Leh & Ladakh

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Where to base yourself.

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.

Leh & Ladakh

Kargil

Kargil is Ladakh's second-largest urban centre after Leh and its joint capital, 204 km east of Srinagar and 234 km west of Leh.

Browse Leh & Ladakh by theme

The same places, sorted the way you might be thinking about the trip.

Heritage Spiritual & Pilgrimage Adventure Hidden Gems

Heritage

Forts, temples and old towns.

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Basgo Fort

Basgo Fort and Palace, about 5 km west of Nimoo and 40 km east of Leh, was a political and cultural centre of early Ladakh, frequently mentioned in the Ladakhi Chronicles, with a monastery complex …

Chiktan Fort

Chiktan Fort, in Kargil district, was the capital of the Cig-tan principality, built in the 16th century by Balti craftsmen and once famed across Lhasa as an architectural masterpiece.

Namgyal Tsemo Fort

Namgyal Tsemo Fort (Tsemo Castle) stands at the highest point in Leh, within walking distance of Leh Palace, and is maintained today by the Archaeological Survey of India.

Shey Palace

Shey Palace and Monastery, 15 km south of Leh in the Indus Valley, served as the summer capital of Ladakh and houses a 12-metre, three-storey gilded statue of Shakyamuni Buddha, the second-largest …

Stok Palace

Stok Palace, about 2 km from Stok Monastery south of Leh, was built in 1820 as the summer home of Ladakhi royalty from the Namgyal dynasty and remains a residence of the royal family today.

Tingmosgang Fort

Tingmosgang was the capital built by King Drag-pa-Bum in the 15th century, and through his grandson Bhagan gave rise to the Namgyal dynasty, which ruled Ladakh until the 1841 Dogra annexation.

Zorawar Fort

Zorawar Fort in Leh was built in 1836 by General Zorawar Singh under Maharaja Gulab Singh of Jammu & Kashmir, and now functions as a restored heritage site with a military museum.

Spiritual & Pilgrimage

Places people come to pray.

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Alchi Monastery

Alchi is unlike any other gompa in Ladakh: it sits low by the Indus rather than on a crag, and its temples preserve some of the finest 11th–12th century Buddhist art in the world. The Kashmiri-styl…

Shanti Stupa

The white dome above Chanspa is newer than it looks. A Japanese monk, Gyomyo Nakamura, built it in 1991, and the 14th Dalai Lama enshrined relics of the Buddha in its base. The hilltop puts the sur…

Shey Monastery

Shey was the summer capital of Ladakh, and the site still reads that way: the 10th-century palace of Lhachen Palgyigon stands ruined on the hillock, with the later palace and monastery, raised in 1…

Thiksey Monastery

Thiksey Gompa cascades down a hillock above the Indus like a miniature Potala Palace — twelve storeys of whitewashed cells, red-ochre temples and golden finials. The seat of the Gelug (Yellow Hat) …

Adventure

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Leh-Ladakh

Leh-Ladakh is a high-altitude desert region cradled by the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges in the union territory of Ladakh. Famed for stark moonscapes, centuries-old Buddhist monasteries, turquoise…

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. Positioned at a height of approximately 3,350 met…

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. It sits between the Ladakh range and the giant peaks of the K…

Pangong Tso

Pangong Tso is an endorheic lake at roughly 4,225 metres on the Changtang plateau of eastern Ladakh. It runs nearly 134 kilometres end to end, about a third of that in India and the rest in Tibet. …

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 Ladakh. The body of water spans roughl…

Zanskar Valley

Zanskar is one of the last genuinely difficult journeys left in India, and that is the whole appeal. The valley is cut off by snow for around seven months of the year. In summer a single road come…

Hidden Gems

Quieter than the rest.

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Indian Astronomical Observatory

The observatory stands at Hanle at 4,500 metres, which makes it one of the world's highest sites for optical, infrared and gamma-ray telescopes, and the tenth-highest optical telescope anywhere. Th…