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.
3,500 m2–3 daysBest: May–Sep
HeritageHigh-altitude desertMonastery
Region
Ladakh
High-altitude desert, cliff monasteries and lakes at four and a half thousand metres.
12 destinations
Everywhere we cover in Ladakh
Ordered roughly by how often travellers ask for them. Each page has season-by-season photography and honest notes on when a place is closed.
Ladakh
Pangong Tso
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.
4,350 m1–2 daysBest: May–Sep
LakeHigh-altitude desert
Ladakh
Nubra Valley
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.
3,048 m2 daysBest: May–Sep
High-altitude desertValleyMonastery
Ladakh
Khardung La
A 5,359-metre pass on the road from Leh to Nubra, long promoted as one of the highest motorable roads in the world.
5,359 mEn route stopBest: May–Sep
SnowHigh-altitude desert
Ladakh
Tso Moriri
A 4,522-metre high-altitude lake in the Changthang plateau, a Ramsar wetland with breeding black-necked cranes and almost no tourist traffic.
4,522 m1–2 daysBest: Jun–Sep
LakeHigh-altitude desertWildlife
Ladakh
Turtuk
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.
2,980 m1–2 daysBest: May–Sep
HeritageValleyOffbeat
A twelve-storey Gelugpa monastery nineteen kilometres from Leh, stacked up a hillside and home to a fifteen-metre Maitreya Buddha.
3,600 m2 hoursBest: May–Oct
MonasteryHeritage
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.
3,600 mHalf dayBest: May–Oct
MonasteryHeritage
An 11th-century monastery above a valley of eroded clay formations so strange the area is universally known as Moonland.
3,510 m2–3 hoursBest: May–Oct
MonasteryHigh-altitude desertHeritage
A stretch of highway thirty kilometres from Leh where a gravity-hill illusion makes a stationary vehicle appear to roll uphill.
3,450 m30 minutesBest: Apr–Oct
OffbeatHigh-altitude desert
Ladakh's second town, on the Suru river between Srinagar and Leh, and the gateway to the Suru valley and Zanskar.
2,676 m1 nightBest: May–Sep
HeritageValleyHigh-altitude desert
Ladakh
Zanskar Valley
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.
3,505 m4–7 daysBest: Jun–Sep
ValleyMonasteryTrekking
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