Best places to visit in September

Leh & Ladakh

Leh

Leh sits at 3,500 metres and the single most important thing about it is that you cannot skip the first two days.

Crisp autumn weather with changing leaf colors.

Leh & Ladakh

Pangong Tso

Pangong Tso is an endorheic lake at roughly 4,225 metres on the Changtang plateau of eastern Ladakh.

Chilly days with exceptionally clear night visibility.

Leh & Ladakh

Magnetic Hill

Magnetic Hill is a famous gravity-defying road stretch on the Srinagar-Leh National Highway, roughly 30 kilometres outside the capital town of Leh.

Cool autumn days with crisp clear blue skies.

Himachal Pradesh

Key Monastery

Key Monastery is a thousand-year-old Tibetan Buddhist monastery belonging to the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) lineage.

Chilly days with sharp evening drops under open skies.

Himachal Pradesh

Chandratal Lake

Chandratal means Lake of the Moon, and the name comes from its crescent shape.

Bitterly cold nights with incredibly crisp atmosphere.

Leh & Ladakh

Hemis Monastery

Hemis belongs to the Drukpa (Dragon) lineage of the Kagyu sect, and it is set back in a mountain canyon on the western bank of the Indus, roughly 45…

Cool refreshing daytimes with chilly evening winds.

Himachal Pradesh

Kalpa (Kinnaur)

Kalpa is an offbeat mountain village on a high ridge at an elevation of 2,960 metres in the Kinnaur Valley.

Crisp autumn daytimes with clear blue skies and crisp air.

Himachal Pradesh

Spiti Valley (Kaza)

Spiti is the emptiest place in India that you can still drive to, and the reason to come is the scale of the nothing.

Chilly days with clear night atmospheres.

Arunachal Pradesh

Ziro Valley

Ziro is a valley of rice paddies ringed by pine hills, and it is the home of the Apatani — one of the few communities in India who terrace-farm rice and fish…

Pleasant green valley, festival season.

Leh & Ladakh

Nubra Valley

Nubra is a three-armed valley north of Leh at an average of nearly 3,048 metres, cut over millennia where the Shyok and the Nubra meet.

Cool refreshing daytimes with sharp night drops.

Leh & Ladakh

Tso Moriri

Tso Moriri, or Mountain Lake, is an offbeat high-altitude lake tucked away at an astounding elevation of 4,522 metres on the Changtang plateau of southeastern…

Bitterly cold nights with immaculate clear visibility.

Jammu & Kashmir

Hazratbal Shrine (Srinagar)

The Hazratbal Shrine, set on the western shore of Srinagar's Dal Lake, is Kashmir's holiest Muslim shrine, revered for housing a relic believed to be a hair…

Clear post-monsoon mountain days.

Uttarakhand

Devprayag (Panch Prayag)

Devprayag is the most sacred of the Panch Prayag — the five holy confluences of Uttarakhand — where the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi rivers merge to form the…

Clear post-monsoon mountain days.

Uttarakhand

Yamunotri

The sacred source of the Yamuna River and the first stop of the Chota Char Dham pilgrimage circuit in Uttarakhand.

Uttarakhand

Gangotri

The revered birthplace of the holy River Ganga and the second shrine in the Chota Char Dham circuit.

Uttarakhand

Badrinath

A Vishnu temple that anchors both the national Char Dham and the Chota Char Dham circuits.

Uttarakhand

Hemkund Sahib

One of the highest and most revered Sikh shrines in the world, next to a glacial lake surrounded by seven mountain peaks.

Uttarakhand

Chopta (Tungnath)

An offbeat hill station popularly dubbed the 'Mini Switzerland of Uttarakhand', and the base for the trek up to the world's highest Shiva temple.

Uttarakhand

Mussoorie

Famously nicknamed the 'Queen of the Hills', this historic colonial-era hill station looks out over the Doon Valley and Shivalik ranges.

Uttarakhand

Valley of Flowers National Park

A UNESCO World Heritage Site in the high Himalayas famed for its vast meadows of endemic alpine flowers blooming in monsoon.

Leh & Ladakh

Leh-Ladakh

Leh-Ladakh is a high-altitude desert region cradled by the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges in the union territory of Ladakh.

Quieter, beautiful light

Rajasthan

Jaipur

Jaipur repays getting up early more than almost anywhere in Rajasthan, because by ten the coaches have arrived and Amber Fort stops being a fort and becomes a…

Cooling

Himachal Pradesh

Manali

Manali is really two places, and knowing which one you booked matters more than anything else about the trip.

Rain easing, lush green