As one other poster commented, this is well out of the way. I went for one day, but ended up staying 3 days. My entire time, I also did not see another (non-Indian) tourist, and I got curious stares and big smiles everywhere I walked. I found lots of easy and lovely hikes all around town. The food was not that interesting (with so few tourists--not surprising), but was just fine. Mirik is right next to a small but lovely lake, and I spent hours walking around it everyday. It is a pain to get to, but I highly recommend it.
The only way to get here is by share-jeep, or taxi. By taxi is relatively expensive, so after a difficult and *very* crowded ride here from Siliguri, I learned the trick for riding in a share-jeep: Buy 2 tickets for yourself (they fit 5 people into a 3-person bench, and sometimes 6 people), and get a window seat. If there are not enough free seats, just wait an hour, till the next jeep is leaving, and make your reservation for the following one. My record on my last trip was--for a jeep that was designed to seat 8 people + driver--was 25 people!!! (That includes the 5 hanging on the rear bumper and the 6 on the roof.)
In Mirik, there are lots of hotels. I got off the jeep, walked over to one or two places, did a tiny bit of bargaining, and got a place I really liked easily. For all foreign tourists, you have to register with the local authorities, but that took only 3 minutes, and the guy was all smiles and could not have been more friendly. According to his sign-in book, only about 8 visitors per month have been coming to Mirik. Get here before Lonely Planet gives it a big review and it gets overwhelmed/ruined with a flood of tourists.
Only one internet place in town (as of Fall 2008), and it was almost never working. No ATMs at all. No nightlife, except that the locals gather by the bottom of the town/lakeside each night, and loud music is played. So if you pick a hotel there (as I did), bring earplugs, or, get a room not facing the lake. (Better to bring earplugs, since the lake view from the hotels are one of the nicer aspects of Mirik. Power outages are common.
