Ladakh sits behind the main Himalayan wall, so the monsoon barely reaches it. Leh gets about 35 mm of rain a year. What you see is bare brown and violet rock, then a sudden green strip of barley, willow and poplar wherever a glacier stream has been led into fields. Every village is an oasis built by irrigation, and every oasis has its gompa on the ridge above it.
For centuries Leh was a stopover on the caravan routes between Tibet, Kashmir and the Tarim Basin. Traders carried salt, grain, pashm wool, indigo, silk yarn and Banaras brocade through its bazaar, and the road north over the Karakoram Pass led to Yarkand. That mixed past still shows: Buddhist villages in the Indus valley, Shia Kargil to the west, and Balti Turtuk on the Shyok, the only part of India where Balti people live.
Most visitors fly into Leh at 3,500 m. That single fact shapes every good itinerary we write. You spend your first two days doing almost nothing, then add height slowly: Hemis and the Indus monasteries, then Khardung La (5,359 m) to Nubra, then Pangong Tso at about 4,250 m or Tso Moriri at 4,522 m. Rush it and the trip is spent with a headache.
We plan Ladakh in three ways. Saver trips use the Leh bus stand, shared taxis and family guesthouses at ₹1,000–2,000 a night with dinner. Comfort trips use a Ladakh Taxi Union car with driver and the better hotels. Signature trips use the region's few true luxury addresses: a restored manor at Nimmu, a cottage retreat in Nubra, a summer camp facing Thiksey Monastery.
