MG Marg and Lal Bazaar food walk

Start on MG Marg, the pedestrian promenade at the heart of Gangtok. It is closed to traffic, smoking and littering are banned, and it is one of the cleanest town centres in India. Cafés and small restaurants line both sides; most serve steamed or fried momos (pork, chicken or vegetable) and thukpa, a noodle soup that came over the passes from Tibet.

Walk downhill to Lal Bazaar, the Kanchenjunga Shopping Complex area, where farmers from the surrounding villages sell vegetables, spices, dried fish and dairy. On Sunday mornings the haat is at its busiest. Look for churpi: soft churpi, a fresh cheese made from buttermilk, is cooked into curries and chutneys, while hard churpi is dried over a fire until it can be chewed for hours.

Also look for gundruk (fermented, dried leafy greens), sinki (fermented radish), fiery dalle chillies and sel roti, the ring-shaped rice bread fried for festivals. Since 2016 Sikkim has been a fully organic state, and much of the produce here comes from small family farms. Finish with tea back on MG Marg.