East & North-East India

This collection gathers the eastern and north-eastern reaches of the country: Odisha’s temple triangle of Puri, Konark and Bhubaneswar; the Buddhist trail through Bihar, where the Buddha found enlightenment; the tea-covered hills of Bengal and Sikkim around Darjeeling and Gangtok; and Assam’s Brahmaputra, with the rhinos of Kaziranga and the river island of Majuli.

What sets this quarter apart is how little of it is travelled. Roads are longer, connections fewer, and parts of the North-East still ask for permits arranged in advance. In return you get temple carvings without crowds, hill stations at their own pace, and a landscape that shifts from coast to Himalaya to floodplain within a single journey.

These are journeys for the traveller who has seen the headline sights and wants the parts most itineraries skip: the patient, the curious, and those who would rather trade convenience for a country that still feels its own.

What you’ll find

• Landscapes and encounters that reward the longer trip.
• Odisha’s temple triangle, from the sun temple at Konark to the shore at Puri
• The Buddhist circuit through Bodh Gaya and the old hills of Rajgir
• Darjeeling and Gangtok, with tea gardens and the long view to Kangchenjunga
• Kaziranga’s grasslands, home to the one-horned rhino, explored on foot and by jeep
• Majuli, the river island on the Brahmaputra, with its monasteries and mask-makers
• The narrow-gauge toy train and old colonial hill-station architecture
• Regional kitchens that change entirely from Odisha to Assam to the Sikkim hills

When to go. The comfortable window across most of this region runs from October to April, when the heat and the monsoon have passed. Kaziranga keeps its own calendar, opening roughly from November to April and closing in the rains. The hills of Darjeeling and Sikkim are clearest in autumn and spring, when the mountains show themselves. Some areas of the North-East require permits, which take time to arrange, so these trips reward a little planning ahead.