Darjeeling or Leh?

Neither town offers swimming. Darjeeling's valley rivers are fast and cold, while Leh's Indus and high lakes are fed by snowmelt and used for rafting rather than bathing. If you want a beach, plan it as a separate part of the trip from either one.

Darjeeling has the better table, and tea is the reason. You can taste first and second flush muscatel leaves in tea rooms around the Mall or out on an estate, which Leh has nothing to match, and the colonial-era bakeries add long breakfasts with a view.

Both towns serve the Tibetan staples of momos, thukpa and thenthuk. Leh adds Ladakhi skyu, salty butter tea and its prized apricots, but much of its eating happens in trekker cafés around the Main Bazaar and Changspa that serve pizza and coffee, and many of those close outside summer.

The two are close in heritage but different in character. Darjeeling's comes from the Raj and the railway: the UNESCO-listed toy train, St Andrew's Church, the colonial schools and the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute with its Everest history, with the old monastery at Ghoom as the Buddhist side.

Leh's heritage is royal and monastic. The nine-storey palace, modelled on the Potala, rises above a mud-brick old town, and Shanti Stupa looks out over the valley at sunset. You can see either town itself in two or three days.

Both go to bed early, so neither is a place for evenings out. The difference is in the setting. In Darjeeling you can have a drink by the fire in an old pub or hotel bar. In Leh, a beer on a rooftop after dinner is about as far as it goes, and the cold and the altitude send most people to bed even sooner.

Both are excellent mountain bases, but Leh goes further. From the Indus valley you can trek through Hemis National Park, cross Khardung La above 5,000m, raft the Indus and Zanskar, and stay overnight among the Nubra dunes or beside Pangong Tso. In winter there is snow leopard tracking and the frozen-river Chadar trek.

Darjeeling's strength is the view: Kangchenjunga from the town and Everest from Tiger Hill, with easy walks through tea terraces and rhododendron forest. Its great trek, the Singalila Ridge to Sandakphu, is superb, but in the monsoon cloud can hide the mountains for weeks.

Leh is well ahead here, thanks to the monasteries along the Indus. Thiksey and Shey are under half an hour away, Hemis is about an hour, and the thousand-year-old painted temples at Alchi make a full day to the west. Almost everything is a gompa or a palace, but the quality is exceptional.

Darjeeling's outings are to other hill towns: Kurseong, Mirik with its lake, and Kalimpong across the Teesta. They are pleasant but much like Darjeeling itself, so they add less to a stay.

Darjeeling is much the easier choice with children. The toy train, the zoo with its red pandas and snow leopards, the ropeway and pony rides give them plenty to do. The steep steps and the twisting drive up from the plains make it better for older children than for buggies.

Leh is much harder. You arrive at 3,500m in a single flight, so altitude sickness is a real risk, and the outings are long mountain drives with little made for children. Robust teenagers who want to raft or trek are the exception.

Neither is easy, but Darjeeling takes less effort once you are there. The car-free ridge around Chowrasta and the Mall is pleasant to stroll, and shared jeeps and taxis cover the rest, though slowly on the crowded Hill Cart Road. The catch is the drive of three hours or more up from Siliguri or Bagdogra.

Leh's small centre is walkable, but the thin air makes every slope hard work. Beyond town you depend on union taxis, hired motorbikes or shared jeeps and long drives on mountain roads, and some passes close in winter.

Darjeeling has the better things to take home. Shops along the Mall and Nehru Road let you taste and compare loose-leaf tea by estate and flush, and the Tibetan Refugee Self Help Centre sells carpets and thangkas made on site.

Leh's Main Bazaar has similar Tibetan and Kashmiri goods, such as pashmina, turquoise jewellery and singing bowls, plus dried apricots from street sellers and useful trekking gear. Stock repeats from shop to shop and quality varies, though, so you need to look carefully.

Both are cheap places to stay, with low-cost guesthouses and plates of momos for very little. Darjeeling is a little easier on the budget because shared jeeps get you around cheaply. In Leh the transport adds up, with fixed taxi-union fares, a hired car for most outings and permits for the outer valleys.

Neither has a theatre, a concert hall or regular live music. In both, the performance worth seeing is the masked cham dance at monastery festivals. Leh's Hemis festival falls in summer, its main visitor season, so it is the easier one to plan a trip around. Darjeeling adds occasional evenings of Nepali and Lepcha music and a local tradition of rock and folk bands.

Darjeeling is the more restful of the two. A stay in a tea-estate bungalow above the town, with mountain mornings, long walks and pots of tea in cool air, does a lot of good, as long as you stay away from the noise of the Mall.

Leh's quiet is more contemplative, with meditation courses and consultations with amchi practitioners of Tibetan medicine. For the first days, though, the thin air, dry skin and broken sleep work against real rest. Neither town has much in the way of spas.