Where we actually go

1,585 m

2–3 days

The summer capital and the front door to everything else. Most trips begin here with a night on Dal Lake, a shikara at sunrise through the floating vegetable market and an afternoon among the terraces of the Mughal gardens. The old city rewards a slow walk, walnut-carving workshops, papier-mâché, pashmina looms and the ninth-century Jama Masjid.

2,730 m · Apharwat 3,979 m

1–2 days

A bowl-shaped meadow at 2,730 m that is one of the country’s great natural playgrounds. In summer it is wildflowers, the world’s highest golf course and the Gondola rising to Apharwat; in winter it becomes the subcontinent’s best ski destination, with lift-served powder, ski schools and horse-drawn sledges on the road up from Tangmarg.

2,130 m

1–2 days

Base camp for the Amarnath yatra and the southern valley’s most laid-back town, where the Lidder runs cold between deodar banks. Betaab valley, Aru and the pony track up to Baisaran give you a meadow, a river and a forest in a single afternoon, and the trout fishing is the best in the state.

2,740 m

1 day (2 if trekking)

The last green valley before the mountains turn bare, and the trailhead for the Great Lakes trek. Thajiwas glacier is a short walk or pony ride from the road, and beyond the town the old highway climbs over Zoji La towards Drass and Kargil, which is why Sonamarg marks the psychological start of Ladakh.

2,730 m

Day trip, or 1 night in a meadow guesthouse

A high meadow in Budgam district where the Shaliganga runs milky-white over limestone and shepherd families camp through the summer. It is what Gulmarg was thirty years ago, no hotels on the meadow, no gondola, no queue, and most travellers have never heard of it.

2,396 m

Day trip

A quiet bowl of pine and meadow south-west of Srinagar, where the Doodh Ganga cuts through the grass and trails lead on towards the alpine Nilnag lake. Local tradition holds that Jesus passed through, which is where the name comes from, and the ponywalas who live here are some of the most unhurried people you will meet.

1,860 m

Day trip

The Veshav river drops about 25 metres into a basalt gorge at Aharbal, then rushes on through apple country towards Shopian. It is a lower-altitude, almost year-round destination, good for a short trip in December when the higher meadows are snowed in, and for an easy riverside camp in summer.

3,500 m

2 days minimum for acclimatisation

A small Himalayan town ringed by bare ranges, with a palace on the ridge, a stupa on the hill and a bazaar that has been on the trade route to Central Asia for a thousand years. Everything in Ladakh radiates from Leh, and everything in Ladakh requires you to spend your first day here doing nothing at all.

3,050 m · Khardung La 5,359 m

2 nights

Cross Khardung La and the landscape changes character completely: cold-desert dunes at Hunder, double-humped camels left behind by the Silk Road, and the irrigated green of Diskit, Sumur and Turtuk’s Balti villages. It is the most varied corner of Ladakh and worth two nights, not one.

4,350 m

1 night

One of the highest and largest brackish lakes in the world, running 134 km east towards Tibet and sitting at 4,350 m. The famous colour shifts with the sun, from steel grey at dawn to an impossible azure by noon. Stay overnight at Spangmik if you can, the day-trippers leave and the lake becomes yours.

2,676 m · Drass 3,300 m

1 night on a trans-Ladakh journey

The overnight stop between Kashmir and Ladakh, and much more than that: Drass is the second-coldest inhabited place on earth and home to the Kargil War Memorial at Tololing, while the Suru valley south of Kargil hides some of Ladakh’s greenest villages and its Buddhist rock carvings.

Katra 875 m · shrine 1,584 m

1–2 days

The shrine of Vaishno Devi sits at 1,584 m in the Trikuta hills above Katra, reached by a 12 km uphill walk, pony or helicopter from the town. Most travellers combine it with Patnitop or with the drive onward to Srinagar, which makes Katra the classic first stop on a Jammu–Kashmir itinerary.