Darjeeling and Kalimpong, 6 nights
A family week paced for ages six to fourteen: red pandas at opening time, a steam engine with sandmen up front, a house full of cacti. Every day has one thing a nine-year-old will describe at school.
Photo: Mudit Agarwal / Unsplash
Day 2, 08:30
The zoo gate opens at 08:30, the cool hour when red pandas move along their branches. Between 2022 and 2024 this zoo set nine captive-bred pandas free in the Singalila forests, and three of the released females have raised five cubs in the wild.
Photo: NSG / Unsplash
Day 3
On the steam joy ride, seat the children where they can see the front of the engine: two sandmen ride there, throwing sand on the rails when the wheels slip. At Ghum the train waits 30 minutes for the railway museum upstairs.
Photo: Soumyadip Maity / Pexels
Happy Valley, since 1854
After lunch, an hour's factory tour and a tasting. In plucking season we ask whether the children may pick a few shoots: two leaves and a bud. The factory rests on Sundays, Mondays and in winter, so the days are set around it.
Photo: Sayan Samanta / Pexels
Day 4, 55 km
Kalimpong is about 2.5 hours away. Above Peshok the children find two rivers joining far below; we pause halfway down the bends so nobody feels unwell, and seat whoever feels them most in the front.
Photo: Boudhayan Bardhan / Unsplash
Day 5
Pine View Nursery keeps cacti from deserts on the other side of the world under glass, by the hundred. On the Deolo lawns, tandem paragliders launch between 09:00 and 15:00 from October to June; older children can watch, or fly as an add-on.
Photo: Mosharraf Hossain / Unsplash
Day 6
At the Gangjong workshop, bark is soaked, boiled, beaten to pulp and lifted out on a floating sieve as paper. Kalimpong lollipops are milk and sugar boiled down in a wok and rolled by hand, still made by former workers of an old Swiss dairy.
Photo: Unsplash
Day 7
Locals call the Coronation Bridge Bagh Pul, the tiger bridge, though its big cats are lions. Go March to May or October to mid-December, and set your dates around the zoo's Thursday closure.
Photo: Sahil Pandita / Unsplash