Surrounded by the world’s highest mountains is a fascinating world whose exotic charm enchants all who experience it, from the plains of West Bengal up into the Himalayas. Siliguri is a vibrant city located within India’s Terai Plain, a peaceful provincial town with calm streets and shops that once supplied the region’s tea pickers with their daily needs, has been transformed into an important crossroads for travellers to the Himalayas. Siliguri Train Station is the starting point of one of the most famous train journeys in the world, the Darjeeling Himalaya Toy Train which climbs to an altitude of more than two thousand metres, negotiates eight hundred and seventy three bends and crosses more than five hundred bridges. Sikkim is strongly associated with Tibet and possesses more than two hundred monasteries. The most holy monastery of the Nyingmapa Schools is in Tashiding and is located on a mountain in the east of the country along the route from Darjeeling. The independent kingdom of Bhutan is located in Southeast Asia, most of it being two thousand metres above sea level and is situated between India in the south and Tibet in the north. Thimphu is the capital of Bhutan. An array of prayer flags adorn a bridge in the centre of the city and close by is the large Tshonhkhang Marketplace, a colourful meeting place for both farmers and traders. For more than a thousand years Bhutan has survived in self-imposed isolation, cut off from the outside world by its own deliberate policy. Sikkim and Bhutan: two gems of history, monastic culture and religious life.