The Windamere is one of those great hotel legends, residing like a grande dame above the bustling hill station of Darjeeling. It started life as a boarding house in 1889 for the English and Scottish tea planters, and was converted into a hotel in 1939, just before the start of the Second World War.

Today it is all genteel, if vaguely shabby, elegance. Time seems to have stood still within its panelled corridors. Turbaned waiters with white gloves still serve watery soup, old-fashioned roasts and jelly (bringing back memories of school dinners rather than days of the Raj). For afternoon tea, there's fragrant Darjeeling and sandwiches (with the crusts cut off) by a crackling fire. Guests curl up companionably, wandering in after days spent rummaging through piles of musty Penguins in the Oxford bookshop, or visiting the old tea plantation, Happy Valley.

Mrs Tenduf-La, the 98-year-old Tibetan owner, and another grande dame, holds court, reminiscing about elegant garden parties and famous guests such as Sir Edmund Hillary and the New York socialite Hope Cooke, who met and fell in love with the King of Sikkim in the Windamere's drawing-room. Her autograph book is scrawled with the names of European royalty and great explorers, while sepia photographs cram the walls.

Location, location, location

The Windamere is on Observatory Hill, Darjeeling, India (00 91 354 54041, www.windamerehotel.com). On a clear day, from the terrace awash with bright orange marigolds, you can see the snowy summits of the five-peaked Kanchenjunga range. Darjeeling sprawls across a mountain ridge in the shadow of the Himalayas, and was developed as a retreat from steamy Calcutta and the plains of Bengal by the Raj in the early 19th century. Today its grimy streets are a seething mass of people, its makeshift market stalls piled high with sacks of overflowing rice and pungent spices.

Time to international airport: Badgroga, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Darjeeling, is the nearest airport. From here it's a two-hour flight to Delhi or a 50-minute flight to Calcutta.

Are you lying comfortably?

The hotel is divided into two wings; The Windamere (the original guest house called Ada Villa) and Little Windamere (the newer Observatory House and Annandale House). There are also a couple of cottages in the grounds. I was in Room 8, a heritage suite in Ada Villa. The panelled walls were painted yellow, the wooden ceiling, white. The furniture was solid Victorian in dark wood, a large blue and brown Persian-style rug on the floor. Bedspreads and curtains were chintzy blue and white floral. In between the bedroom and bathroom was a small dressing-room, and in the bathroom an old-fashioned bath on gold feet.

There was no mini bar and no room service – but most bedrooms have a real log fire, and hot water bottles are placed between your sheets every evening.

Freebies: just soap and a shower cap.

Keeping in touch: there are no telephones or TVs in the main house, but there are in the newer wings. Phone calls can be made from reception.

The bottom line

Single rooms start at US$103 (£66.50), doubles from US$138 (£90) per night – including all taxes and service as well as breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. Heritage suites costs from US$160 (£103.50).

I'm not paying that: The Hotel Shamrock, Upper Beechwood Road (00 91 354 56387) has doubles from Rs165 (£2).