The first time I went to Sikkim, in 2022, I stayed in five hotels in seven nights. Gangtok, Lachung, Lachen, back to Gangtok, then Pelling. Most of the trip was spent in the front passenger seat of a Sumo on a road that did not appear to have been graded since the British left. By the second-to-last day, when the driver asked if I wanted to stop for lunch, I asked him to please not, because I had developed motion sickness in a way I have not had since I was nine.
I went back to Sikkim last December and did it differently. Six days, two hotels, one rest day, and a lot more walking. I think it was the better version. I have started planning client trips this way too, especially for couples and families who are not on a "tick the boxes" mission.
The route was Gangtok for three nights, Pelling for two, one travel day. That was it. Two base hotels. No Lachung, no Lachen, no Zero Point.
Most people will tell you that you have to do Lachen-Lachung in Sikkim. They are wrong about this, and I will explain why. The Lachen-Lachung-Gurudongmar circuit is genuinely beautiful, but it requires two extra days, a restricted area permit for Lachen, and driving at four and a half thousand metres with the kind of basic homestay accommodation that has dry toilets and dim bulbs. For a first Sikkim trip, with six days available, the trade-off is not worth it. You spend most of the time in the car and miss the actual texture of Sikkim, which is its monasteries and small villages, not its high-altitude lakes (Ladakh does those better anyway).
So, the actual six days.
I flew Bangalore to Bagdogra direct, three hours. From there it is a four-hour drive up to Gangtok. The road climbs through tea estates first, then pine forests, then the Sikkim border. The driver played local music for the first hour and then asked, sensibly, what I wanted to listen to. We settled on silence by mutual consent.
Day one in Gangtok was just MG Marg in the evening. The pedestrianised stretch is small and the cafe scene is good. I ate an aloo paratha at a place called Baker's Cafe and watched the lights come on. The hotel was a mid-range thing near MG Marg, around four and a half thousand a night, with breakfast.
Day two was Gangtok local. I did Enchey Monastery in the morning when the air is cool and there are no tour groups. Cottage Industries Institute next, for the handicrafts, where I spent a long time looking at handwoven Lepcha shawls without buying one. Lunch at a Sikkimese place called The Square (phagshapa, which is pork stewed with radish, and a thick beer that comes in a bamboo mug). Afternoon at Rumtek Monastery, which is a forty-five-minute drive out of Gangtok.
Rumtek is the seat of the Karmapa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. The main hall is beautifully painted, the courtyard is wide, the bell hangs from a wooden frame in the centre. I had timed my visit for the evening prayer session, which most tourists do not, because they leave for sunset photos elsewhere. I sat in the back of the prayer hall for forty minutes while the monks did their chant. I do not speak Tibetan. I do not understand the theology. But the acoustics, the deep voices of the older monks against the higher voices of the younger ones, the small punctuation of a bell or a horn every minute or so, did something to me that I have not been able to describe afterwards.
I have since told approximately fifteen clients to time their Rumtek visit for the evening prayer. Most have done it. Almost all have come back and mentioned it specifically.
Day three was Tsomgo Lake and Baba Mandir. You need an inner-line permit for this (the hotel arranges, two hundred rupees, takes about half an hour). Tsomgo is at three thousand seven hundred metres, the drive up is dramatic, and the lake itself is smaller than the photos suggest. The point of the day is the journey, the yak rides at the top (yes, cliched, yes, I did it, no, I am not sorry), and the chai-pakora at the small huts at the lake's edge. Back to Gangtok by evening.
Day four was the long drive to Pelling. About five hours, broken with a lunch stop at Ravangla, where the giant Buddha statue dominates the hill and you can do a quick walk through the surrounding park. The road quality is better than the Lachung route I had done two years earlier, mostly black-top, mostly smooth.
The arrival in Pelling is what most travellers do not write about properly. You turn a corner on the road just before the town and the entire Kanchenjunga range appears across the valley. If the weather is clear, and it was for us in December, the mountain fills the windshield. I asked the driver to stop. He stopped. We sat on a rock by the side of the road for fifteen minutes. He had probably done this stop a hundred times. He still pointed out Kanchenjunga to me, by name, like he was introducing a friend.
Day five was Pelling local. Pemayangtse Monastery, one of the oldest in Sikkim, with intricately carved wooden interiors and a six-tiered model of the Tibetan Buddhist paradise on the top floor. Khecheopalri Lake, which is sacred, calm, and surrounded by prayer flags. The Rabdentse ruins, an old Sikkimese capital, a thirty-minute walk through a forest to reach the broken walls.
Day six was the drive back to Bagdogra and the evening flight.
The total cost for six days, solo, mid-range hotels, hired car for the long drives, shared jeep for the Tsomgo permit day, all meals, came in around forty thousand rupees ex-Bangalore. If two people share, the per-person cost drops to around twenty-eight thousand. We arrange Sikkim trips fairly regularly at the office, and most of them now do the two-base version after I started suggesting it. The clients who insist on adding Lachen-Lachung also do it, of course, and they have a different but equally valid trip.
Food worth caring about: phagshapa (pork and radish), gundruk soup (fermented greens, an acquired taste), sael roti (sweet fried rice ring, breakfast staple), and the momos which are genuinely better than most of what I have eaten outside Tibet. Vegetarians are well-served at most Tibetan-Sikkimese restaurants. Jain travellers should plan around the bigger hotel kitchens.
The best windows are March to May and October to early December. October has the cleanest Kanchenjunga views and is the underrated month. December and January are cold but possible. Avoid July to August, monsoon and landslides, road closures.
What I will remember from the trip, two years later: the Rumtek evening prayer, the silence in the car when Kanchenjunga first appeared on the Pelling road, the yak's surprisingly soft eyelashes at Tsomgo, the man at the Pelling hotel who brought me a hot water bottle in my bed without being asked at 9 pm on the second night.
Sikkim does not need to be raced through. Two bases, six days, at a walking pace, gives you the actual place. The other version, the one I did in 2022, gives you only the highlight reel.