Ladakh & Kashmir 2025

Into Leh on the early flight, by way of a night in Singapore, and straight up to 3,500 metres.

The first day is for doing nothing, which is the only sensible way to arrive here. A dosa for breakfast at the Chospa, then the main bazaar: prayer flags strung across the street, the white minaret of the Jama Masjid at the end of it, and the old town stacked up the hill behind. I went back at sunset and again at night and it was a different street each time.

The second morning was Khardung La, with fresh snow on the pass and the Stok range across the valley from every switchback on the way up. Drink more water than you think you need, and take the altitude seriously.

Over Khardung La and down into the Nubra valley for two nights.

The road drops and drops until the Shyok river spreads out across a flat grey valley a mile wide. I stayed at the Kyagar near Sumur, a garden and a fire pit with the Karakoram across the way, and a calf that had decided the car park was its.

The Sumoor dunes are best at the end of the day: the sand goes gold, the peaks behind go pink, and dinner was laid out on a table in the middle of it. Diskit monastery on the second day, climbing its cliff with the whole valley below, and a slow afternoon watching the birds, which is not a bad way to spend a day at altitude.

I left the hard way, over Wari La to cut across to Pangong rather than going back through Leh: fresh snow on a pass nearly as high as Khardung La, the road a single thread through it and not a building from one side to the other, and then Chang La, 17,688 feet by the sign in the prayer flags, before the long descent to the lake. Check Wari La is open before you plan on it.

A night by Pangong Tso, which is the thing the whole of Ladakh is built around.

The first sight of it from the road above is the one that stays: a strip of water in three blues between bare brown mountains, with nothing green anywhere. I stayed in a cabin on the shore at Misty Hills, woke before dawn for the light coming over the ridge, and had the lake to myself for an hour. Then the shore with the tricolour flying and the film props from 3 Idiots, which you photograph whether you mean to or not.

Back over Chang La on the way to Leh, with a stop at Tsoltak to look down the valley I had come up.

Back in Leh for a night between the lake and the drive west.

The bazaar again, lit up after dark and busier than in daylight, and an oxygen cylinder in the hotel room the next morning, which is what five days at altitude does to some people. Nothing dramatic, and worth knowing it is there to be asked for.

The Indus road west out of Leh, which is the start of the long drive to Kashmir.

First stop is the confluence at Nimmu, where the Zanskar comes in from the south in a different colour from the Indus and the two run side by side for a while before they mix. There is a Border Roads sign to pose with and a viewpoint above the junction. Basgo a little further on, a green village of poplars and barley in the middle of all that rock.

Moonland, which is exactly what it looks like.

The hills around Lamayuru are pale yellow and eroded into ribs and folds, and the road hairpins down through them. Pull over at the top for the view and again at the bottom, because they look different from each angle. The monastery sits above the village just beyond.

Four days in Srinagar, most of them on or beside the lake, after coming in over Zoji La from Ladakh: brown to green in an hour, and the air thick again.

A shikara out from the Boulevard on the first afternoon, through the houseboat rows and the floating gardens, with pond herons and kites working the water, and back again at sunset when the boats go to silhouettes.

The Mughal gardens took a morning: Chashme Shahi with its dahlias, Pari Mahal stepping down the hillside in stone terraces, and Nishat with the long water channel running straight down to the lake. Shankaracharya hill first thing for the whole city and the houseboats laid out below, and the old city's timber-and-brick lanes, which could have taken a day.

A last morning up at Gulmarg, which I would not do again.

The drive is the good part: out of Tangmarg through pine forest, a herd of goats taking the whole carriageway, and the Forest View Point on the zig-zag road for the valley below. The meadow itself is a big green bowl with the ski slopes behind it and should be lovely, and in September it is litter, half-built huts and a general air of nobody caring. An hour each way for that is a poor trade; spend the morning on the gardens instead.