The Windamere is one of the great eccentric hotels of Asia — a Victorian boarding house that became a hotel in the 1930s and has changed remarkably little since. The rooms are heated by coal fires, the furniture is mostly original, and afternoon tea is served in a drawing room lined with prints, photographs, and the accumulated memorabilia of a century of Himalayan visitors. Former guests include Tenzing Norgay, Indira Gandhi, and various foreign dignitaries who used Darjeeling as a stopover.
You don't have to stay here to see it. Tea and dinner are open to non-residents, and the experience — coal fire, china teacups, the occasional power cut, a view of Observatory Hill through the window — is entirely genuine. The Tenduf-La family still runs the hotel, and the staff maintain a propriety that feels genuinely inherited rather than performed.