Windamere Hotel

The Windamere Hotel is "One of the three Jewels of the Raj". Established in the 19th century as a cozy boarding house for bachelor English and Scottish tea planters, it was converted into a hotel just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Well known to sophisticated travelers the world over, the Windamere is famous for its unique ambience and charm, and has been the subject of many leading stories in the international media.

Windamere is the original "Heritage House of the Himalayas". It is situated on Observatory Hill, a Darjeeling landmark, believed to be the focus and repository of life-enhancing cosmic energies.

There are two wings at The Windmere Hotel

The Ada Villa
Ada Villa appeals to guests who like tradition, who would be comfortable in a bygone age, and who want a reminder of how people got on with their lives in old Darjeeling. For this reason, there are no TVs and telephones in Ada Villa as guests who choose to live here prefer to avoid the distractions of modern life for the duration of their stay.

The Snuggery at the Windamere
The Snuggery appeals to people who need to remain in touch with modern life, even while they indulge their love of the past and old things. The residential houses in this wing, Annandale House, and Observatory House, are provided with TVs and telephones.

Room types in these Villas include

• Standard room
• Superior room
• Heritage Suite
• Forget-me-not-Suite
• Little Peppers Suite
• Governor of Bengal Suite
• Tinker Belle's Cottage

Dining
The food is legendary, with both Continental and Indian menus. The Continental cuisine still has remnants of the old Raj with such dishes as "Roly Poly Pudding", "authentically prepared porridge for breakfast" and "cheese & onion pie". You can wash this down with our lovely wines and finish up with a cup of steaming Darjeeling Tea or freshly ground coffee. During dinner, the dining room is transformed into a candlelit affair, with soft music floating around in the ether. White-gloved waiters seem to glide in and around the tables and soft conversations are flowing.

Conference
The Windamere Conference Centre in elegant surroundings, is an ideal location for Board, and senior management meetings. It offers a setting that is private and intimate, where camaraderie comes easily, and people speak as friends.

The DHR club
The Windamere sponsors The DHR Club, which is located on its Snuggery grounds. Although founded by and for railway enthusiasts, visitors with varying interests outside railways have sought admission in recent years to the club’s amenities. The club now welcomes to its fellowship, and provides a congenial meeting place, to the following: railway enthusiasts; explorers; mountaineers; geographers; naturalists; botanists; and zoologists.

Lloyd Botanic Garden in Darjeeling
It seems in the character of Britons to create botanical gardens wherever they happily settle. And so they created the Lloyd Botanical Garden in Darjeeling, which offers a protected habitat for many species of Himalayan trees and plants.

Darjeeling Himalayan Mountaineering Institute
The world renowned Darjeeling Himalayan Mountaineering Institute had Sherpa Tenzing Norgay of Mt. Everest fame, as its first field director. The institute offers training in mountain climbing, and maintains a fascinating museum of memorabilia of famous mountaineers and expeditions of the past.

Darjeeling Himalayan Zoological Park
Adjacent to the Mountaineering Institute, on Birch Hill, is the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park, which has attracted world attention by successfully breeding endangered species like the snow leopard and red panda. The Zoo houses several other rare Himalayan animals.

Darjeeling Tea Gardens
Darjeeling tea, famously known as the champagne of teas, is generally regarded as the World's best tea, fetching the highest prices at auction. The tea gardens are worth visiting, to observe the way tea is manufactured. Tea estate managers, "the planters" as they are called, are known for their hospitality.

Monasteries Around Darjeeling
There are well over a dozen Buddhist monasteries in Darjeeling. The best known is the Yiga Choeling Monastery, or the Ghoom Monastery. Other monasteries worth visiting are the Dali Monastery, and the Bhutia Busti Monastery. A few miles from Darjeeling, at Sonada, is the Samdrub Dharjay Choeling Monastery, which was founded by the saintly Kalu Rimpoche, and where a number of western language scholars have been toiling for many years to make Tibetan Holy Scriptures accessible to westerners.

Darjeeling Himalayan Railway
The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (The DHR), known to generations of local school children as "The Toy Train", is the world's most famous, two feet gauge railway. It is a masterpiece of 19th century engineering, a product of the world's first industrial revolution.

Trekking in Darjeeling
Darjeeling can be defined as a trekker's paradise. People from far and wide come to this part of India in order to fulfill their trekking desires. One of the famous trekking routes comprise of the Darjeeling - Sandakphu/Phalut trek. The trek passes through low areas and very high ridges so temperature varies a lot. The surroundings are mostly very attractive. Regular meals are available. Guides and porters can also be arranged.

There are several ways of getting to Darjeeling: by Air, by Road, by Train; or a combination of these modes of transport.

• Nearest Airport: Bagdogra Airport
• Nearest Rail head: NJP Railway Station (New Jalpaiguri Railway Station)

Both these terminus points are in close proximity, at the foothills of Darjeeling, and almost equidistant from Darjeeling.

From Bagdogra Airport
Some visitors arriving at Bagdogra by Air prefer to travel by the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) to Darjeeling. This requires that they go by taxi from Bagdogra Airport to NJP Railway Station, a 45 minute road trip, from where they may take the train to Darjeeling early the next day. An overnight stay at a local hotel is necessitated because the flight arrival times at Bagdogra are not compatible with the DHR travel schedule. The road journey to Darjeeling usually takes about 2.5 hours.