Our story

Glenmist is a working tea estate on the slopes above the Rungeet valley, an hour below Darjeeling town. Its two bungalows were built for the estate's managers in the 1890s, with deep verandahs, fireplaces in every room and windows set square to Kanchenjunga. Today they hold just six suites, so the whole house never has more than a dozen or so guests at a time.

We are the family that lives here and runs the garden. Meals are taken together at one long table: Nepali, Bengali and Anglo-Indian dishes cooked from the estate's kitchen garden, with pickles and preserves from the larder and tea plucked a few hundred metres from your cup. There is no menu card; tell us what you love and what you can't eat, and the kitchen takes it from there.

Days here follow the garden. Walk the sections at first light with the pluckers, sit through a cupping in the factory, picnic by the river, take the toy train up to Ghum, or do nothing on the verandah but watch the clouds lift off the mountain. In the evening the fires are lit, and dinner is when everyone gathers.