Overview

East India Luxury Tours and Vacations

A tour through East India takes you through a dramatically varied landscape: mangroves in the Sundarbans and lofty peaks in the high Himalayas. Most tours begin in Kolkata, once the capital of the British Empire, where bustling B.B.D. Bagh brims with declining 19th-century colonial architecture. Moss-covered headstones in South Park Street cemetery, the Paresnath Jain temple, the Armenian Church, all tell stories of the multi-cultural influences that have shaped this city over millennia. Sail the Hooghly at dawn to visit temples upriver, and end the day with a typical Bengali meal. Bengalis are obsessed with food, and Kolkata, for all its shortcomings, is a foodie’s paradise. Don’t leave without sharing in the bounty of Bengali cuisine and conversation.

Around the hill station of Darjeeling, large estates grow some of the world’s most coveted tea. Sip on a cup of pure Darjeeling first flush, amidst mist-covered tea gardens in a colonial ambience.

The sound of chanting Buddhist monks fills the air in Pelling, Sikkim. Gardens burst with orchids and forests teem with rhododendron. Around every corner of the state, you’ll come to arresting views of snow-capped ranges and the striking five-peaked Mount Kanchenjunga.

Further east, in Assam’s Kaziranga National Park, one-horned rhinos graze languidly, and otters swim energetically in the muddy rivers flowing by. Assam is part of the seven northeastern states affectionately called the Seven Sisters. Unique wildlife like hoolock gibbons and great hornbills inhabit this land of exceptional natural beauty, starring dramatic waterfalls and hidden caves. It is also an ethnically diverse region, where indigenous tribes like the Angami Nagas and Bodos reside.