Darjeeling

Darjeeling was built by the British to escape the heat of Calcutta, and it has been quietly outgrowing that purpose ever since. The town clings to a ridge at 2,000 metres, houses stacked like books on a shelf, and on a clear October morning Kanchenjunga appears above them — 8,586 metres of it, close enough to feel unfair.

What the postcards leave out is the effort. Steep lanes, a thin water supply, and years of political shutdowns that emptied the hotels. Darjeeling is loved and worn at the same time, and it does not pretend otherwise.

This is Nepali-speaking India, with Lepcha, Bhutia and Tibetan threads running through it. Momos and thukpa are not exotic here, they are lunch. Buddhist gompas sit a few streets from Anglican churches and both are busy on a Sunday morning.

Tea is the other language. The gardens below town — Happy Valley, Makaibari, Glenburn — pick the first flush in late March, and the difference between that and June's second flush is something people here will argue about for an hour. Drink it black, without sugar, at least once.

Tiger Hill at sunrise is famous and often a queue of jeeps in the dark — go if you want it, but the ridge above Chowrasta gives you the same peak with almost nobody on it. Ride the toy train for the short Darjeeling–Ghum stretch rather than the full seven hours. And ask whether a bandh has been called before you fix dates; strikes still happen here, and they close everything at once.

Water is trucked up to Darjeeling and rationed in parts of town — a long shower here has a cost that somebody else pays. Buy tea at the garden or a town shop rather than the airport, ask before photographing pickers at work, and carry your plastic back down with you.

If Darjeeling's Tibetan side is what stayed with you, McLeod Ganj at the far end of the Himalaya is its cousin — the same momos, prayer wheels and vertical lanes, with the Dhauladhar standing in for Kanchenjunga.