Travel in Kalimpong

Fifteen private routes make up our India programme. One of them stops in Kalimpong, and it stops for a single night.

The trip is Colourful Rajasthan & Himalayas — twelve days, from EUR 1,910, rated easy. Nine of those twelve days happen somewhere else entirely. You start in Delhi, take the old caravan route out to Alsisar, look at the painted havelis of Shekhawati and Mandawa, spend two days in Jaipur with the Amber Fort and the Hawa Mahal, then drive to Agra by way of the stepwell at Abhaneri. Day seven is the Taj Mahal before sunrise, Agra Fort after breakfast, and the Taj again at sunset from across the Yamuna. Only on day eight does the itinerary turn east.

That day is the hardest one on the trip, and the itinerary says so itself. Early breakfast in Agra, the drive back to Delhi, a flight to Bagdogra, then roughly seventy kilometres and about three hours of switchbacks up from the plains to Kalimpong. You arrive tired, at or after dusk. That is your first and only evening here.

The next morning is the whole of Kalimpong as we sell it. You visit the nurseries around the town, which is what Kalimpong is genuinely known for — orchids, cacti and cut flowers grown for the rest of India. Then a local Buddhist monastery. The itinerary names neither the nursery nor the monastery; your guide settles that on the day, so if you want a particular one, ask before you travel rather than in the car. After that you drive on to Darjeeling, about three hours further, and sleep there for the next two nights.

So this page is about a stopover. If you came looking for Kalimpong itself — Deolo Hill, the Durpin monastery, Dr Graham's Homes, the cheese-makers, rafting on the Teesta — none of it is in the itinerary. There is no free day here and no second night. There is no trekking either: the route is rated easy from end to end, and the Himalayan part of it is looking rather than walking.

One thing worth stating plainly, because people assume it: the toy train is not ridden from Kalimpong. Kalimpong is not on that line. The narrow-gauge ride comes on day ten, out of Darjeeling to Ghoom, a miniature locomotive at ten kilometres an hour on a line opened in 1881, with the 1875 monastery and its fifteen-foot Maitreya at the far end. That day starts earlier still, at Tiger Hill, thirteen kilometres from Darjeeling before dawn, for the horizon changing colour and then the whole range going gold, Kangchenjunga highest in it. The afternoon is a Darjeeling town tour, the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute that Tenzing Norgay founded and the Padmaja Naidu zoo beside it — both closed on Thursdays, which is worth knowing while your dates are still open.

What the night in Kalimpong does do is break the climb. The town sits at around 1,250 metres and Darjeeling at 2,134. Going from Delhi to Darjeeling in one push, on the back of the Agra day, is a bigger jump than most people want. Kalimpong is the softer landing, and the morning there earns its place on the route.

The practical shape is the same as the rest of our programme. Every trip is private and guided, with no fixed departures and no set dates. A German-speaking guide travels with you, there is a 24-hour contact number for the whole trip, and a bottle of water waiting when you land. The Delhi to Bagdogra flights in both directions are written into the itinerary, so they are included; international flights are not. Hotels are not named in advance on this route. Rooms come as Standard, Deluxe, Superior or Executive — there is no five-star tier, in Kalimpong or anywhere else on our India list.

If one night is not enough, say so when you enquire. The trip is tailor-made and dateless, so a second night here is a real conversation — but we would rather have it before you book than after.