Sikkim & Darjeeling travel guide

Travel to Sikkim & Darjeeling between Mar – May, Oct – Dec. Those are the months the weather, the crowds and the airfare line up — outside them you trade one of the three.

Currency

Indian Rupee (INR)

Language

Nepali is the lingua franca on both sides of the Teesta, with Bhutia and Lepcha in Sikkim and Bengali in the Darjeeling bazaars. Hindi works everywhere, and English is fluent in hotels and among Darjeeling’s school-town crowd.

Time zone

IST (UTC+5:30)

Plug type

Type C / D / M

Flight time from India

3 hrs

Flying from

Ahmedabad · Mumbai · Delhi · Kolkata · Bengaluru

• 

  Tsomgo Lake and the road to Baba Mandir

  Forty kilometres and 2,000 vertical metres from Gangtok, Tsomgo is a glacial lake that freezes white in winter and turns steel-blue in spring, ringed by yaks in embroidered saddles. The excursion runs on daily permits and local union vehicles arranged the evening before; when the army opens the higher road, the day extends to the memorial shrine of Baba Harbhajan Singh. Carry warm layers whatever the month — the lake sits at 3,750 metres and the wind means it.

• 

  Rumtek and the living monasteries

  Rumtek, an hour across the valley from Gangtok, is the seat-in-exile of the Karmapa and the largest monastery in Sikkim — arrive near 4 pm and you catch the young monks debating in the courtyard, all claps and lunges. Enchey above the town is smaller and quieter, and the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology below it holds one of the world’s great collections of Buddhist manuscripts and thangkas.

• 

  Sunrise at Tiger Hill

  The 4 am convoy out of Darjeeling exists for one reason: at 2,590 metres, Tiger Hill faces the entire Kanchenjunga massif, and on a clear morning the summits catch fire one by one before the sun reaches the valleys. On the very best days a white thumbnail on the north-west horizon is Everest, 170 kilometres away. Book the vehicle the night before and take the hotel’s flask of tea — the wait is cold and entirely worth it.

• 

  The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway

  A UNESCO World Heritage steam railway on rails two feet apart, climbing through bazaars so close you could take a shopkeeper’s tea off his counter. The two-hour joyride from Darjeeling to Ghoom and back circles the Batasia Loop, where the track spirals over itself around a war memorial garden with the mountains behind. Steam departures sell out days ahead in season; the diesel runs are cheaper and use the same rails and the same views.

• Pelling — Pemayangtse and the ruins of Rabdentse

  West Sikkim’s reward for the extra drive. Pemayangtse, from 1705, is one of the oldest monasteries in the state and keeps a seven-tiered carved wooden model of the celestial palace upstairs that one monk built over five years. A forest path from its gate leads to Rabdentse, the ruined second capital of the Sikkimese kings, where bare stone platforms look straight at Kanchenjunga. The glass Sky Walk and the giant Chenrezig statue above town are the newer, louder additions.

• Tea gardens, tasted properly

  Darjeeling’s 87 estates grow the only tea in the world with a protected geographical name, and the difference between a first flush and an autumn flush is real once someone shows you. Happy Valley, twenty minutes’ walk below Chowrasta, runs factory tours when plucking is on; the serious tasting happens at the town’s tea boutiques, where five rounds cost less than a cinema ticket and ruin teabags for you permanently.

• Momos, the local religion

  Steamed dumplings served with a fierce red chutney, made fresh in every second doorway from Gangtok to Ghoom. Vegetable, paneer and cheese fillings are everywhere and as standard as the meat ones, so vegetarians eat as well as anyone. The fried version, and the chilli-tossed kothey, are the late-evening upgrades.

• Thukpa and thenthukVegetarian

  Tibetan noodle soups that make sense the moment the mist rolls in — thukpa with thin noodles, thenthuk with hand-torn flat ones, both in a ginger-warm broth loaded with vegetables. Every hill café has a vegetarian version, and a big bowl is a full dinner for less than the cost of the taxi back.

• Sha phaley and the monastery kitchens

  Deep-fried stuffed bread pockets, crisp outside and soft in, sold at stalls near the big monasteries — ask for the potato-and-cheese filling. Around Rumtek and Ghoom the simple canteens also do butter tea, which every traveller should try exactly once, and sweet milk tea for immediately afterwards.

• Darjeeling first flush, at the source

  The spring pick, light and almost floral, is the one the auction houses fight over. Drink it without milk or sugar — the estates will say so before you can ask — and buy directly from a garden outlet or a reputed town boutique, where the harvest year is printed on the tin rather than implied.

• For a Jain travellerJain friendly

  Gangtok and Darjeeling both have pure-veg Indian restaurants — Gangtok’s are clustered around MG Marg, Darjeeling’s near the Mall — and most will cook without onion and garlic given a few hours’ notice. Tsomgo and the Pelling sights have only basic stalls, so on those days we carry a packed Jain lunch from the hotel.

Set a meal preference — vegetarian, Jain or halal — when you book and we brief every hotel and restaurant on your itinerary.

• Darjeeling tea bought at a garden outlet, with the flush and harvest year on the tin
• Hand-woven Lepcha shawls and carpets from the Directorate of Handicrafts, Gangtok
• Prayer flags and hand-turned prayer wheels from the stalls below Rumtek and Ghoom
• Thangka paintings — buy from a workshop where you can watch the artists, not a kerbside stall
• Sikkim’s large cardamom, dalle chilli paste and yak-cheese churpi from the Lal Bazaar
• Woollen caps, mittens and hand-knits from the Tibetan Refugee Self Help Centre, Darjeeling

Bagdogra airport and New Jalpaiguri station are the twin doors to both hills; Gangtok is four and a half hours up the Teesta gorge and Darjeeling about three. Within the region everything moves by hired car or shared jeep — there is no app-cab network in the hills, and the roads are too twisty to want one. Tsomgo Lake runs on its own system: a daily permit, arranged by your operator against ID photos the evening before, and local union vehicles from Gangtok, so your own car waits behind. Sikkim checks everyone at the Rangpo border post — carry original photo ID, and note that the Gangtok–Darjeeling leg crosses a state line, so build in an hour more than the map says.

• Altitude is the quiet risk. Tsomgo sits at 3,750 metres and headaches or breathlessness are common on the day trip — walk slowly at the lake, skip it if you have a heart or lung condition without a doctor’s clearance, and never plan it as your first morning after arrival.
• Hill roads close. Landslides in the monsoon and snow above Tsomgo in winter can shut roads for hours or a day — keep a buffer day before your return flight and let the driver, not the schedule, decide.
• Carry original photo ID for every traveller, including children — it is checked at the Rangpo border post and photocopies are needed for the Tsomgo permit. Foreign nationals need a separate Protected Area Permit and cannot join the standard Tsomgo excursion without it.
• Tiger Hill mornings are near freezing even in April. The viewpoint is at 2,590 metres and you stand still for an hour — take real warm layers, not a shawl over a T-shirt.
• Mountain sickness pills, sunscreen and sunglasses matter more here than anywhere else in India — the sun at altitude burns through cloud, and the glare off snow at Tsomgo is fierce.
• Book steam toy-train tickets and Tsomgo permits a day or more ahead in season; both sell out, and roadside touts selling "instant" versions of either are the one genuine scam of the region.

Per person, per day, on the ground — meals, local transport and entry tickets. Flights and hotels sit in the package price, not here.