If you hit a clear night (more likely in October or November - the best time to come - than in the secondary season of April to May) go up to Observatory Hill and have a good look around: the farmhouses’ electric lights blend with the blaze of the heavens, making you feel like you’re standing in a complete globe of stars. Then sacrifice your sleep to catch a jeep taxi at 4.30am (along with half of the town) to the top of nearby Tiger Hill, one of the greatest places to watch the sun rise. If the skies are clear you’ll be treated to a panorama that includes Everest and Kanchenjunga, the first and third highest peaks in the world. That’s worth getting out of bed for.

However, on the morning we visit cloud masks the view. All we see is a sleepy-eyed wink from a sun which surfaces from the mist only to promptly disappear again, not to be seen for the rest of the day. Still, it’s beautiful in its own quiet way - a contrast to the noise and bustle of the trip back into town. My Mahindra jeep taxi’s among dozens honking their way down the hillside, queueing to pass the priest; he annoints each one with the blessing of the god that resides in the small temple here.

Crosstown traffic

Nepalese, Bengalis, Tibetans, Nagas, Assamese - Darjeeling is something of a cultural crossroads. Hardly surprising, seeing how it overlooks the main pass through the mountains and up on to the Tibetan plateau. (When the British founded the place in the 1840s they chose the site for good strategic reasons, as well as for women and children to escape from the heat of the plains.) The Tibetan community is one of the most interesting and accessible. It’s organised into government-supported centres with their own cottage-industry workshops: you can see carpets being weaved, wool being dyed, tapestries made and so on. Most Tibetans are here because of the Chinese occupation of their country, but Tibetan influence also has a much more venerable history in and around Darjeeling. Red and white gompas and stupas (Buddhist temples and shrines) dot the countryside; while the original manuscript of the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’ - among the most influential of Buddhist writings - has been housed in the Bhutia Busty gompa since 1879 (worth visiting as much for the dragon carvings in the library as for the silk-swaddled tome itself).

The heterogeneous cultural mix is one reason why people in this area stubbornly insist upon its separate identity from the rest of the region. Yet diversity in Darjeeling is mirrored by the huge contrasts throughout West Bengal, which stretches all the way from Bangladesh to Calcutta. The cultural and geographical differences contribute to political strife, but also make this an exciting part of India for travellers.

As a guest of the tourist board I am staying at the Windermere, the top hotel in Darjeeling and one of those places untouched since the time of the British Raj. Effectively a living museum, the huddle of wooden buildings with pitched corrugated-iron roofs are set among carefully tended rock gardens and flower beds. It seems to be more English than England. Until, that is, you notice a twist: turban-wearing attendants and aproned maids (many of them Tibetan) wander the halls and terraces. Meanwhile, the managerial staff take orders from the aged and decidedly eccentric owner, Mrs Tenduf-La, also Tibetan. She has been in charge here since 1920 and sits on the terrace, nested in pillows and dispensing a bizarre series of instructions. The managers nod politely before vanishing, grateful to return to the hands-on running of the place.

If you come here - which you probably won’t, since only rich Americans appear able to afford it - be wary of the food. Afternoon tea with home-baked shortbread, cherry cake and cucumber sandwiches is all very fine, but the authenticity is carried a little too far in the restaurant. Evening meals are served with great ceremony in a gloomy candlelit ambience; the food is largely school dinner-style, complete with bullet peas and jam roly-poly. Try and avoid these dishes and choose the ethnic option instead.

The food at the Windermere is just one dubious colonial legacy. Another, in which there’s only a grain of truth, is the persistent travellers’ story that people hereabouts want the British back in government. One day, as I hitch a lift out of town on the running board of a jeep, I fall into conversation with fellow hanger-on, Samad, a 17-year-old local student.

‘The British did a better job of ruling the West Bengal Hills [and Sikkim and Assam] than the plains Indians,’ he says. ‘Though that’s really to say how badly people round here think the current administration is fucking up, than a desire to go back in time. And we don’t want total independence from India, just independence from the regional authority in Calcutta.’ Calcutta is located hundreds of miles to the south and there are practical considerations: many think the area is too unwieldy to continue functioning as a single administrative region.

Darjeeling reeling

The long-simmering discontent with rule from Calcutta finally erupted in the early ’80s; demands for a separate highland state (to be named Gorkaland) led to pitched battles in the streets. The fighting continued, on and off, for a couple of years, with locals cutting down trees both for fuel and to strike an economic blow against the state government by crippling the forestry industry. One side effect was massive deforestation, so thank god for the various tea plantations in and around the town.

I pay a visit to the Happy Valley Plantation which is only about 20 minutes walk from Chowrasta, the smart marketplace and town centre (well it is as far as tourists are concerned; but most local business takes place in the higgledy-piggledy chowks that crowd the lower slopes). Happy Valley is relatively small in terms of area and professes to be organic. I am a week or two before harvest (depending on the weather there are two or three pickings a year) and the factory stands empty. Yet I’m still able to get a tour and am shown how the leaves make their way from the wooden fermenting tables via crushers, graders and driers into the long low chests for export. I buy some tea, too, from Kusum who works as a senior picker. ‘I’ve done this job since I left Nepal as a 13-year-old newlywed,’ she tells me. That was two or three decades ago. Her hands deeply coloured with henna, she weighs me out a kilo from an old rucksack kept on one side for tourists like me. ‘The tea divides into five grades,’ she explains, ‘and this is the highest.’ I ask what it’s called and she needs to take a breath before replying, ‘Super Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe Number One’.

She also demonstrates how to brew the leaves correctly: five seconds in a covered pan of boiling water is all that’s needed, after which it’s strained and drunk neat, without milk or sugar. The tea’s delicious and beautiful, the same rich orange as Kusum’s hands and the sleepy Himalayan sun I’d seen the previous morning from Tiger Hill.