Experience the best of Darjeeling

Darjeeling spreads along a ridge in the Himalayan foothills, with its tea gardens dropping into the valleys below. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, a narrow-gauge line with small steam locomotives, is a World Heritage site and spirals through the Batasia Loop. The Mall at Chowrasta is the town's open square, and Observatory Hill is hung with prayer flags around a small shrine.

Tiger Hill, on the edge of town, is where people gather before dawn to watch the sun light up Kangchenjunga, the third-highest mountain in the world. The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, founded in 1954, has a museum of climbing, and the zoo beside it breeds snow leopards and red pandas. The Ghum monastery, the Japanese Peace Pagoda, Kalimpong and the hills of Sikkim lie around the town.

Tea is the trade of the district: first-flush leaves are picked in spring, and the fuller second flush follows in early summer. Momos, thukpa noodle soup and Tibetan and Nepali dishes fill the cafés. The clearest views come in October and November and again in spring, while the monsoon from June to September wraps the hills in cloud.