Question: My local machine is running Ubuntu 16.04 and I have created a VM instance on Google Cloud Platform, which is also Ubuntu 16.04. How do I connect to this virtual machine from my own laptop terminal? I wish to install anaconda etc on my virtual machine so how do I 'access the VM's terminal from my local machine's terminal?'

Answer: 
for connecting to GCP instance from local machine you've to setup **gcloud command-line tool** and select the default region and zone in local machine. This might help
<https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/connecting-to-instance>
For using ssh command

1. create your ssh key if you dont have it
2. add the content of your ssh key to the instance settings, under SSH keys
3. `ssh -i ~/.ssh/<filename without .pub one> <your email without @gmail.com>@<your instance ip>`

replace `<content>` with your actual details