Sikkim

Gangtok recalibrates an Indian traveller within a day, chiefly through the absence of things: horns, litter, hurry. MG Marg, the pedestrian high street, is swept, flower-boxed, smoke-free and traffic-free by law, and functions in the evenings as an open-air living room where the whole town promenades. Lepcha, Bhutia and Nepali Sikkim in one unhurried current, momos steaming at the margins. The state's tidiness is not cosmetic; it is policy with a worldview. Sikkim banned plastic bags back in the late 1990s, made itself India's first fully organic state in 2016 (every farm, chemical-free, by legislation and long persuasion) and treats its environment the way other states treat their monuments. Above the town, the Enchey and Rumtek monasteries hold the state's spiritual weather: Rumtek, seat-in-exile of the Karmapa lineage, its golden stupa room ringed by murals and by the particular hum of a working monastery, debate slaps echoing from the shedra courtyard, a novice sprinting somewhere with a kettle, the sacred and the domestic sharing staff, as they had at Thiksey, at Tabo, at every gompa that had taught me the same lesson at increasing altitudes: continuity is maintenance, performed daily, by the young.