In short
Leh is the capital of Ladakh, a high-altitude desert with a Tibetan Buddhist culture, enclosed between the Himalaya and the Karakoram. The town sits at about 3,500 metres, and the surrounding passes exceed 5,000.
The landscape has nothing of lowland India: bare rock, intense blue sky, perched monasteries — Thiksey, Hemis, Diskit — and green villages only where the meltwater reaches.
Arriving and getting around
The plane sets you down directly at 3,500 metres, and that is Ladakh's real danger: the body gets no transition. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours of complete rest on arrival is the rule, without exception, before any high-altitude excursion. Serious cases of acute mountain sickness every year involve visitors who followed a flight with a drive to Pangong the next day.
By road there are only two routes, open roughly May to October depending on snow: from Manali and from Srinagar. They take two days but acclimatise you gradually.
Permits are required for several zones — Nubra, Pangong, Tso Moriri — because of the proximity of the borders. They are obtained in Leh and the rules change: check them on the spot.
What it really costs
Ladakh is affordable, but the season is short and prices rise in July–August.
Excursions to Pangong or Nubra are sold as shared jeep trips over two or three days; that is the main item.
When to come
June–September, when the roads and passes are open.
Winter is extreme — down to minus thirty — and part of the accommodation closes. It is also the season of the frozen-river trek, the Chadar, now closely regulated.
What nobody tells you
Pangong Lake sits at 4,250 metres and is often visited on the same day as the drive: a combination to avoid. Sleeping there without prior acclimatisation is a bad idea.
The monasteries are working places of worship. The masked festivals, such as Hemis in summer, follow the Tibetan lunar calendar: their dates change each year.
The air is extremely dry and solar radiation very intense at this altitude: dehydration and sunburn arrive quickly, even in cool weather.