In Darjeeling last year my partner and I met a British couple who have been travelling back and forth to India for the past twenty years. I asked them to name their favourite place in the country.

"If you're talking about a great place to live, I'd say Kolkata. It's got everything: great restaurants, historic buildings, the Maidan, an excellent transport service and friendly people."

Jamie loved the city immediately, but I took a little longer to succumb to its charms. Now I look back at our trip and wish we could have stayed longer. Perhaps we'll go back.

On our final night we went to Kewpies for dinner. Tucked away down a narrow lane off busy Elgin Road, it is the kind of place you have to know about to find. Thanks to Lonely Planet and other assorted sources -- and the fact that it was within striking distance of our hotel, www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33343 -- we decided to give it a try. To be honest we went to another restaurant over the road called Oh! Calcutta first. But after being ushered to our very posh table in a super slick dining room, and perusing the designed-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life menu we made a dash for freedom. I'm sure the place serves splendid food, but the restaurant could have been anywhere (anywhere expensive), and the super efficient A/C had sucked out all its atmosphere.

Kewpies couldn't have been more different. They've knocked a couple of ancient buildings together with interconnecting doors, to form a warren of dining areas. An odd assortment of Victorian and Indian furniture clutters up the place. It has charm and originality in spades. The menu is simple, just a list of set meals ranging from a basic thali and rice to a full-on banquet. Jamie wanted the banquet, I wanted the basic meal. We settled for something nearer my end of the spectrum.

As with everything in India, it is best just to sit back and watch proceedings unfold in front of you. Don't waste energy trying to work out what will happen next and how long it will take, just accept that what you expect may be quite different from what you get.

A few individual dishes, all vegetarian, were placed on the table in the ubiquitous brick-coloured un-fired pots you see everywhere in Kolkata. The rice came separately. It didn't look like much, and we hoped the dishes would be re-filled. The food was fresh, spicy, delicious and surprisingly filling, for me. Jamie clung to the hope that the bowls would be re-filled. They were whisked away, and we were left wondering if that was it.

Next came a pile of pappads and a selection of pickles. Despite living in India for eighteen months we hadn't been given our food in this order before. We tucked in. The pappads were light and crispy, and the pickles and chutneys homemade and tasty. Once every crumb and smear had been devoured we were presented with two blocks of white sweetened cheese. Our waiter told us it was 'like ricotta'. When we asked him if he'd ever tried ricotta he blushed, but told us that other people had assured him of this fact.

He was right.

Next we were given bowls of brown curd. Jamie doesn't like yogurt at the best of times. Although it didn't look particularly appetising, we discovered the colour came from the carob used to flavour this delicious, creamy pudding.

We thought we'd finished, but just as we were getting ready to leave, we were presented with the restaurant's own variety of paan. Zingy flavours sparkled in our mouths as we bit into the leaves. Heavenly.

Address: 2 Elgin Lane
Phone: 033 24861600
Hours: 12.30-3pm & 7.30-11pm Tue-Sun

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For the best views of India's highest mountain head to Singalila National Park. At 8,586m Kanchenjunga is the third highest mountain in the world, but you only need to reach 3000m to catch the dawn over this spectacular Himalayan massif.

Walking up from Manebhanjang on the first day, we met 'Chitray Pala' (Bamboo House Papa) an eighty year old Tibetan refugee who escaped prison in China. Sixty years ago it took him and his parents two months to walk from Tibet to their small farm settlement in the mountains

The first leg is the steepest, but once on the ridge the walk is less strenuous. Tiny wild strawberries littered the trail when we were there in May, but we were too late for the wild rhododendron bushes and orchids which carpet the mountains in April. Renowned for its wide variety of bird life, the park is also home to wild boar, black bears and the beautiful clouded leopard. If you are very lucky you might see its most famous resident, the shy and rare red panda.

In the dark, smoky huts dotted along the trek, try quenching your thirst with 'tongba', a millet beer served in bamboo segments. If you want something stronger then the Himalayan hooch 'rakshi' will warm up hands and heart. After a well-deserved hot evening meal a cosy night's sleep under heavy blankets is all you'll need.

The clearest skies are usually found in November when panoramic views will enthuse budding photographers looking for the perfect image to enter in the Guardian's 'Been there' photo competition.

Guides are compulsory and can be pre-booked in Darjeeling. Apart from showing you the way, they have encyclopaedic knowledge of the area's flora and fauna.
darjeeling.gov.in/treak.html

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Ranging between 20 and 200 feet in diameter, these Orwellian sentinels tower eerily over the world-renowned shingle peninsular of the Dungeness National Nature Reserve. Erected between 1928 and 1930 the three concrete 'listening ears' detected the approach of enemy aircraft, but when radar was invented before WW2 they became redundant.

The only way to get up close to these impressive feats of engineering is by joining one of Dr Richard Scarth's highly popular walks organised by the Romney Marsh Countryside Project. Check the noticeboard on the Project's website for dates.

Romney Marsh Countryside Project
website: www.rmcp.co.uk/NoticeBoard.php
Phone: 01797 367934
Email: mail@rmcp.co.uk
More info: www.greatstone.net/history/sound_mirrors.htm

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If you want a break from the relentless manicured (for India) tourism of Fort Cochin, hop on a ferry across the estuary. Ernakalum District, of which Fort Cochin is only one small part, is Kerala's commercial hub. To get an idea of ordinary life for your average Kochiite put on your walking boots and refuse every offer from rickshaw drivers (not that you'll get hassled here, they are not so used to tourists).

Walk the length of Market Street, from Hospital Street to Banerji Road, and explore the lanes that run off this busy market area. There are no touts, and you won't be hassled to buy a carpet or 'antique'. The fella coming up and asking your name simply wants to welcome you to Kerala and talk to a foreigner, especially an English speaker. You'll find Jew Street, Muslim Street and Convent Road within a prayer of each other, illustrating the easy religious integration which characterises this enlightened state.

Turn right at the end of Banerji Road and pop into the Hotel Saravana Bhavan for the best vegetable thali in Kochi. (Like many restaurants in India it is called a 'hotel' when all it does is serve food, which can be a bit misleading as the hotels are usually called hotels too.) The non A/C section is packed with local workers every day. For less than a £1 they'll keep filling your plate or 'ela' (Malayalam for banana leaf) until you burst. There's an A/C section for posh people.

After lunch head a little further up Banerji Road and turn onto MG Road. Seemati has a fantastic textile section full of silks, satins and cottons for a tenth of the price you would pay in the UK. Chennai silks is great for sarees, salwaars and mens' clothes, they even have on-site tailors.

If you fancy a beer the best local bar is the Bar Oberoi on MG Road. It's not as dark and desperate as most of the diamond-signed bars all over town, and cleaner than most. You'll be the only non-Indian in there, and if you're a woman you'll definitely be the only one. Between 5 and 6 most days the proprietor lights a series of incense sticks, each more smoky than the last, finishing with full-on frankincense bowls.

Hotel Saravana Bhavan
Banerji Road, Ernakulam Bazar, Near Sritha Theatre, Kochi, Kerala 682031, India
+91 484 237 0153

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The One-Horned Rhinos of Kaziranga National Park.

This Unesco World Heritage Site is set in spectacular scenery and is professionally run, without any fuss. Please believe the hype and take an elephant safari. It's a humbling experience to ride these stoical and patient relics from prehistory. You'll see plenty of rhinos as you pass through the elephant grass swampland, and if you're very lucky you may see some of the fifteen species of India's most threatened mammals. We saw wild elephants, several dear species and fantastic birds, but you could see fish eagles, hornbills, King Cobras, tigers, bears, leopards, or more.

We stayed in pristine huts with new kids on the block, the Nature Hunt Eco Camp. Superb.

www.worldheritagekaziranga.com
naturehunttours.com
Kaziranga National Park & Tiger Reserve
Bokakhat – 785 612
Golaghat
Assam, India
Telephone: +91-3776-268095
Google map: bit.ly/z8MT8D

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Kolkata’s South Park Street Cemetery, with its 18th and 19th century monolithic tombs, is full of the tales and tribulations of Britain’s earliest pioneers.

India was filled with danger for early settlers, and tropical disease was a common cause of death for many of them. Soldiers died in relentless skirmishes and shipwrecks took the lives of many mariners. Nevertheless, enough settlers thrived (or were replaced) to oversee the original three villages gradually turn into The British Raj’s great nineteenth century metropolis, Calcutta.

Built in 1767 for the early East India Company pioneers and their attendants, this latter day necropolis is packed with giant mausoleums, all vying for top billing: pyramids, colonnaded temples, oversized urns, obelisks, sarcophagi and stone cupolas. The cemetery is a roll-call of the soldiers, sailors, civil servants, merchants, women and children who succumbed to the rigours of an unfamiliar and disease-ridden life in the tropics.

I felt nostalgia for a time I had never known. One hundred and fourteen years before I arrived there, Sir William Wilson Hunter’s eloquent words summed up the oppression which descended on me as I walked between the tombs.

“Most mournful of graveyards are those walled-up ghastly settlements, desolate spaces of brick ruins, and blotched plaster, reproachful of forgetfulness and neglect. It was difficult to restrain some retrospective pity for the inmates of those squalid tenements — for their hard, hot lives more than a hundred years ago, solaced by none of the alleviations which have become necessaries of our modern Indian existence; with few airy verandahs or lofty ceilings, without punkahs, without ice, without possibilities of change to the hills, or respite to their exile by visits home.

The mental stagnation of a small society given to arrack and heavy dinners in the heat of the tropical day, and dependent for their news of the outer world on three or four shipments a year, produced a tedium vitae even harder to bear… If the world dealt hardly with them in life, it has made no amends to their memory. As I thought of how much they achieved, and how little they have been honoured, I found myself involuntarily composing an apologia for the dead.” (Sir William Wilson Hunter, ‘The Thackerays in India and some Calcutta graves’.)

There were not many visitors to the cemetery on the day my partner and I were there, but then you do have to make a particular effort to go, it is not a place that you pass on the way to anywhere else. We bumped into one other western tourist, a few Indian couples and a small group of Indian soldiers during the two hours we spent there. But we were never alone, the caw-cawing of a hundred flapping crows accompanied us over the whole eight acres.

Among the monoliths, the prosaic British names on the oversized tombs are a long way from home: Elizabeth Jane Barwell, James Addison Webster, Captain Dennis Bodkin, Harriet Chicheley Plowden, Major George Dowlie, Thomas Cotterell, Capt W Mackay.

Edward Wheler Esq, “In his political character which will be best learned from the Pages of History he was an upright, just, and honest Man. And as his disinterested conduct garnered the esteem of all Ranks of Men So in the Memory he is honored, beloved, lamented.”

Near the entrance, and smothered in the edible scent from a curry leaf tree, lies Hastings Impey Esq, “son of Sir Elijah Impey, Factor in the Service of the Eaft India Company who died in the 24th year of his Age February 4th 1805″. His father — the most prominent name on the stone, and former Chief Justice of Bengal — fared rather better than his son. He left India and became the parliamentary member for New Romney, before retiring to Brighton. In 1809 he died, and was buried in the family vault in Hammersmith.

Much of the cemetery was overgrown, and many of the tombs are decaying: inscriptions no longer legible, corners falling off and columns crumbling. Someone is keeping the jungle at bay, though, because the pathways were reasonably clear and at over 250 years old the tombs would have been swallowed up without some attention.

As you read each new story in the names, ages, dedications and tomb designs, you are reminded of the bravery and stoicism shown by these settlers. The journey alone would have been a hardship, and then to end up in such inhospitable and unknown terrain would have been an even greater trial, especially for women in their layers of clothes and corsetry. For all their jingoism and arrogance, you can't help but feel humbled by their intrepidness. We call ourselves travellers today, but catching a flight over to the other side of the world for a quick jaunt up to Machu Picchu, or a guided tour round a wildlife park, doesn’t compare to the terrifying adventure into the unknown these individuals must had endured for the sake of commerce.

Mother Teresa Sarani, Kolkata, India

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Fate pointed its fickle finger at me in Nelson's Dockyard on Christmas Day. Jamie had sailed across the Atlantic, and I was snatching a do-nothing break between business deals. Up on Shirley Heights our love was sealed with a kiss. By next Christmas we'd given up the rat race, and bought a yacht in Turkey. Seven years (and 10,500 miles) later, we're still sailing.

nationalparksantigua.com/
Google map: bit.ly/xHT9f4

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Back in the 60s I learned to ski in Geilo. We used long wooden skis, leather boots, and elasticated safety bindings permanently attached to our skis. You never lost your skis when you fell over, but you were occasionally bashed on the head as you crashed to a stop. The equipment has improved, but Geilo still guarantees off-piste powder and deep-packed snow on your ski runs. You won't find ice or patchy slopes in the land that invented cross-country skiing.

www.geilo.no/en/winter/
Google map: bit.ly/zBv9L3

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Antigua has a number of uninhabited islands accessible by boat. Green Island is the classic desert island, with turquoise waters, smooth sandy beaches and a forest of palms and tropical flora.
You can only get there by boat, so choose a slow journey by sail and anchor overnight with the super yachts, or charter a motorboat for a day and have a picnic.
Alternatively enjoy the heavenly view from Harmony Hill Hotel and Yacht Club, an old converted sugar plantation, and maybe cadge a lift across from one of the yachts.

www.harmonyhallantigua.com
Brown's Bay, Nr. Freetown, Antigua, West Indies
+1 (268) 460-4120

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Well known to fishing enthusiasts, the Hallaniyat Island group lies just off the magnificent Dhofar coast. The water is transparent, the pristine white beach is scattered with delicate pastel shells, and the hills look like chocolate layer cake. It was an idyllic place to drop the hook and catch our breath before the impending 1000 mile passage across the Arabian Sea.
Illustrating its draw for anglers, we caught a metre long dorado on the day we left.
Best time:
Early Late autumn to early spring when vis in the Red Sea is at its best.

North of Salalah on the Dohfar coast.

How to get there:
Hire a local boat from the mainland, or beg, borrow or buy your own.

Lon: 056° 01.0E Lat: 17° 30.0N

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Peaceful and remote Majuli Island (the largest riverine island in the world) is home to many endangered birds, and an important wetland in Assam. The 'Mising' tribe, a subsistence farming community, lives here in simple bamboo and palm leaf houses built on stilts.
For a tranquil stay away from India's hustle and bustle, rent a room in one of the Assamese neo-Vaisnavite monasteries which dot the island.
(Not to be confused with Ali G's "Me Julie")

Get the ferry from Jorhat. If travelling with a driver and car ensure the driver books the ferry well in advance, it only takes three cars.
Google map: bit.ly/xnLFXy

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It's not deserted, but with only 300 inhabitants it is pretty sparsely populated, and after a couple of days you will have seen everyone on the island.
Less than a mile from the coast of Turkey, Kastellorizo (officially named Megisti) is Greece's easternmost island, and nicely off the beaten track. For fresh home-cooked eastern Mediterranean food try the Olive Garden, in the island's tiny harbour.
A number of boats plough back and forth between Kastellorizo and Kaş, one of Turkey's prettiest fishing towns.

Six flights a week from Rhodes. Several ferries from Rhodes, including a weekly catamaran.
One hour boat ride from Kaş in Turkey.
Google map: bit.ly/xxbntP

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With luxurious sandy beaches, archaeological sites, cetacean spotting and shark fishing, the Isles of Scilly are the UK's own tropical paradise. Don't just stay in one place, though, use the excellent boat service to explore all the islands, several of which are uninhabited. You'll find rare birds, seal colonies, pre-historic remains and the UK's most south-westerly lighthouse, Bishop Rock.

Nature walking tours:
www.islandwildlifetours.co.uk
Walks start in late March and finish mid October, numbers and weather permitting.
www.scillywalks.co.uk
Katharine Sawyer leads archaeologial and historic walks round the islands between April and September
www.simplyscilly.co.uk
Google map: bit.ly/AlTA1D

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For macabre Victoriana take a trip round Highgate Cemetery. Sadly it is no longer open for individual roaming, but the accompanied tours are entertaining and informative. With its catacombs, statuary, grand mausoleums and famous names this latter day necropolis is a spooky but fun place to visit. Lucinda Hawksley, Charles Dickens's great, great, great granddaughter, will be giving two talks in the cemetery's chapel in February 2012.

www.highgate-cemetery.org
Swain's Lane, London N6 6PJ
+44(0)20 8340 1834
Nearest tube: Archway
Google map: bit.ly/e24iLF

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I met my destiny on the dock of the bay, in the midst of a Caribbean Christmas party. The stylishly preserved Nelson's Dockyard was established by Britain in the early eighteenth century as a base for its navy. Once home to a young Horatio Nelson, the harbour is now a prominent stop for racing, cruising and super yachts.

Jamie – who was having an extended mid-life gap year – had just helped deliver a yacht from Europe and was trying to decide what to do next. I was partying like a woman possessed, desperately trying to obliterate an eighty hour corporate working week from my consciousness.

When I returned to the UK I put my house up for sale and began the tortuous process of extricating myself from my job. A year later I'd given up the expense account for a life afloat with Jamie. 10,000 miles and seven years later we have just celebrated Christmas in Cochin on our yacht.

+1 268 481 5021

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It's not always easy to find authentic food if you are with a tour group, or staying in hotels in India. All too often they try to pander to what they think 'westerners' want to eat.
If we're on a road trip with a driver, we always ask him (invariably it's a him in India) where he eats. In Munnar he took us to the unfortunately-named “Roachas”. It is not in any tourist guide, and a Google search reveals nothing but my own entries in my blog. But Munnar is not a big place, and all I remember is that it is at the end of one of the roads leading out of town.
It's a large rectangular, functional caff, with few frills. But it is clean and airy. It was full of other drivers and local people when we went there. The big plus here is that it serves really good Keralan food. We had a fantastic fish supper of Meen Moilee (black fish from the backwaters, cooked in a cocunut curry sauce) and enjoyed a very tasty biryani lunch there too for less than a quid each.

One of the at the end of one of the roads leading out of Munnar. Big, set back, car park, well sign-posted.

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Located in one of the many cardamom plantations that cling to the side of the higher slopes, our hotel grandly calls itself “Olive Brook: Republic of Nature”. It sat up a one in three climb just off the only road running along the valley and consisted of six bungalows overlooking a colourful and well-maintained garden. Good start.
As is the norm in India, every car that approaches a bend beeps its horn. Loudly. Several times. There are bends either side of our hotel. Not so good. Contrary to expectations, however, we were not kept awake all night by frantic horn blowing as it turns out everyone retires to bed early in these parts, and since the road takes you nowhere but to other hotels it was virtually deserted after 9:30pm. Phew.
Our bungalow was vast. We had a front sitting area and an inner sanctum home to a huge double bed and an even bigger bathroom. The rooms were spotless, with a comfortable bed and hot running water. Each night we sat on our veranda, sipping beer and unusual (i.e rubbish) local wine, listening to the sounds of the jungle. Like most places, the small hotel doesn't serve alcohol, but equally doesn't mind if you bring your own. The hotel food was less than inspiring, pretty to look at but rather bland in taste if you are used to the fiery curries found in Kerala. They will cook to order, though, so make them aware of what you do and don't like.

Olive Brook, P. B. No:62, Pothamedu, Munnar,
Idukki(Dist.), Kerala 685 612
+91 4865 230588
www.olivebrookmunnar.com

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Found 15kms outside Munnar, Eravikulam was declared a sanctuary in 1975 and upgraded in 1978 to a national park, in part due to its unique flora and fauna. We went at the wrong time to see the enigmatic Neelakurunji, a plant which produces its carpet of blue flowers every 12 years (go there in 2014 for the next viewing) but we did see the fabulously rare Nilgiri Tahr, the only species of Caprine ungulate (look that up in your Funk and Wagnall’s) found south of the Himalayas. There are around 2,500 left of this friendly wild mountain goat in the world, ensuring its place among the status of ‘endangered’ in the WWF list of rare animals.
We arrived at the park excited at the prospect of seeing rare goats. In addition to nature’s gifts, it is home to Anamudi (2690m), the highest peak in India south of the Himalayas. We were not allowed to walk up the mountain path, so along with everyone else ascended the foothills aboard the park bus. We jumped off with about 40 domestic tourists at the high entrance point. We were not allowed to deviate from the path. We were told to keep quiet so as not to upset the wildlife. We could not pass go. Fair enough.
Accompanied by families of screaming children scrambling in the undergrowth, shouting groups of men and chattering women in bejewelled thong sandles and saris, we tried to pretend we were at one with nature. A Nilgiri Tahr crossed the carefully designated pathway in front of us ignoring the noise: the 25 species of other mammals, 132 species of birds, 101 species of butterflies and 19 species of amphibians recorded in the Park kept their distance. An abrupt end to the path made it clear we would not be allowed any further, ending our dream of a decent shot at climbing the highest peak in southern India.
A little disappointedly we returned down the hill-path, trying to find a moment of tranquility among the tourist madness. Anyone who has visited India will know this is never an easy task. We gave up at the bus drop-off point, and, in a last ditch effort to find some serenity in the beautiful surroundings, decided to walk back to the bottom. Fat chance. A guard shooed us back up the hill and we joined a heaving bus of tourists back to the park entrance.
Oh well, we saw the goats.

Idukki, Forest Information Centre, Wildlife Warden's Office, Munnar PO, Kerala 685 612, India
+91 4865 231 587
Google map: bit.ly/xjyUeq

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Munnar, Kerala’s best known hill station, is set in a land of undulating hills blanketed by tea estates. But beware, in this dreamy landscape death lurks at every turn.
High up in the valley, under the cool shade of a cardamom plantation, I asked the guide if we could take a stroll into the rain forest. Nitish swiveled his eyes, carefully avoiding mine.
“Madam, there were wild elephants here yesterday.”
In the white heat of the tea estates women sliced fragile new shoots from the tips of shrubs, their razor-sharp shears specially adapted to catch the crop with each snip. Others heaved sacks as big as boulders onto a truck. A man sat in the shade, perfunctorily supervising the women’s work.
Wild elephants? Aren’t they one of the attractions here? I tried an encouraging smile, my excitement fading as he explained the danger.
“Angry elephants will charge and trample everything in their way, madam, including you.”
Stunted and pruned to within an inch of their lives, tea shrubs are packed tightly in manicured rows, like a green candlewick bedspread draped over the rumpled hillsides. Dotted around the slopes, shade-giving acacia trees perforate the swaddled fields. The women moved carefully between the bushes.
I glanced at the forest, now dripping with malevolence under its latticework of branches. Myna birds shrieked and glistening tropical flowers pierced the gloom. A shadow shifted in the darkness and a crazed string-puppet butterfly, the size of a bat, lurched out of the gloom.
Nitish, heartened by my hesitation, warned of foxes in these parts. I shrugged, Fantastic Mr Fox didn’t frighten me.
“If they are hungry they will attack you.”
Unlike the sly tricksters of childhood fairy tales, it seems Indian foxes are wild and ferocious, “like small Alsation dogs.” My naïve Jemima Puddle-Duck persistence faltered.
A muffled shriek from the tea fields stopped us dead in our tracks.
Nitish smiled as he went in for the kill, “also, madam, there are snakes.”
The next day we visited The Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Company tea museum, where monochrome images of puny white men holding guns, each with a foot planted on a dead tiger, were hung in the corridors. We watched a short, and surprisingly interesting, film about the history of the area, then walked through the displays. It is a working museum, and you can walk through the whole process from the leaves arriving to buying your souvenir bag of tea at the end.
A sign on the wall told us that schools and crèche facilities are provided for its families by the local tea cooperative. Remembering yesterday’s scream, I asked a manager if labouring in the plantations could be dangerous.
“Certainly, our workers get bitten by the occasional snake, but we carry anti-venom and are able to treat bites immediately.”
He informed us that all visitors to India should learn how to identify poisonous snakes.
“If you are attacked you must tell the doctor which snake bit you, so the correct anti-venom can be administered.”
Now, I reckon I can recognise an angry cobra, but with over 270 species of snake in India I decided I should keep my camera handy. If avoidance tactics don’t work, the only way I’m going to be able to explain which would-be slithery assassin has bitten me is to take its photo. Smile please.

www.kdhptea.com/TeaMuseum.html
KDHP House, Munnar-685 612, Kerala
+91-4865 230561

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If you're looking to relax and unwind after a hard day's trek along the vertical slopes round Darjeeling, then don't come here. Hasty Tasty is frenetic, hectic and loud. Packed from the minute it opens (9.30am) till it closes (around 8pm) this strictly vegetarian cafeteria delivers exactly what it promises, fast and delicious food.
Choose from the vast menu displayed above the long counter, pay (around a quid) for your meal, grab a piece of paper with a number scribbled on it, and see if you can bag a table by the window. As you wait for the waiter to call your number - and if it's a clear day - you can gaze at Kanchenjunga, India's highest mountain, the third highest peak in the world. If you've had enough of mountains (is that possible?) I recommend some simple people watching: a cavalcade of characters swiftly passes through, mainly very cold-looking domestic Indian tourists in idiosyncratic get-ups (the women in be-jewelled, kitten heeled sandals, the men in extravagant bobble hats and tight gilets).
We ate here several times, and a typical meal would include two enormous bowls of (veg) chow mein and two lassis for 120INR (around £1.50).
The kitchen is behind the counter, so you can watch all the food being prepared and cooked in front of you. It doesn't get much fresher.

Opening hours: 09:30 to 20:00
13, Nehru Road, Darjeeling
(0354) 2252727
Google map: bit.ly/xbCQ9e

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