Darjeeling

Drive to Tiger Hill at 4am for the most famous sunrise view in India — when clear, Kangchenjunga (8,586m) turns gold above a sea of clouds. Even Everest is visible on exceptionally clear days.

The 1881 narrow-gauge UNESCO railway through tea gardens and Himalayan foothills — the 2-hour joy ride from Darjeeling to Ghoom is a perfect morning.

Visit Happy Valley or Makaibari tea estate — see withering, rolling, fermentation, and drying of first-flush Darjeeling tea. The tasting at the end is exceptional.

The high-altitude zoo at 2,100m is the world's most successful red panda breeding programme — seeing these remarkable animals in a near-natural Himalayan setting.

The 7-day trek to Sandakphu (3,636m) — the highest point in West Bengal — offers views of four 8,000m peaks including Everest. Best in April (rhododendrons) and October.

The 1919 spiral railway loop built so the toy train could gain altitude without racking was also designed as a war memorial — the names of Gorkha soldiers killed in World War I ring the central garden. Today it's the most photogenic bend in the UNESCO railway: the train circles a full 360 degrees, offering a rolling panorama of the tea gardens, Darjeeling town, and on clear days, Kangchenjunga above it all.

The oldest Tibetan monastery in the Darjeeling district (founded 1875) sits at 2,438m — the highest point on the toy train route and often above the cloud line. The main shrine houses a 15-foot Maitreya Buddha (the Buddha of the future) surrounded by thankas and butter lamps, and the head lama maintains a 10,000-manuscript library of ancient Tibetan Buddhist texts.

49km from Darjeeling, the man-made Sumendu Lake at 1,495m sits in a bowl of cardamom plantations, orange orchards, and tea gardens that give the surrounding hills a sweetly domestic quality entirely unlike the dramatic high Himalayas. Row a boat on the lake, cross the 80-metre footbridge above the water, and detour to the Swiss Cottage viewpoint for an angle on Kangchenjunga rarely seen on tourist circuits.

The hillside garden at Barbotey, 10km below Darjeeling, is built around a cascading stream — terraced flowerbeds, stone steps, and artificial waterfalls through stands of bamboo and orchid. Arriving by the steep mountain road is itself a spectacle; the garden is best in spring when rhododendrons and roses bloom simultaneously and the sound of the water is audible from every level.

Founded in 1954 after Tenzing Norgay and Hillary's Everest summit, the HMI has trained India's finest mountaineers for 70 years and its attached museum holds Tenzing's original summit equipment, expedition photographs from the 1953 climb, and an extraordinary collection of high-altitude gear that tells the history of Himalayan mountaineering through its artefacts. Tenzing's tomb is in the grounds.