Ladakh will make you sick if you arrive and do anything

IndiGo and Air India both connect through Delhi to Kushok Bakula Rimpochee airport, and you are on the ground in Leh before nine in the morning. The altitude hits you in the taxi — a mild headache, slightly heavy legs, the sense that the air is thinner than it should be. It is. Do not fight it.

Today is complete rest at the hotel: no sightseeing, no walking uphill, no alcohol, three to four litres of water through the day. Acute mountain sickness is what ruins Ladakh trips, and one full rest day is the most effective prevention. If you feel genuinely well by six in the evening, a slow, flat walk to Shanti Stupa for sunset is allowed. That is all.

A gentle day, still at low effort. The Hall of Fame museum on the Srinagar highway sets out the Siachen and Kargil record in photographs and captured equipment — plan forty-five minutes. Gurudwara Pathar Sahib, run by the army a kilometre further on, is cool and quiet. Magnetic Hill is a genuine optical illusion of the slope; the road appears to climb when it slopes gently down. At the Sangam, the grey silt-heavy Indus and the clear green Zanskar run side by side without mixing for several hundred metres. You can see the line from the road.

Leh Palace in the late afternoon is fifteen minutes up a steep lane from the main bazaar — take it slow. The old town below it, the Jama Masjid end of the bazaar, and the line of chang shops before dinner. Skip the overpriced Tibetan restaurants on the tourist strip; a dal and thukpa at the end of a local lane costs a quarter of the price.

You leave Leh by seven. The road climbs through South Pullu checkpoint, where the Inner Line Permit is checked, and reaches Khardung La at 5,359 metres. The army allows a stop of fifteen to twenty minutes at the top — that is a medical rule, not bureaucracy. The air is thin enough that a short walk to the signboard leaves you breathless. Take the photograph, have a cup of the hot sulphur-tasting tea at the army stall, and get back in the vehicle.

Down the far side the valley opens gradually into Diskit, where a 32-metre Maitreya Buddha on a ridge faces down the Shyok valley toward the Pakistan border. At Hunder, a short drive further, cold-desert sand dunes sit at 3,000 metres with snow peaks immediately behind them — one of those things that looks like a composite photograph but is not. The double-humped Bactrian camels that work the dunes are the descendants of Silk Road pack animals. Your camp or guesthouse at Hunder is the night stop.

Six to seven hours on the Shyok river road via Agham and Durbuk. The road is rough and broken in stretches, and in July and August the glacier melt can flood the track at the water crossings. The driver will know whether to proceed; you should trust that call. Pack lunch from the guesthouse because there is nothing along this route worth calling a dhaba.

Pangong Tso arrives suddenly at 4,350 metres — a wall of blue that appears at a bend in the road. The lake is 134 kilometres long, salt water that freezes solid in winter, and the colour shifts through the afternoon from steel grey at midday to turquoise at three, to deep indigo as the sun drops behind the western ranges. You stay at a fixed camp at Spangmik on the near shore; the camps are simple but the view from the dining tent is the point. Dinner is hot thukpa and blankets.

Wake before sunrise. The far Tibetan range turns pink about twenty minutes before the sun clears it, and the lake takes the colour immediately after — five minutes where both sky and water are the same deep rose. Then pack and drive. Chang La at 5,360 metres is the third-highest motorable pass in the world; the top is colder and windier than Khardung La and the army tea stall is more welcome. Same rule: fifteen minutes and descend.

Down into the Indus valley: Thiksey Monastery is a twelve-storey Gelugpa complex modelled on the Potala in Lhasa, with a 15-metre seated Maitreya on the top floor — climb to it. Shey Palace, a few kilometres on, is smaller and quieter. The drive back into Leh arrives by early evening, enough time to eat properly and sleep at low altitude for the first time in three nights.

Hemis is the largest and wealthiest monastery in Ladakh and hides in a side gorge forty-five kilometres south of Leh. The courtyard holds the copper-gilt Padmasambhava statue, and a storeroom behind it contains a two-storey silk thangka unrolled publicly once every twelve years. The monks are present, the butter lamps are lit, and the place is working rather than curated.

Alchi, further down the Indus, has eleventh-century Kashmiri-style wall paintings that survived because the monastery was abandoned early and never repainted over. Photography inside is banned; the reason is obvious once you see the condition of what has been preserved. Afternoon back in Leh's old town: pashmina at the fixed-price government emporium if you want a reference price, apricots dried and fresh from the roadside stalls, and the Jama Masjid end of the bazaar where the Ladakhi Muslim traders run the carpet and jewellery shops.

Leh flights leave in the morning because the valley winds make afternoon operations unreliable — the airport drop is typically around 5.30 am, sometimes earlier. Kushok Bakula Rimpochee is a defence airfield: no drone on board, no photography of the apron or runway, and both your cabin bag and checked luggage go through X-ray twice. Keep all batteries and power banks in your hand baggage, not in the hold.

Connect through Delhi to Ahmedabad. The one thing worth declaring at Indian customs is wood carving, pashmina above the duty-free limit, and any loose dried fruit above a kilogram — keep the receipts from the emporium. The altitude you lose between Leh and Ahmedabad in two hours is more than most people climb in a lifetime.