Your chauffeur meets you at Bagdogra (IXB) and drives up alongside the Teesta River into Sikkim, climbing to the capital Gangtok at around 1,650 metres.

After check-in you walk MG Marg, Gangtok's spotless, traffic-free café-and-shopping promenade, for your first evening in the mountains.

The day centres on Sikkim's living Buddhist heritage: Rumtek, the seat of the Karmapa and one of the most significant Kagyu monasteries outside Tibet, set on a ridge across the valley.

You also visit the 200-year-old Enchey Monastery in town and, as time allows, viewpoints, the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology and a handicraft centre.

A high-altitude excursion climbs the old Silk Route road to the glacial Tsomgo (Changu) Lake at about 3,750 metres, sacred to the local Bhutia and often frozen or snow-ringed in the cold months.

You continue to Baba Harbhajan Singh Mandir, a shrine near the Nathula frontier, before descending, this is a permit-controlled border zone, so your papers are arranged in advance and altitude is real, so take it slowly.

You cross Sikkim from east to west on a scenic ridge-and-valley drive to Pelling, a quiet hill town famed for its front-row views of Mt Kanchenjunga, the world's third-highest peak.

Arriving by afternoon, you settle in for what, on a clear dawn, is one of the finest sunrise mountain panoramas in India.

The morning takes in the Pelling Skywalk, a glass cantilever leading to the giant Chenrezig statue, and the atmospheric Rabdentse ruins, the former royal capital of Sikkim set in forest.

You can add the Pemayangtse Monastery, the Kanchenjunga (Khecheopalri) area and the Singshore suspension bridge, with the afternoon at leisure among the peaks.

An early start allows for the long, scenic descent from the Sikkim hills back down to the plains and Bagdogra airport.

Your chauffeur delivers you in good time for your onward flight; connections to Darjeeling or Kalimpong can be added on request.