Gangtok’s cable car: a 20-year-old ride still reshaping the capital’s skyline

Gangtok’s cable car, which has carried locals and tourists between the city’s lower and upper bazaars for two decades, is getting a second line — and with it, a rethink of how a hill capital moves.

The city’s streets are too narrow for the traffic that tourism has brought, and planners now treat the cable car as serious public transport, not a ride.

The new line will cut the trip from the bus station to the monastery quarter to six minutes.