If you find yourself in New Delhi in the summer, you will likely feel an overpowering need to flee to the nearest hill station, where blessedly cool Himalayan air can restore some measure of your sanity. On a recent trip to India, my father and I bypassed the perfectly nice hill stations close to New Delhi in favor of hopping two planes and driving three hours to Darjeeling, on the other side of the country. That’s something like shunning the Hamptons to spend the weekend in Hawaii. But just like there is no other Hawaii, there is no place like Darjeeling.

Driving up the winding road from Bagdogra Airport in Siliguri, long before Darjeeling comes into sight, it becomes clear why this hill station was the favorite among the British colonial officers, who turned the sparsely inhabited area into a sanitarium in the mid-19th century. The road, cut into the side of the foothills of the Himalayas, offers on one side a view of rocky cliffs and trickling waterfalls, and on the other side a dizzyingly steep drop to the valley below, with lush greenery and an occasional cluster of one room shacks perched precariously on the cliffs. As we traveled higher and closer to Darjeeling proper, the wild overgrowth turned into neatly ordered rows of tea plants, and the crown of each hilltop sported a sparse, Zen-like row of Japanese conifers.

All of this – the trees, the tea plantations, the road – was built by the British. It’s hard to suppress the feeling of gratitude that colonialism could create something so beautiful. When the British leased (and eventually took over) Darjeeling from the Raja of Sikkim in 1835, it boasted a population of 100 and an annual income of 20 rupees (about 46 cents). By 1849, the town was home to 10,000 people, most of them Nepali immigrants working on tea plantations, and Darjeeling had become synonymous with orange pekoe. These days, Darjeeling tea accounts for only 5% of India’s production, and there are far more Nepalese locals and Bengali tourists than Brits.

Colonial nostalgia still clings stubbornly to the town. It’s easy to feel like a British colonial officer when you first get a glimpse of the sparkling cluster of monasteries, tea factories, and Victorian-era palaces that populate Darjeeling. Looking down at your jeans, you’ll see that they are in fact khaki breeches, and you will find that, what-ho, you are quite looking forward to a spot of tea.

Any travel agency can set you up with a package deal to Darjeeling. My father and I booked one with the New Delhi-based Corporate Flyers Pvt. Ltd. (91-11-29217575, www.corporateflyers.com), which included a private car and driver for airport transfers and sightseeing, three nights in an English-style cottage at the Mayfair Hill Resort, daily breakfast, and hotel taxes (11,445 rupees, or about $264, each person, based on double occupancy). The Mayfair (the mall opposite the Governor’s House, 91-354-56376), formerly the summer house of the Ma haraja of Nazargunj, has been reinvented as a three-star hotel. It boasts orchid-lined verandas, gorgeous valley views, and wood-burning fireplaces. A hotel worker will start the fire in your room while you sit in the bar-library swilling brandy and munching on a spicy chaat of peanuts, coriander, lime juice, and green chilies.

My father has vivid childhood memories of watching the sun rise over Tiger Hill, so after a quick trip down the Mall Road to buy a couple of cheap shawls – Darjeeling turns frigid when the sun goes down – we went to bed and asked for a wake-up call for 3 a.m. Tiger Hill, at 8,482 feet and nine miles from Darjeeling, offers a notoriously fickle view, but if you’re lucky and it’s clear, you can watch the sun rise from beneath your feet on one side and gaze out at Mount Everest and Mount Kanchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world, from the other.

After descending the hill, we swung by Yiga Cholling Monastery. Built in 1875, it’s the oldest monastery in the area, and the one the Dalai Lama visits when he’s in town. Yiga Cholling is about five miles from the town of Ghoom, home to the highest railway station in the world. From here you can take a short ride on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, or “toy train.” (If you have six or seven hours to spare, you can also take the train all the way from Siliguri to Darjeeling.) The diminutive train, which has been running since 1881 on a two-foot gauge, skirting the cliff faces as it chugs through the hills, is one of the marvels of British engineering. It is also adorable: As Colonel Young husband said on a 1903 stopover to Tibet, it is “a most ridiculous little railway.”

The state of West Bengal, of which Darjeeling is a part, is famous for its sweets; that means loading even the curries with plenty of sugar. But Darjeeling would not be Darjeeling without the “champagne of teas,” so we drank gallons of it. At the Happy Valley Tea Estate (two miles east of Darjeeling proper, no address or phone), one of Darjeeling’s oldest plantations, we paid a guide 50 rupees (about $1.14) to show us around the factory, where they still use the original Britannia machines. He explained the tea-making process, from the picking to the sorting of the leaves into grades, the highest of which produces a warm, delicate fragrance. The lowest, called “dust,” fills commercial tea bags.

Thankfully, after leaving Darjeeling you’ll never have to use a tea bag again. The tea shop Nathmulls (Laden La Road, 91-354-2256437, www.nathmulltea.com) stocks the area’s finest green and orange pekoe teas. Pravin Sarda, whose grandfather opened Nathmulls, will shake his head in wry amusement when you try to bargain and will scold you for buying Happy Valley’s cruder stock. I bought gold-foil wrapped packages of first- and second-flush (picked in the first two seasons) orange pekoe teas for myself – and I decided to unload the Happy Valley boxes on my unsuspecting friends back home.