Every road in these hills, in the right order

Every journey is private. Your party travels alone, with its own vehicle, a driver from the hills and a local guide wherever the route calls for one. There are no fixed departures and no strangers at dinner. Most parties are couples, families or a few friends. You choose the start date, and we set each day's timings around your flights, your children's routines and your parents' pace.

Every journey page carries a from-price, quoted per person on a twin-share basis. That figure is built from the published rates of the houses we name, a private vehicle and driver, guides, permits and fees, with the design work and 24x7 support included. Your own figure moves with the season, the room category and the size of your party, so send us your dates and we cost them exactly.

October to December is the surest window: the monsoon has gone, the air is dry and Kanchenjunga is out on most mornings. March and April bring first-flush tea, rhododendrons and milder days, with haze building by noon. Winter suits honeymoons and Bhutan's cranes. From mid June to mid September the monsoon closes roads and hides the peaks, so we steer almost every journey away from those months.

Most begin at Bagdogra (IXB), near Siliguri, which has direct flights from Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad. From there Darjeeling is about 70 km and 3 hours by road, Kalimpong about 80 km, Gangtok 124 km and Pelling 135 km. Bhutan journeys use Paro, reached by Drukair from Bagdogra on set weekdays. Nepal journeys use Kathmandu, reached via Bhadrapur or by a nonstop flight from Delhi.

Yes. These are tested shapes, not fixed packages. Add a night where a road is long, swap a house, join a Sikkim week to a Bhutan week, or trade a sightseeing day for a morning on the verandah. We keep only the rules that make a route work: no ordinary day over six hours of driving, no night above 3,000 m in the first two, and a short run to the airport on the last morning.

Indian citizens need only photo ID for Darjeeling, Gangtok and Pelling, while protected areas such as Tsomgo Lake need a permit we file through a registered operator. Foreign nationals need a Sikkim Restricted Area Permit, applied for online. Bhutan charges every visitor its Sustainable Development Fee and requires a licensed guide, and Indians must carry a passport or original voter ID for both Bhutan and Nepal.

Many are. Every journey in the family collection sleeps at or below about 2,150 m, keeps drives to a few hours and asks each house for lifts or ground-floor rooms where it has them. Three Generations was built around grandparents, and The Hills with Children around ages six to fourteen. Anything high, such as the lake at Tsomgo above Gangtok, is offered, never required.

Every day of every itinerary carries a written plan B. If a landslide shuts NH10, we take the diversion via Gorubathan or Lava. If cloud sits on Tiger Hill, you sleep in and we try the next dawn. If rain settles over a town, the day turns to a tea tasting, a kitchen or a monastery at prayer. Our team checks the roads each morning, and someone answers the phone at any hour while you travel.