Pelling & West Sikkim

Because the old texts name it a beyul, a valley hidden by Guru Rinpoche for a later age. Bhutias call it Demazong, the hidden valley of rice, and tradition puts Tashiding at its heart: the hill is the pistil of a lotus whose four petals are sacred caves, one to each direction. The western one, Dechen Phug, lies near Dzongri on the Goecha La trail. Monasteries of the East can add the southern cave, Khandro Sangphuk, above Reshi.

On the 14th and 15th days of the first Tibetan month, in February or March, the lamas at Tashiding open a vase of holy water sealed a year earlier and read the level. Full to the brim foretells a year of peace and plenty; brimming over means disturbance and disaster; low or dry means famine. The water is then shared, the vase refilled from the river and sealed again. Thousands come, so tell us early and we walk you up before dawn.

Pemayangtse and Tashiding admit everyone, inside the halls as well as the courtyards. Dubdi above Yuksom has one resident monk, so we send word the day before and he opens it for you. Sanga Choeling is the exception: by custom only men go into the hall, and the inner sanctum is kept for Bhutia and Lepcha worshippers, while the courtyard above the valley is open to everyone. Worth knowing before you choose a house here, not at the gate.

Height, and how much road you hear. Upper Pelling sits at about 2,150 m and holds the helipad ground, an open field where anyone may stand for the whole northern arc. Lower Pelling is roughly 250 m below it, on the road that carries the day's traffic. The Elgin Mount Pandim is off both, under a kilometre from Pemayangtse. Ask us which end a hotel stands on before you book a room for the view.

Because the Gurkha armies came. Tensung Namgyal moved the court here from Yuksom, and Rabdentse was the capital of Sikkim from 1670 until 1814, when the court moved on to Tumlong. What stands now is a platform with three royal chortens and the palace walls to the north, reached by a forest path fifteen minutes from the gate. The Archaeological Survey of India looks after it, and almost nobody walks up in the middle of the day.

More than the photographs suggest. Rabdentse is fifteen minutes on a forest path from its gate. Sanga Choeling is a climb of 45 minutes to an hour. Dubdi above Yuksom is about 3 km up through cardamom and oak, an hour at a steady pace. Khecheopalri's boardwalk is flat, and Norbugang at Yuksom is a short level path. We build each day so that anyone who would rather sit has somewhere worth sitting.

Yes, in its first hour or late in the afternoon, and not at all on a cloudy day, when you pay to stand on glass above fog. It runs out from the foot of the 137 ft Chenrezig statue and was the first glass skywalk built in India, opened on 1 November 2018. Children like it and some adults do not. The statue's own stairway and prayer-wheel pavilions are the better half of the visit.