Ilam Honeymoon Package

A flight of about an hour takes you to Bhadrapur in the far south-east, and from there it is three to four hours by road climbing out of the Terai into the tea hills. The landscape changes completely as you gain height - rice and banana give way to tea planted in rolling terraces that run to the horizon in every direction, and the air cools. Ilam is the quiet option among these itineraries and for some couples that is the entire point: you are unlikely to meet another visitor all week. We check in and spend what is left of the afternoon walking the town, which is small, misty and built along a ridge.

A morning in the estates on paths between the bushes with pickers working around you, and then a factory visit to see the leaf go through withering, rolling, oxidation and drying over the course of a single day. Ilam grows orthodox tea rather than the CTC of the Indian plains, which is why it tastes the way it does. In the afternoon we drive up to Mai Pokhari, a small forested lake at 2,100m with nine corners, a Hindu shrine and a Ramsar wetland listing, where the forest around the water is good for birds and the whole place is almost always empty.

Out before dawn to a ridge viewpoint - Antu Danda near the Indian border or Sandakpur higher up - for sunrise on Kanchenjunga, the third-highest mountain in the world, standing almost due north with the eastern Himalaya running away west from it. On the clearest mornings the Everest group is visible at the far end of the range. It is cold at that hour and worth the layers. Back for a late breakfast, and then a day with nothing in it at all among the gardens.

A free day, which in Ilam means genuinely free. The options if you want them are all easy and all quiet: the Siddhithumka viewpoint, the Mai valley, the Gajurmukhi temple, or a longer walk through the estates with a packed lunch. Most people spend it on a terrace with a pot of tea watching the mist come and go across the hills, which is a reasonable use of a day. Dinner at the hotel.

A relaxed morning before the descent back to the Terai, three to four hours and nearly a thousand metres down, with the temperature climbing all the way. The flight from Bhadrapur to Kathmandu takes about an hour and puts you back in the capital in the afternoon. Darjeeling is two hours east of here across the border and combines naturally with Ilam if you would rather extend than return.