Places to visit in Ladakh
These are the places Ladakh trips are built from. Each trip page lists exactly which of them it covers, and a private trip can swap one for another.
- Leh Palace and Shanti Stupa: The old royal palace above the bazaar and the white stupa across the valley, the easy first-day sights while you acclimatise.
- Thiksey and Hemis monasteries: Thiksey's hilltop gompa for the morning prayers, and Hemis, the largest in Ladakh, home of the summer Hemis festival.
- Khardung La: The high pass on the road from Leh to Nubra; a photo stop only, because the altitude is not a place to linger.
- Nubra Valley: Diskit monastery and its giant Maitreya Buddha, and the sand dunes at Hunder with the double-humped Bactrian camels.
- Turtuk: The Balti village at the far end of the Shyok valley, among apricot orchards, opened to travellers in 2010.
- Pangong Tso: The long high-altitude lake over the Chang La pass, changing colour through the day; most trips spend a night in the camps on its shore.
- Tso Moriri: The remote lake in the Changthang plateau with the village of Korzok on its shore, for the longer trips.
- Hanle and Umling La: The observatory and dark-sky village of Hanle, and the Umling La road beyond it, on the grand-circuit and bike expeditions.
- Magnetic Hill, Pathar Sahib and the Sangam: The Srinagar road stops: the hill where cars seem to roll uphill, the gurudwara, and the meeting of the Indus and Zanskar rivers.
- Lamayuru and Alchi: The moonland landscape around Lamayuru monastery and the thousand-year-old murals at Alchi, on the way to or from Srinagar.
