Sikkim is located to the north of West Bengal and between Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan. Formerly an independent kingdom, it became part of India in 1975. It is India’s least populated state with less than 600,000 inhabitants, a drop in the bucket of the country’s billion plus population.

The province has expansive forest and mountain terrain that includes the third highest peak in the world: the Khangchendzonga (Kanchanjunga) peak in northwest Sikkim rises to 8,598 meters, and the Sikkimese people worship its spirit in autumn festivals.

In his work attire, Mr. Wangdi was supervising the construction on his new farmhouse hotel, an addition onto his “ancestral home,” as he calls it, in Chumbong village. He was born here in 1971, and three generations of his family still live in the same house. Now, Mr. Wangdi, 38, and two of his childhood friends are all building hotels here, the first ever in their village.

With a population of under one thousand, Chumbong is spread out along nearly ten kilometers of hillside below Pelling, which is one of West Sikkim’s most popular tourist destinations. Pelling has long drawn visitors for its impressive views of the mountains, including Khangchendzonga, so buses and jeeps pass frequently through; in Pelling, hotels, tourist shops, and multi-cuisine restaurants are the norm. Chumbong, on the other hand, can offer a much different experience.

“We got together to talk about it,” Mr. Wangdi said, “and we don’t think that Pelling caters to all kinds of tourists. We are all interested in sharing our land with foreigners, and we want to provide a rural setting where people can relax and get a sense for the real way of life in a Sikkimese village.”

One of Mr. Wangdi’s fellow hoteliers here is Pem Dorjee, a tall man with longish black hair and a disarming smile. Mr. Dorjee works as a clerk for the local government, but he has recently gotten into the hotel business as well: he just completed a three-story project across the road from his childhood home, and he is now living with his family on the hotel’s top floor. The hotel’s guest rooms have rustic hardwood floors and hot-water heaters. On his days off, Mr. Dorjee works in vegetable and flower gardens that surround his small hotel.

When I visited, Mr. Dorjee was preparing lunch with his two “adopted” children. (Mr. Dorjee and his wife have a baby girl, but they also host a young girl, Shanti, and boy, Chewang, who come from very poor rural families and attend school in Pelling.) Using their own homemade cheese, they were preparing a dish of crumbled cheese stir-fried with fresh tomatoes and green chilies.

Mr. Wangdi, too, is building his hotel while keeping up other full-time work. His main job is headmaster of a nearby village school. The road going to down to Chumbong from Pelling is under construction, and Mr. Wangdi does not own a car, so in order to get to his school everyday he must walk the steep three kilometers up to Pelling where he can catch a jeep going down another mountain road to Timbrong. From there it’s another ten-minute hike up to his school.

As a full-time headmaster and father, Mr. Wangdi doesn’t have a lot of time on his hands for the demanding hotel business, but he welcomes the new venture.

“I will only have five guest rooms, so it will be very quiet, much like staying in a local person’s home. I’ve always wanted to host people here, to talk about Sikkim’s history and Buddhism with travelers who are interested.”

Every room in the farmhouse will have a balcony with unobstructed views of the Khangchendzonga range and the lower hills leading down towards Khecheopalri Lake. These hills provide many hiking trails leading to a number of villages, monasteries, and palace ruins from the time of Sikkim’s monarchy.

Just a ten-minute walk from Mr. Wangdi’s home is Pachhu Village Resort, a new hotel completed last year. The owner, Tshering Pintso, is a good friend of Mr. Wangdi’s and Mr. Dorjee’s.

Out of the three hotels Mr. Pintso’s is the high-end option: >>Read More

Malindi, from which the restaurant gets its name, is a small coastal city in Kenya. It is known for its multi-faceted cuisine made up of dishes from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Meat and vegetarians alike will find many choices here, but any proper East African lunch starts with ugali. Similar to Nepali dhedo in its preparation and dough-like shape, ugali is the staple calorie source for the people of East Africa. Instead of wheat flour, though, ugali is made from a mixture of ground maize and cassava, a tuber vegetable hearty enough to grow in Africa’s arid climate.

Ugali, a Swahili word meaning, roughly, “thick mush,” can accompany any stew made with meat, beans, or vegetables. Like dhedo in Nepal, Africans use ugali to scoop up the accompanying stew.

Along with ugali, diners choose from a variety of meat and vegetable dishes to complete their lunch. There is golden fried chicken, the priciest item on the menu, as well as cheap and filling kenyienji, potatoes and spinach mashed together and doused in ketchup and chili sauce. Nyoma choma is the most common non-veg preparation: a leg of roasted mutton in gravy.

In place of ugali, some people have bhajia, a mixture of fried potatoes and plantains. Bhajia is served with a spicy kachumbari sauce made from onions, green chilies, and tomatoes, diced and blended into fresh chutney.

For those preferring something more directly from the Indian subcontinent, there are plates of mutton pulao as well as carrot- and cinnamon-flecked vegetable biryanis. In East Africa, these two rice specialties, borrowed from Nepal and India, are popular although expensive due to the high cost of imported rice. Those interested in an Indian flatbread can order paratha, popularly served at Malindi Dishes with an eggplant curry. >>Read More

Ngwang Dopchung, a Tibetan refugee, lives here in the village of McLeod Gunj, the site of Tibet’s government-in-exile, in India’s Himachal Pradesh province. Tall poplars line the narrow mountain road, and off to the east are the green hillsides and snow-covered peaks of the Triund range. When motorbikes aren’t passing flute music or ritual chanting from the nearby nunnery fills the air.

When I visited Mr. Ngwang’s home in early November, I kept my jacket on in the cold, heatless room. His eleven-months-old daughter Choeying had on puffy parka that made her arms stick out to the sides.

While we talked, Mr. Ngwang, 36, served me Tibetan butter tea and steamed bread made of wheat and potato flour and dusted with coarse salt. While we ate, he showed me photographs of his family in traditional Tibetan dress—his wife Dolma, a fellow refuge whom he met in McLeod Gunj, and their children: Rabgyal, their five-year-old son, and Choeying.

An ex-political prisoner’s organization, Gu Chu Sum Movement of Tibet, owns the three-story cement building where the Ngwangs live. Mr. Ngwang works here, too: he’s the head pastry chef at Long Ta, the organization’s Japanese restaurant. >>Read More