50 places across Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh

The summer capital of Kashmir, built around a lake, a river and an old city of wooden balconies, copper-beaters and saffron-scented kitchens.

Eighteen square kilometres of waterways, floating gardens and carved houseboats that have defined the image of Kashmir for a hundred and fifty years.

A 2,650-metre bowl below Apharwat peak with the world's second-highest operating gondola, India's best lift-served skiing and a summer meadow that gave the place its name.

A glacial valley at 2,730 metres on the road to Ladakh, surrounded by snow peaks, braided rivers and the walk-in Thajiwas glacier.

The Mughal emperors built their idea of paradise into the hillside above Dal Lake — twelve terraces, running water and chinar avenues still standing four hundred years on.

Asia's largest tulip garden opens for roughly twenty-five days each spring, with seventy varieties terraced between the Zabarwan hills and Dal Lake.

Kashmir's most relaxed hill town, where the Lidder river runs through pine forest at 2,130 metres, with Aru, Betaab and Chandanwari branching off above it.

A cave shrine in the Trikuta hills above Katra, drawing around ten million pilgrims a year to the three natural rock pindis of the Mother Goddess.

An hour from Srinagar, a wide alpine meadow cut by a stream that froths white over the rocks — hence the name, the valley of milk.

A manicured river meadow seven kilometres from Pahalgam, walled by pine ridges and named after the 1983 film shot there.

A remote Dard-Shin valley on the Kishanganga river, ringed by the Habba Khatoon peak, open only when the Razdan Pass is clear of snow.

A meadow village twelve kilometres above Pahalgam, base camp for the Kolahoi glacier and the Tarsar–Marsar lakes, and the prettiest overnight stop in south Kashmir.

A deodar-covered plateau at 2,024 metres above the Chenab valley, known for paragliding, snow in winter and India's longest cable car.

A deeper, cleaner, far calmer basin ringed by willows and poplars — where travellers go when they want the lake without the crowd.

At 2,895 metres, the highest point reachable by road above Pahalgam — where snow bridges survive into summer and the Amarnath yatra begins.

A small, accessible glacier three kilometres above Sonmarg, reachable on foot or by pony, where snow survives through the summer.

A quiet pine-fringed meadow south-west of Srinagar, backed by the Pir Panjal and known for horse rides, the Doodh Ganga stream and the Nilnag lake walk.

For two weeks each autumn the karewa plateaus south of Srinagar turn purple with Crocus sativus — the only commercial saffron fields in India.

A green bowl of a valley in Doda district, surrounded by alpine meadows, lavender fields and high lakes, and almost unknown outside the region.

One of Hinduism's most revered shrines — a Himalayan cave where a stalagmite of ice forms each summer, reached by a demanding pilgrimage from Pahalgam or Baltal.

The old Silk Route capital of Ladakh, built below a nine-storey palace in a high desert valley on the Indus — and the base for everything in the region.

Kashmir's largest freshwater spring, fanning out through a terraced botanical garden and rose garden in the foothills south of Anantnag.

A 4,350-metre endorheic lake stretching from Ladakh into Tibet, famous for water that shifts through every shade of blue and green across a single day.

An octagonal Mughal spring enclosed by Jahangir in 1620, considered the source of the Jhelum and one of the most elegant small monuments in Kashmir.

A broad desert valley north of Leh where the Shyok and Nubra rivers meet, with cold-desert sand dunes, Bactrian camels and green villages below 7,000-metre peaks.

A high pass on the Anantnag–Kishtwar road where snow banks survive into July and the view spans both the Kashmir valley and the Chenab basin.

141 square kilometres of oak, pine and alpine meadow twenty kilometres from Srinagar — and the only place on earth where the critically endangered hangul survives.

A 17th-century Mughal garden laid out by Nur Jahan around a powerful spring, with cascades, chinar avenues and terraced beds.

A vast, bowl-shaped alpine grassland in Kupwara, surrounded by conifer ridges and still largely untouched by tourism.

A vast freshwater lake north of Srinagar, fed by the Jhelum, ringed by fishing villages and critical for the valley's birdlife and flood control.

A gentle, fertile valley in Kupwara filled with rice terraces, walnut and apple orchards, caves and springs — and virtually no tourists.

The deepest lake in the valley, famous for its summer lotus beds, a Mughal garden on its shore and a complete absence of crowds.

A quiet conifer valley at 2,438 metres on the Bringhi river, used as a trout fishing base and the approach road to Sinthan Top.

A powerful 25-metre waterfall on the Veshaw river in Kulgam, set in pine forest and used as the trailhead for the Kousar Nag lake trek.

A small bowl of meadow at 2,050 metres above Patnitop, ringed by conifer and known for paragliding, a nine-hole golf course and genuine quiet.

At 2,711 metres, the highest accessible point near Patnitop — a bare ridge with Pir Panjal views and the most reliable snow in the Jammu region.

A long natural limestone cave in Reasi district housing a four-foot self-formed Shiva lingam, and one of Jammu's most important pilgrimage sites after Vaishno Devi.

A 5,359-metre pass on the road from Leh to Nubra, long promoted as one of the highest motorable roads in the world.

A mile-long lake east of Jammu surrounded by forested hills, with the Sheshnag temple on its shore and a long tradition as a pilgrimage and picnic site.

Jammu's largest temple complex, begun in 1835, with seven shrines, gold-leafed interiors and galleries holding thousands of saligrams and lingams.

A hilltop fort overlooking the Tawi river, home to the Bawe Wali Mata temple and surrounded by terraced gardens and an aquarium.

A small, deep lake ringed by dense Shivalik forest about forty kilometres from Jammu, paired with Mansar as a Ramsar wetland site.

A 4,522-metre high-altitude lake in the Changthang plateau, a Ramsar wetland with breeding black-necked cranes and almost no tourist traffic.

A Balti village of apricot orchards and stone lanes near the Line of Control, part of Pakistan until 1971 and open to visitors only since 2010.

A twelve-storey Gelugpa monastery nineteen kilometres from Leh, stacked up a hillside and home to a fifteen-metre Maitreya Buddha.

A 17th-century Drukpa monastery hidden in a side gorge of the Indus, famous for the Hemis Tsechu festival and a vast copper-gilt Padmasambhava statue.

An 11th-century monastery above a valley of eroded clay formations so strange the area is universally known as Moonland.

A stretch of highway thirty kilometres from Leh where a gravity-hill illusion makes a stationary vehicle appear to roll uphill.

Ladakh's second town, on the Suru river between Srinagar and Leh, and the gateway to the Suru valley and Zanskar.

A remote high valley around Padum, cut off by snow for seven months a year, home to cliff-built monasteries and the winter Chadar trek on a frozen river.