Kolkata to Darjeeling and Gangtok

This is two journeys bolted together, and it is worth knowing which half you are buying before you give a week to it. Kolkata to Siliguri is 560 to 600 km depending on which line you take — NH12 up through Krishnanagar, Berhampore, Farakka and Malda, then NH27 for the last run in — and it costs thirteen to fifteen hours of flat highway behind trucks, through towns the road runs into rather than around. Nobody pretends that leg is scenic. Then the ground tilts. Those last two stretches are as good as hill driving gets in India. So say it plainly. If you only want the hills, take the overnight train to New Jalpaiguri or fly into Bagdogra and hire a car there; you lose nothing and you gain two days. Drive the whole thing only if the plains are genuinely the point — the Farakka barrage carrying the highway over the Ganga, and the Bengal Sultanate capitals at Gaur and Pandua outside Malda, which almost nobody stops for. Allow six to eight days, then add a spare one, because NH10 closes without warning.

Darjeeling did not start out Bengali. It was Sikkimese ground, and on 1 February 1835 the Sikkim Raja handed it over — not a lease, whatever the shorthand says, but a Deed of Grant whose own wording is the language of a present: the Raja "hereby present Darjeeling" to the East India Company. Money followed the gift rather than paying for it: an allowance of Rs 3,000 a year from 1841, raised to Rs 6,000 in 1846. What the Company wanted was a sanatorium. Captain Lloyd had come through the ridge in 1829 and decided it would suit officials who could not survive a Calcutta summer, and that is the founding logic of the town — a convalescent home for an administration that was killing its own staff on the plains. Tea came second. Archibald Campbell put in experimental plants around 1841, and the first commercial gardens opened in 1856, at Alubari and on the Lebong spur. The labour to work them came from outside: the population went from not more than a hundred in 1839 to about ten thousand by 1849, chiefly immigrants from Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan. That is why the Darjeeling hills speak Nepali today, and why the demand for a Gorkhaland state has run through local politics for decades. The narrow-gauge railway followed the tea rather than the other way round — built between 1879 and 1881, open as far as Kurseong in August 1880 and through to Darjeeling in July 1881. Sikkim's story runs the other way. It was a kingdom under the Chogyals from 1642. The British turned it into a protectorate in 1890 and independent India inherited the arrangement, but the monarchy outlasted both, and it was only on 16 May 1975 that Sikkim became the twenty-second state of the Indian Union and the throne was abolished. Gangtok therefore feels less colonial than Darjeeling and more recently built, and the kingdom sits inside living memory rather than in a museum.

Kanchenjunga from Tiger Hill on a clear October morning. The Batasia Loop five km out of Darjeeling, below Ghum, where the line spirals back on itself around the Gorkha war memorial. Tea gardens on the slopes below Kurseong. And the Teesta running green a long way beneath NH10.

NH12 across Bengal is mostly four-lane and in reasonable shape, but it runs through the towns instead of around them, so your average speed stays low whatever the map promises. Above Siliguri, Hill Cart Road is narrow and heavily used, with the railway on it and beside it for much of the climb. NH10 along the Teesta is the weak link, cut into slopes that keep giving way: it was shut for six days in August 2025 after a section collapsed into the river at 9th Mile, and closed again for three days in July 2026 between Rangpo and Ranipool while the slope was stabilised.

Do the Kolkata-Siliguri leg in daylight, and in two hops rather than one push. Book the Tiger Hill vehicle the evening before, never on the morning itself. Check NH10 before you commit to a Gangtok date in any month with rain in it. And on the climb through Sonada and Ghum the toy train track runs alongside Hill Cart Road and criss-crosses it repeatedly, so drive on the assumption that a train can appear on the tarmac in front of you.

Split the plains drive rather than pushing it in one go. Kolkata to Berhampore or Malda on the first day, Malda to Darjeeling on the second, then stay put in the hills. Do the plains in daylight — NH12 after dark is unlit trucks and unpredictable overtaking, and there is nothing out of the window anyway. October to early December is the window worth planning around: the monsoon has gone and the air is dry enough to see the mountain from a distance. March and April are the second choice, warmer but hazier. Mid-June to September you should simply not attempt. This is one of the wettest corners of India and NH10 along the Teesta is the road that pays for it, so keep a spare day even outside the monsoon. Tiger Hill is eleven km out of Darjeeling and takes planning rather than effort. Vehicle numbers to the summit have been capped since September 2019, and taxi drivers collect the following day's coupons on a first-come-first-served basis, so the booking happens the evening before, not on the morning. Leave well before first light — sunrise here shifts by about an hour across the year, so check the day's time and work back from it. Leave too late and you arrive after the good ground has gone. Go on a weekday — several hundred people come up on a high-season morning. Permits are two separate instruments and people conflate them. Indian nationals need nothing to enter Sikkim or to stay in Gangtok, Rumtek included, but a Protected Area Permit is required for Tsomgo Lake, Nathu La, Zuluk and the North Sikkim valleys, and it is arranged through a travel agent registered with the Sikkim tourism department rather than over a counter. Nathu La is closed to tourists on Mondays and Tuesdays, so do not build either day around it. Foreign nationals need a Restricted Area Permit for Sikkim itself, are barred outright from Nathu La, Gurudongmar and Zuluk, and cannot hold a Protected Area Permit alone: the rule is a party of at least two with a certified local guide.