in 1875, with a 15-foot Maitreya Buddha inside. The afternoon is a town tour: the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, founded by Tenzing Norgay, and the Padmaja Naidu zoo beside it. Both close on Thursdays. If your dates land day 10 on a Thursday, say so when you enquire and we will move the days around.

Day 11 reverses the journey, down to Bagdogra and back to Delhi by air. Day 12 is Delhi again — India Gate, the Bangla Sahib Gurudwara, the Qutb Minar — then a flight home after midnight.

Now what this trip does not do. There is no tea garden or tea factory visit. The itinerary calls Darjeeling world-famous for tea, and it is, but walking a working estate is not a scheduled stop on either day. If tea is your reason for coming, ask us to add it rather than assuming it is in there. The train ride is the short Darjeeling to Ghoom section, not the long climb up from the plains at New Jalpaiguri. There is no trekking; the tour is graded easy and there is no walking day in the hills. And no tour we sell crosses into Sikkim, so Gangtok is not an option on this route.

The Tiger Hill view is weather, not a booking. On a clear October morning it is one of the best things in the Indian Himalaya. In the monsoon the range can stay hidden for weeks, and no guide can change that. Roughly October to early December, then March and April, are the dependable windows. Ask us about your months before you fix dates.

Two more things worth raising on your quote. No hotels are named in advance on this route, in Darjeeling or anywhere else on it, so ask for the property list. And rooms come as Standard, Deluxe, Superior or Executive. There is no five-star tier in the Darjeeling hills or anywhere else in our range.