Srinagar to Leh via Kargil

NH1 runs 434 km from Srinagar to Leh, and almost everyone breaks it at Kargil — a little over 200 km on the first day, a little over 230 km on the second. Out of Sonamarg you climb Zoji La, then the road crosses Namika La and tops out at Fotu La, 4,108 m and the highest point on the highway. Zoji La is the pass people are nervous about, and it is not the high one. Take three days if the calendar allows. Leh sits at about 3,500 m against Kargil's 2,676 m, and arriving worn out at the end of a long second day is how people lose their first two days in Ladakh flat on a guesthouse bed. The unpleasant part comes early: above Sonamarg the road narrows to a single-lane unsurfaced shelf cut into the hillside, with loaded trucks working down it, and that first hour asks more of your nerve than everything after Kargil put together.

For most of its life this was a trade road rather than a tourist one. Caravans moved between Srinagar and Leh and on over the Karakoram towards Yarkand, and the route only worked in summer, which is why the villages along it are built for one season of business and a long winter of nothing much. Ladakh was its own Buddhist kingdom until the 1830s, when Zorawar Singh, a general in Dogra service, campaigned across it and folded it into what became the state of Jammu and Kashmir. That is why you drive from a Muslim-majority valley through a Muslim-majority Kargil into a Buddhist Ladakh without crossing any border at all. The line was drawn by a nineteenth-century conquest, not by the people living either side of it. The twentieth century kept the road in the news. In November 1948 the Indian Army took tanks over Zoji La, a manoeuvre nobody had expected to work at that height. In 1999 the ridges above Drass and Kargil were fought over again, and the highway you are driving was within artillery range of it. The memorial at Drass is the reason a great many Indian travellers stop in a town they would otherwise pass through.

Zoji La dropping into the Drass valley, the Kargil War Memorial, the nine-metre rock-cut Maitreya at Mulbekh, Fotu La at 4,108 m, and the eroded grey hills below Lamayuru.

Good tarmac either side of a bad middle. The climb from Sonamarg over Zoji La is a narrow, largely unsurfaced shelf shared with trucks in both directions, and it is where nearly every delay on this road happens. From Kargil onward the surface is broadly sound over Namika La and Fotu La, with rockfall-prone stretches around Lamayuru.

Leave Srinagar by six to get over Zoji La before the truck queues build. Do not attempt Srinagar to Leh in one day however good the road looks on a map — the altitude gain is the problem, not the distance. Fill the tank in Kargil; the next pump east of it is at Khaltse, roughly 120 km on. Give the memorial at Drass an hour instead of ten minutes.

Two days is standard: Srinagar to Kargil, then Kargil to Leh. Three is better. Break the second day at Lamayuru or Alchi, sleep lower for one more night, and reach Leh in the morning with the rest of the day to do nothing in. Timing. The highway is cleared in spring and shuts under heavy snow, so the dependable window is roughly June to early October. The weeks either side of that hang entirely on what the Border Roads Organisation has managed at Zoji La, and the dates move by weeks from one year to the next — check the current status rather than a published calendar. Start each day early; the truck traffic on the Zoji La section is the reason. Permits. The Srinagar–Leh highway itself needs no permit. Beyond Leh, for Nubra, Pangong and Tso Moriri, Indian nationals no longer take an Inner Line Permit and instead register online and pay the Ladakh environment fee, while foreign nationals still need a Protected Area Permit arranged through a registered Leh agent. This has changed more than once in recent years, so confirm it in the month you travel rather than trusting a write-up from last season. Fuel. Fill the tank in Kargil. It is the one town on this road that every account agrees has working pumps, and the reports of Sonamarg and Drass contradict each other enough to be worth treating as luck rather than plan — one detailed survey of the highway puts the last dependable pump before Kargil at Gagangir, short of Sonamarg, and none at Drass at all. East of Kargil the next pump is at Khaltse, roughly 120 km on, and from Khaltse it is another 95 km to Leh with nothing in between. Phones. Signal holds as far as Sonamarg, goes over Zoji La, returns at Drass and Kargil, then fades again past Mulbekh across Fotu La — warn people at home that they may not hear from you for a day. The thing that catches visitors out is the SIM rule: a prepaid connection issued outside Jammu & Kashmir or Ladakh does not work here on any network. Postpaid connections from the rest of India roam normally.