जगहें

Alchi ChoskorविरासतLeh

A temple complex of the eleventh and twelfth centuries on the Indus, built low on the valley floor rather than on a crag — which is why it was neither fortified nor rebuilt. Its wall paintings and carved wooden doorways are in a Kashmiri idiom of that period, down to the dress and jewellery of the figures, and they are the best-preserved evidence anywhere of a painting tradition that no longer survives in Kashmir itself. Photography inside is not permitted and the interiors are deliberately unlit.

सबसे अच्छा समय: May–October.

Hemisतीर्थLeh

The largest and wealthiest monastery in the region, of the Drukpa Kagyu order, set in a side gorge that hides it completely from the Indus valley — a siting decision that is generally credited with its survival through several periods of upheaval. Its Tsechu in the fifth Tibetan month is the region's best-known Cham festival, and a very large appliqué thangka is unfurled there once every twelve years.

सबसे अच्छा समय: June–September.

Thikseyतीर्थLeh

A Gelug monastery stacked up a hill in tiers of whitewashed buildings, holding a two-storey seated Maitreya installed in the twentieth century. The morning liturgy, with the long horns sounded from the roof at dawn, is open to visitors who arrive early enough.

सबसे अच्छा समय: May–October.

LamayuruविरासतLeh

A monastery on a spur above a basin of pale, deeply gullied lake sediment that local usage calls moonland — the floor of a lake that once filled this stretch of the valley. One of the oldest monastic sites in Ladakh, and the last one on the road down towards the Zoji La.

Leh old town and the PalaceशहरीLeh

A nine-storey mud-brick and timber palace of the seventeenth century, built under Sengge Namgyal on the slope below the Namgyal Tsemo gonpa, with the old town's lanes of courtyard houses, the Jama Masjid and the bazaar below it. The palace is a demonstration of what can be built in unfired brick if the walls are battered and the rain never comes.

BasgoविरासतLeh

A ruined mud-brick citadel on a fluted spur with three Maitreya temples inside it, the oldest of the sixteenth century. Its conservation is a well-documented case of stabilising earthen architecture rather than replacing it.

SheyविरासतLeh

The old royal seat before Leh, with a copper-gilt Shakyamuni of the seventeenth century that is the largest of its kind in the region, and a plain below it dense with chortens.

Phugtalतीर्थKargil

A monastery built into the mouth of a cliff cave above the Tsarap river in southern Zanskar, its cells stacked in a honeycomb under the overhang. There is no road to it; the approach is on foot, and everything in it was carried.

सबसे अच्छा समय: June–September.

Karsha and PadumविरासतKargil

Zanskar's largest monastery and its main settlement, at the meeting of the Doda and the Tsarap. Padum is the point from which the valley's villages, its Gustor festival and the Chadar route are reached.

Diskit and HunderविरासतLeh

Nubra's principal monastery, with a large hillside Maitreya above the Shyok, and below it the cold-desert dunes at Hunder where double-humped Bactrian camels graze — descendants of the pack animals of the Yarkand caravan trade, left behind when the route closed.

सबसे अच्छा समय: June–September.

TurtukविरासतLeh

A Balti-speaking village of stone-and-timber houses terraced above the Shyok, with buckwheat fields, an unusual density of apricot trees, and cold stores dug into the rock that keep grain and butter through summer. It is the clearest place to see the region's western, Muslim, Balti face.

Pangong Tsoप्रकृतिLeh

A long, narrow, brackish lake at about 4,250 m in a closed basin, so its colour shifts through the day with the angle of the light and the depth. Brackish water freezes solid in winter despite the salinity.

सबसे अच्छा समय: May–September.

Tso Moriri and Korzokवन्यजीवLeh

A high-altitude lake and Ramsar wetland at about 4,500 m with the Changpa settlement of Korzok on its shore — one of the highest permanent villages anywhere, and a breeding site for the black-necked crane.

सबसे अच्छा समय: June–September.

Hanleप्रकृतिLeh

A monastery on a hill above a broad marsh, and on the ridge behind it the Indian Astronomical Observatory at about 4,500 m. The aridity that limits farming here produces some of the clearest and driest night skies in the world, and the surrounding area has been notified as a dark sky reserve, with villages shading their outdoor lights to keep it.

सबसे अच्छा समय: May–September.

Dah and HanuविरासतLeh

Brokpa villages on the lower Indus where a Dardic language, a distinct dress with flowered headgear, and an older ritual calendar survive inside a Tibetic Buddhist region. Apricot and grape grow here at the region's lowest and warmest altitudes.

MulbekhविरासतKargil

A standing Maitreya some seven metres high, carved in relief on a rock face beside the Srinagar–Leh road, generally dated to the early medieval centuries. It marks, roughly, where the Buddhist monastic landscape begins as you come over from the west.

The Suru valley and Rangdumप्रकृतिKargil

A green irrigated valley under the Nun and Kun peaks, Shia Muslim in population, running up to the isolated monastery at Rangdum on the way into Zanskar — the transition between the region's Muslim west and Buddhist south laid out along one road.

सबसे अच्छा समय: June–September.

Zanskar river gorge (the Chadar)प्रकृतिKargil

The Zanskar's lower gorge, which freezes over in January and February to make a walkable sheet — chadar means sheet — through cliffs that have no path along them. It was the valley's only winter link to the Indus, used for freight, for court cases and by schoolchildren, and it is warming and thinning.

सबसे अच्छा समय: Mid-January to mid-February, with local guides only.