The following is based on my Ladakh trip from mid-May to mid-July 2022, and most of it was written at that time as well. It is already two years out of date, and I had hoped to get it up in May this year before the tourist season started. Now (September 2024) the tourist season has ended and Ladakh is cold and will soon be frozen, and this post will be three years out of date by the time anyone can make good use of it. I apologize for any outdated information. I have also undoubtedly changed as a person, traveler, and writer since then, you can decide if the changes are for the better or not.
I broke my Ladakh trip into five posts. This post covers Leh and everything I did that’s within roughly 2 hours of Leh, and it also has my scattered thoughts about Ladakh. I have a separate post just for food in Leh. I also have a separate post for Turtuk, Nubra Valley, and Pangong, and another post for Kargil and the Aryan Valley. See also my post on film, music, and reading recommendations for Ladakh.
I have more sections in here than usual, so here’s a table of contents, browse accordingly:
Introduction & Trip Rundown
Caveats & Warnings
Random Thoughts
Leh City Guide
Cinemas of Leh
Places to Visit Around Leh
Where to Stay In & Around Leh
Introduction
I don't like putting a lot of photos, for more you can check out my wife's Instagram stories on Ladakh. Everyone's Ladakh photos look the same though.
I spent around two months in Ladakh while working from home and I loved it, more than I was expecting, though I knew very little about it before going. It was my wife’s idea to go, I was indifferent and was just along for the ride out of the promise of going to Kashmir after. I didn’t actually know what Ladakh was, and had only heard people say “You must go to Leh Ladakh, it’s so beautiful,” which for me was a turnoff on several levels. I’m unaware of a Leh, North Carolina or anywhere like that which may cause confusion, so I don’t know why people keep saying “Leh Ladakh,” and I’m skeptical of the advice of anyone who feels the need to consistently aggregate the region and its capital when speaking. Also, as regular readers will know, I like beautiful places, but I optimize for interesting over beautiful and culture over nature, and when someone tells me I should go somewhere because it’s beautiful I have the same reaction that I have when someone tells me to see a movie because the performances are great. “Okay, but how’s the movie?”
Thankfully, Ladakh is very interesting, more so than most places people in India go to primarily because they’re allegedly beautiful. I just imagined, at best, a Shangri-La type place full of beautiful monasteries and mountains, which is partly true and probably what it is for most people, and that part was really great. Still, it’s too bad nobody bothered to tell me that it’s also a Silk Road junction linking India with Central and East Asia.
From an article by the author of Trade and Contemporary Society along the Silk Road: An ethno-history of Ladakh:
"In the early 20th century, three main trade routes passed through Ladakh: the Tibetan route east to the city of Lhasa, the South Asian route south through Kashmir, and the trans-Karakoram route north and east into Chinese Central Asia. Most of these routes were only open for brief periods in the summer, when the snows had melted in the mountains and travelers could traverse the high passes between valleys. Because of the rough terrain, pack-carrying livestock—usually yaks, donkeys, ponies, dzo (crossbred offspring of yaks and cows), and sometimes camels—were the primary mode of transportation.
At the intersection of these trade routes, Ladakh’s main towns of Leh and Kargil housed busy bazaars (market areas), the sites of intense commercial activity where commodities were transported, traded, and taxed. Bazaars were also the zone of cultural interaction. Traders from various parts of Central and South Asia stayed together in caravanserais, the tax and trading posts that also served as inns or hostels for traders during their journey. Thus the traders in Leh bazaar interacted in many activities not directly related to trade, such as sharing meals, telling stories, and praying—interactions that often exposed them to new languages, foods, ideas, and beliefs.
During the late 19th and early 20th century, accounts by visiting Europeans typically described their astonishment at the diversity of the Leh bazaar. For example, in his 1905 travel memoir, adventurer E. F. Knight wrote upon entering the bazaar,
…there is such a motley collection of types and various costumes, and such a babble of different languages, as it would not be easy to find elsewhere…. Leh in September is, indeed, one of the busiest and most crowded of cities, and the storekeepers and farmers who have to supply this multitude must make a very good profit for this time. Leh is therefore a very cosmopolitan city, even in the dead season; for there are resident merchants and others of various races and creeds. Small as is the permanent population, at least four languages are in common use here—Hindostani, Tibetan, Turki, and Kashmiri— while several others are spoken."
Maybe this is all already obvious to everyone given its location on the map, and I’m just a little slow and geographically challenged. Ladakh’s ambassadors should share this with us ignorant firangis though. I mean, if I knew books with titles such as Trade and Contemporary Society along the Silk Road: An ethno-history of Ladakh existed, I would have gone to Ladakh sooner. I guess that’s what I’m here for.
Anyway, I came to Ladakh because my wife made me -- I mean, uh, for the mountains and monasteries -- and I stayed for old world Ladakh, the Ladakh of caravanserais where camels, horses, donkeys, and yaks let off a diverse ethnic mixture who huddled together to stay warm while drinking butter tea from elaborately decorated samovars and telling stories from the Epic of King Gesar and whatnot. I find that stuff more exciting than peaceful places to meditate, and there is a good amount of that old Ladakhi culture to engage with, both living and tastefully museumized.
And for those who don’t care about any of that and just want beauty (and are for some reason still reading), well, Ladakh definitely ranks among the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and it’s certainly the most uniquely beautiful place I’ve been with its stark, otherworldly landscape. If it had better infrastructure it’d probably be one of the leading filming locations for movies set on other planets. There are incredible, awe-inspiring sights pretty much everywhere.
Leh is also a cool little town to live in for a while. Too small-townish for me longer term, but it had enough to hold my interest while I was there and has more going for it than any of the hill stations I’ve been to. There’s a surprisingly good food scene, some nice grocery stores, a few nice cafes to work from, and a nice art gallery and museum. That’s all in addition to the small but fascinating historical area and the nice homestays where we spent most of our time. It’s also walkable and pretty peaceful and laid back, and Ladakhis are generally really nice and pleasant people. It was great for an extended remote-work stay, despite some internet issues, which I’ll get to below.
A brief rundown of my trip
I spent around one month in Leh on and off and also traveled to a number of villages near Leh (Stok, Sumdo, Likir, Stakmo, Phyang, and the popular monasteries nearby), did the typical tourist route of Nubra and Pangong with Turtuk in between, and then finished in the Aryan Valley (a village called Garkone) and Kargil before going to Kashmir. I stayed in homestays in almost every place.
I liked everywhere we went but I loved Leh (and its surroundings) and Turtuk the most. Everywhere else was very beautiful and I liked experiencing the village life, though I admittedly would get kind of bored after a few days. There wasn’t enough to do, connectivity was poor, I didn’t have books to read to connect me to the places I went, there was nobody for me to really talk to, and the food in the villages was generally kind of boring. I was always happy to get back to Leh. That’s okay though, and I’d still encourage people to go do some village stays. I’m also not much of a resort person but there are some stunning resorts in Ladakh, including the Ladakh Sarai where I stayed for a few nights. I think overall it doesn’t matter that much where you go if you find a nice place to stay, because everywhere is really beautiful and there's not much to do anywhere.
Caveats / Warnings / Practical Information
I do have a lot of caveats about traveling in Ladakh. Of course, I have a lot of caveats for other places too, but I don’t write about most of them. Dysfunction and disorder are kind of norms in a lot of India, but it’s already baked in and redundant to mention. Ladakh is nicer than most of India in a lot of ways, and it’s cleaner and calmer, but it is uniquely a pain to travel in, so I feel I should mention that, even though I feel bad for singling out Ladakh. These aren't reasons not to go to Ladakh, they are just things to keep in mind.
Transportation:
Leh has an airport so it’s easy enough to get to, and the main highways which connect Leh with some major sites are pretty nice. However, transport was very expensive, public transport options were very limited, and the roads for a lot of places we went were really bad and often pretty scary. I had numerous rides where I was like “This is such a terrible idea. What the hell am I doing with my life? I’m an idiot. I should never do anything like this ever again.” And then I did it again.
On one ride, I saw a wrecked car in the rocky river below and later learned that it had fallen off the edge of the narrow road a few days prior, killing a handful of people inside. Later in that ride I saw some construction crane in the middle of a wide, gushing river with its driver standing on the roof waiting to be rescued. Our driver kept glancing between the road and the mountain we were driving along looking out for falling rocks. On another ride I think we actually drove through a running river. Oregon Trail did not prepare me for the mental stress of this.
These rides were kinda worth it, but also not worth it, and I don’t recommend them. You should do a “boring” Ladakh trip and stick to the main highways. It will still be great. Don’t risk your life. It’s not worth it. Maybe it was worth it though. I don’t know, decide for yourself.
(We also drove on a handful of very rickety old wooden bridges. Those were awesome. Some of my trip highlights. No regrets there. I only wish I could have walked them too. Old wooden bridges bring out the little boy in me.)
And the long rides also hardly have any decent places to stop and get hygienic food or use the washroom. It’s even worse than much of India in that regard.
Transportation is an issue within Leh too, where a five minute drive will cost you 500 rupees. Going somewhere a short ride from the town, say 20-30 minutes, will set you back several thousand rupees round trip. Definitely frustrating, at least for my lifestyle and budget. I guess normal people planning and budgeting a normal vacation won't have the same issue, and it's typical for people to just hire drivers that are with them for the whole trip.
If you are on a budget, then honestly Ladakh isn't the best destination, but you can ask around about shared taxis. In Leh you’ll get them at the Polo Ground, very early in the morning, though there’s no guarantee you’ll actually get them. To get them outside of Leh…just ask around. And wherever you’re going, ask the hosts if they know of any decent options to get there. At some of the villages outside Leh, the homestay hosts go back and forth, so you might be able to time it so you can tag along with them. Between a few shared taxis and tagging along with homestay hosts, my wife and I easily saved over 10k rupees over the course of our trip.
There are also shared multi-day trips that include transportation and stays that you can sign up for and join. I never did this but saw signs for it around town.
Internet
Internet is an issue in Ladakh, though I’m sure it gets better year by year and has likely improved since I went in 2022. Anyone who plans to work remotely should be aware of the challenges, though.
Leh is a great place to work remotely for most people, though if you need consistent super high speed internet you may have some trouble. Outside of Leh, it is much more difficult and I wouldn’t recommend it if you have tight deadlines, have to make phone calls, have to do heavy uploading, etc. If you have more flexibility and basic network needs, then you’ll be able to get by, just prepare to be frustrated from time to time. Some places were better than others (Diskit/Hunder and Phyang had decent network) but you should expect semi-frequent power cuts and periodic network issues if you go outside of Leh. There were a handful of times where we had to walk around outside of our homestays searching for a signal on our phones so we could hotspot our laptops to send an email. If you’re fine with that then go work from a village, it’s kinda fun, but otherwise don’t even think about it.
Even if you’re in Leh, the internet could be a bit wonky, and power cuts are fairly common, so take note to stay charged. Leh at least has some cafes you can work from, the two I found for good wifi and comfortable seating were Coffee Lounge and Boddhi Terrace, though I'm sure there are more now.
Our regular Indian SIM cards didn’t work here and we had to get local SIMs. I recommend getting multiple providers, as my wife and I got both Airtel and Jio. In Leh Airtel seemed to work better, though I still recommend getting Jio as a backup as in different parts of the city we got different coverage, and in many areas outside of Leh I found Jio to work better. You can also get BSNL, and if you’re concerned about network issues I’d just get all three. You also still want to stay somewhere with wifi. Whenever it got cloudy the mobile network seemed to get worse.
While this was an issue for us since we had work, the bad internet is probably a good thing for ordinary travelers. Get off your phones!
Acclimatization & Altitude Sickness:
The CDC says you are at risk of altitude sickness at 8,000 feet above sea level and higher. Leh is at 11,562 feet, Pangong is at 13,862 feet, Khardung La pass, which you'll drive through to get to Nubra Valley, is 17,582, and you get the idea. I'm not going to keep listing stuff you can google or dish out medical advice, I'll just share my experiences and thoughts, and you should ask your doctor if you have any health conditions.
I took Diamox before coming and was fine, my wife had bad side effects from taking one dose so stopped, and then our first night in Leh she was vomiting. After that she was fine, though we both got tired very easily for many weeks and one week into the trip after walking uphill I got extremely tired, needed to lay down, and had very tingly arms for around an hour. Beyond that we were both fine.
When my in-laws came, we went to Pangong on the fifth day just for a few hours, and my mother-in-law’s oxygen dropped down to the 50s that night. She was on oxygen all of the next day but as soon as she’d go off it her numbers would drop again, so she ended up spending the night in the hospital. This isn't that uncommon, especially for Pangong where you spend a lot of time at a higher altitude both while there and while driving.
Anyway, most people are fine, but follow the rules, drink tons of water (the conventional wisdom here seems to say you should have at least 4 liters a day), stick around Leh or somewhere else that isn’t super high altitude for your early days, don’t over-exert, and maybe don’t go to the very high altitude places like Pangong at all. It seemed like most locals we talked to had stories of some tourists they knew dying because they didn’t follow the general advice. You can google it, there are stories of young, seemingly healthy people dying every year.
For people on longer stays the altitude isn’t really an issue if you take the time to acclimatize in Leh, but if you’re only coming for 1-2 weeks then I’d encourage you to avoid going to high altitude places, and definitely avoid exerting at all for a few days. If you have your heart set on physically intensive activities and/or high altitudes and your trip is too short to properly acclimatize, I say you should probably consider saving your trip for when you have more time.
But really, ask a doctor.
My nails grew very slowly in Ladakh.
Permits:
You’ll need a permit to go to various places. Around Leh you don’t need anything but for me it was necessary for Nubra/Turtuk/Pangong and for the Aryan Valley. For permits, Indians can get them online while non-Indians have to get them through a travel agent. I asked around at a bunch of travel agents and they mostly communicated poorly, didn’t give clear answers, didn’t know what they were talking about, etc, which is kind of weird, why are they travel agents? Eventually I found one near the main market called Ancient Tracks which was great. The main woman there was very nice and helpful, and my permit cost 600 rupees the first time and 100 rupees every time I renewed. It typically takes one day.
Tourists:
This probably won’t bother most people the way it does for me, but unless you just want to hang out in remote villages that are difficult to get to and have nothing to do, it’s generally impossible to avoid being largely surrounded by tourists. Leh is pretty small, so unlike larger touristy cities there aren’t really cool local neighborhoods to hang out in and get away from the tourist crowds. In peak season, the tourist population actually comes close to matching the numbers of locals. I don’t want to put down tourists too much (an only semi-hidden goal of this blog is to suppress my inner misanthrope, after all), and I myself am a constant tourist, but I just don't like being surrounded by tourists for extended periods of time and I find it dispiriting and suffocating to be in environments catering to a certain kind of tourist who has no interest in engaging with the local culture at all, which unfortunately is the norm here.
Tourism is very seasonal, though, corresponding with warm weather. More on that below. Tourism really picked up in mid-to-late June, and here are some government numbers (though as of writing this the July 2023 stat needs an extra zero). Though I didn’t love being in the very crowded peak season between mid June and July, the off-season was actually a bit too quiet for me. In May we were the only people at a lot of the restaurants we went to. I find that to be kinda sad.
It doesn’t really matter though and I enjoyed my time there throughout the whole stay. Despite being touristy, Ladakh hasn’t developed the culture of the world’s most obnoxious touts harassing tourists the way other parts of India have. Let’s hope that doesn’t change.
Weather:
It was very cold when I arrived in mid-May, and I had trouble sleeping even with a small heater our homestay gave us for the room. After a few weeks I slept well with the heater, and after a few more weeks I no longer needed the heater. I missed the cold weather once it was gone, though. Ladakh wasn’t the same without it. If I were to come back, I’d probably aim for late summer when it cools off again and there’s more fruit and fewer tourists.
I’m kind of a wimp when it comes to cold weather so I’m not sure I want to experience September through April, but coming in the winter when it snows would be an amazing experience, though it would also come with a unique set of challenges. In addition to being very cold, there are also issues with running water as most pipes freeze up. Some five star hotels and expensive homestays have heating and insulated pipes, but most places do not and a lot of places just close, as do a lot of restaurants, so keep that in mind if you ever go in winter.
Don’t Listen To Me:
Obviously everything I write is subjective, but in Ladakh more than most places I feel like my preferences differ pretty sharply from the vast majority of people I meet and maybe you should take what I say here with an even finer grain of Himalayan pink salt than usual. Like I think it’s categorically insane to spend all day in a car and risk altitude sickness just to visit a fucking (albeit amazingly beautiful) lake, which is basically what people come to Ladakh to do. But you do you. Listen to my food recommendations though, those are unimpeachable.
On a similar note, Ladakh is massive and spread out and has a ton of places I didn’t even research because I couldn’t go more than a few days without internet. So if you want to go off the beaten path a little bit more you should do some more research and ask around for better recommendations. Also, I'm not very outdoorsy.
Random Thoughts:
Ladakh is full of beautiful animals, some you don’t often see in India. The fluffy street dogs in Leh are exceptionally cute. There are also the yaks, which I find very exciting to see for some reason (it’s a mix of yaks and the yak-cow hybrids called dzo), and the donkeys. While driving I occasionally saw wild horses, and in Nubra are the Asiatic camels. I mostly saw yaks from a distance while driving in higher elevation areas. I didn’t get to see many yaks in the villages I went to around Leh (and the ones I did see were the dzo?) because they leave their homes in the summer to seek cooler weather, taking off on their own. Once it cools off again, they trek back to their homes, knowing exactly where to go. Amazing. I would be so sad every summer when my yak leaves me. I never got to pet any of the yaks, unfortunately. This is one of my big life regrets. On the few occasions I walked by them, I was too shy to say hi…
Look out for special events and festivals going on. I got to see the Dalai Lama for a few seconds on my last day in Leh. Very exciting (though less exciting than seeing yaks). I also randomly went to an archery festival. Monasteries have their own festival. The Hemis festival, with its amazing looking mask dances, happens during the tourist season.
More than anywhere else I’ve visited, I came away from Ladakh amazed at the… tenacity of the human spirit, or something cheesy like that. Don’t get me wrong, life is hard everywhere in India for most people, and was hard everywhere in the world for most of human history, but life in Ladakh is harsh, even to this day. I talked to people who aren’t remotely poor but still have to melt ice for cooking or drinking water in the winter. Or is it not that harsh? Melting ice beats walking miles to the river to collect water in a giant bucket which you have to carry on your head. The laborers here are from UP and Bihar, that says something about the comparative quality of life in these places. I guess I feel like I’d survive in most places and circumstances just by some inertia of living, but in pre-electricity days would I have bothered surviving through a Ladakh winter? I could see myself giving up, but also not having the physical courage to freeze myself to death. I don’t know, it all sounds pretty bad. I probably would have fled to the plains. What are the other options? What would I have even done to pass time? Talk to my family? I can hardly get through dinner table conversations at comfortable room temperatures with an abundance of glorious food on the table. I don’t know what would happen if it were barley soup night after frozen night. I’m against drinking alcohol, but this helps me understand why people drink. Does the chaang freeze too, though?
But I could just chill (literally) with my yak all winter. That would make life worth living, after all. My life in Ladakh would be an endless cycle of waiting for summer to come, the short lived happiness of not-freezing weather, missing my yak once it leaves in the summer, waiting for my yak to come back, the brief joys of the reunion with my yak and eating apricots, and then again a miserable freezing winter, repeated until my yak dies and I get a new one, repeated until I die. No wonder Ladakh is Buddhist. But maybe some variation of this is all life really is for any of us?
I found it interesting how “North Indianized” (or should I say “Punjabified”?) Ladakh was. Even outside of touristy environments, I’d hear Hindi music more than local music, and roti-sabzi and rice-dal seemed more common than Ladakhi food. I first thought this was just for tourists, but families said this is how they eat today, and this was even the case at a monastery and in village areas. I haven’t experienced this in any other part of the country, where attachments to local food run deep. I didn’t feel there were any other contemporary cultural influences the way I’ve heard that parts of the North East look more to East Asian cultures than to mainstream Indian culture, even though East Asian cultures seem like they’d be a more natural fit for Ladakh, which if you went back in time some decades wouldn’t have felt very “Indian” at all. Given the strong cultural parallels I would have guessed more aspects of modern Ladakhi culture had more in common with Tibetan culture. To me it’s interesting how much national borders influence culture. Ladakh, bordering Pakistan and China today, has had its traditional trade routes cut off along with the influences that would have come in on those routes. Instead, the Indian influence becomes more prominent.
Chandigarh was one of the most commonly visited places of Ladakhis I met, and multiple families had second homes there where they spent the winter. It seems most families who can afford it leave for the winter.
The geopolitical status of many places is interesting. Turtuk and some other places I went to used to be in Pakistan. Pangong lake is mostly in China. Obviously there’s a lot of disputed territory, and military bases are everywhere.
The famous Russian painter and writer Nicholas Roerich did a series of paintings inspired by Ladakh (I saw them at LAMO, see later).
On my last day in Leh I saw two Cannibal Corpse shirts in one day. One was worn by a teenage boy at the parade for the Dalai Lama, and the other was worn by a teenage girl at Miniso later in the day. I’ve only heard of Cannibal Corpse because my childhood friend John was a fan of them in high school. I’m pretty confident I hadn’t heard a single word about or even thought about Cannibal Corpse for over a decade and then they mysteriously showed up twice in the same day in a remote Himalayan Buddhist Union Territory of India. What are the chances? I don’t like pointless travel stories like this, but I’m including it because I hope it somehow finds its way to John one day, and I hope it warms his heart like a cheap room heater on a cold early summer night in Ladakh.
A good percentage of travelers you meet in Ladakh will be there for trekking (most of the rest seemed to be part of large and loud Marathi speaking tour groups). What is trekking and why do people do it? Some questions are beyond such attempts at analysis. What is there to say about trekkers as a group of people? They evidently belong to a different culture as I, and I must learn to accept them, even if I cannot understand them. Anyway, I have no recommendations for anything related to trekking here, but such recommendations are unnecessary, as you will get these recommendations from nearly everyone you meet there (outside of the Marathi tour groups). I am here to provide you with recommendations you will not receive from the average person you bump into at a so-called German bakery.
As for bikers, another group of people you will encounter widely in Ladakh, well, let me just say that despite the vast civilizational gulfs that lay between us, it is important to practice tolerance, for tolerance, if not the loftier and more noble ambition of acceptance, is the only way forward in our diverse, pluralistic, and globalized world. I must admit that I may not succeed in practicing what I preach here, but preaching it gives me an ideal to hold myself to.
All over Ladakh are funny road signs telling you to slow down. Some are basic and only nominally clever, i.e. “To stay married, divorce speed,” “Drive with care, accident rare,” and “Wherever you drive, arrive alive.” Some are funnier, like “After whisky driving risky.” A few of these signs were kinda brilliant, though. My two favorites were "It’s better to be Mr. Late than late Mr." and "Hug kids at home but belt them in car."
I thought “Be gentle on my curves” was weird. There’s also “Don’t be Gama in the land of Lama,” an obscure reference to The Great Gama. Here’s an interesting Twitter thread about him that I recommend (though he doesn’t really have anything to do with Ladakh), and here’s a less interesting Twitter thread about the road signs referring to Gama, still worth reading.
There are also military propaganda signs, such as “My only regret is I don’t have more than one life to give to my country.” And a lot of cheesy inspiration quotes as well. You’ll also notice a lot of signs that begin with “BRO”, which makes them sound very funny but unfortunately I shall spoil it for you that it’s just an acronym for “Border Roads Organization.” This only makes “BRO can make road anywhere except in the sky” slightly less ridiculous though.
There’s a book sold in some Ladakh book stores compiling these road signs, if you’re into tacky coffee table or bathroom humor books then this is probably a good one.
Leh City Guide
Leh is the only well developed part of Ladakh, and though I'd call it a small town I think it offers a good combination of things I like about visiting cities (nice restaurants, interesting history and architecture, quality museums, a cultural scene, fancy grocery stores, decent infrastructure, etc) as well as a laid back lifestyle and the feeling of being in nature (many homes have large gardens, you get beautiful views of mountains, etc). I’d say it’s one of the only places in India to have this combination, even though Ladakh is more beautiful once you get out of Leh. I had a lot of fun in the month or so I spent here and would gladly go back for another extended WFH stay.
Leh is fairly small and you could easily cover it all in a day if you want to. I think most people just walk down the two main bazaar lanes and see the palace, but there’s a fair amount more to do and see. The palace, though beautiful from the outside, isn’t really worth going into as it's largely empty inside. If you want to go inside a palace, go with the Stok Palace, which I talk about later. As for the bazaar, I liked it even though it's very touristy and commercialized. It has a nice vibe, and you do find women selling local produce there, plus some cool architecture. Go down the side lanes for the more local market area, though.
The coolest part of the city is the old town. This consists of the old mud houses in the area below the palace but beyond the market, and it’s the best preserved historic area in all of Ladakh. Though I don’t recommend going inside the palace, I do recommend walking up to it from the old town where you’ll see a lot of interesting old homes and get great views. A few have been restored into cafes or art spaces. I highly recommend going into LAMO (Ladakh Arts and Media Organization) which has interesting local art exhibits as well as a well preserved old kitchen that you can see.
Much of the restoration work in the neighborhood is by the Tibet Heritage Fund, and they run tours of the old city area which are worth doing if you have time. When I was there the tours operated daily at 2 PM from a cafe called Lala’s, and I think it cost 700 inr per person. Go into Lala’s and ask them about it. It was more focused on architecture and their restoration work than on history or culture, which I would have liked more insight into, but I enjoyed it and we got to go into many old buildings that we wouldn’t have been able to see on our own, including old homes and a great temple. Definitely recommended. I’m not sure if there are other tours offered regularly in the area.
This article contains a ton of great background info and old photos on the neighborhood, if that has too many words for you then try this one.
Another highlight is the Central Asian Museum, which was also set up by the Tibet Heritage Fund. This helped bring old world Ladakh to life for me, and it’s the best museum in Ladakh (and among the best small museums in India, there’s a message here on public vs. private enterprises…). Lots of great old artifacts and photos, and the building, made to look like an old silk road tower, is a great example of how new buildings can successfully be made in old architectural styles. This is right next to the oldest mosque in Leh and is set in the former courtyard.
The entrance to the Central Asian Museum is on the bakery street, from where you should definitely get fresh bread.
I didn’t like the Hall of Fame museum, which is focused on the military. Maybe there’s some interesting stuff if you’re a huge military nerd. Still, there’s not much in terms of artifacts, it’s mostly large displays with text and photos, and it’s nearly impossible to read huge text blocks when it is packed with people (the place is mysteriously ridiculously popular). The Zorawar Fort is only worth visiting if you have some special interest in it.
Beyond that, there’s not much to see and one or two days would suffice, but it’s a nice place to hang out in, a great place to work from home, a great place for a food trip (for which you’ll want more time, see the food section), and a good base to explore some of the stuff near Leh, of which there is quite a bit. I’m really glad I got to live in Leh for over a month and I hope to return.
Cinemas:
See also my post where I give some movie recommendations and briefly discuss the local Ladakhi language film scene.
There once was a proper single screen cinema in the center of Leh that ran from I believe the late 60s until 2013, called Delite Cinema. They would get film prints after the military did, and based on the timing it’s possible part of the reason they shut is because film prints were phased out and it didn’t make financial sense to upgrade to a digital projector. I couldn't find any info about the cinema online, but our host at Eco Homestay said they would show a lot of Dara Singh films back in the day.
Delite Cinema is still standing and can be found on Google Maps. It is right by Old Ladakh Guest House which if I recall correctly was the first guesthouse/homestay in Leh and whose owners also owned the cinema. A few photos of the theater that I took:
Today, there are only two movie theaters open to the public (so, excluding the military auditorium) currently operating in Ladakh, and when I was there there was only one, an ugly blow-up structure. I can’t imagine I’d like the setup. But props to Picture Time for setting it up, just outside of Leh. They run a number of mobile, inflatable cinemas which they take to small, remote markets. I regret that I didn't go, but I wasn't up for paying 1000+ rupees on cabs to go see an unsubtitled Hindi movie just to check out the theater.
In December 2023, a brand I've never heard of called Chhotu Maharaj, which claims to be India's fastest growing theater chain, also opened a funny looking theater in a corner of Leh. I thought the igloo design was thematically chosen for Ladakh, but it turns out all of their theaters have this shape. This one looks a little nicer than Picture Time but it's hard to tell.
Places near Leh to visit:
If staying in Leh, there are many places I recommend visiting that are under two hours away and make for great day trips from Leh. Though I'm recommending individual places, as with everywhere in Ladakh the drives can be as noteworthy as wherever you are going. This is broken into three categories: Stok, East of Leh, and West of Leh.
Stok
Stok is about 20 minutes from Leh and I highly recommend going. It makes for a good half day trip from Leh and is also a good place to stay as there are what seem to be nice hotels and homestays, and there are good food options there as well.
The royal family of Ladakh has been living in Stok for a few hundred years, and part of the palace is a very expensive hotel, while another part of it is a museum which I highly recommend. It’s a very cool palace with unique architecture and lots of nice artifacts, and it’s the only place you can go to get a feel of royal Ladakh.
(In the museum are pictures of the royal family and one of them has a family member posing with a “famous Japanese composer” but it doesn’t tell us the composer’s name. Unfortunately photographs are not allowed there, and I suffer from a mild case of face blindness. I don't think it was Ryuichi Sakamoto, and various google searches have yielded nothing, so I am unable to figure it out. This has been bothering me ever since so if anybody goes and is able to recognize Japanese composers by their faces, do let me know.)
If you book in advance, you can have a meal at the palace through the great homemade food experience Artisanal Alchemy, which I wrote about in my Leh food post. We ate at the host’s house in Leh, but if you want to pay extra and glam it up you can do it here.
Across from the palace is the old palace garden area which is now a restaurant and part of the hotel. The food doesn’t look special enough to waste a meal on but it's a beautiful area and worth walking through and relaxing in, so go and order a beverage and sit in the garden. The bottled apricot juice they sold here was pretty good, obviously not as good as the fresh ones we got elsewhere, but it was much better than the cheaper brand of apricot juice that most shops and restaurants sell.
Even better than the palace museum is Gyap Thago Heritage Home. This might be the best preserved heritage home in all of Ladakh, and it’s really fascinating. Highly recommended. The family lives in the modern house next door where they have a homestay and they also host people for Ladakhi lunches which seem great. The home can be visited if someone is there to show you around, but I would recommend calling ahead and booking an appointment. The guy who gave us the tour, Jimmy, was incredibly nice, and we briefly met his mom. We planned to take my in-laws here for a meal when they came to town, but we unfortunately had to cancel as my mother in law got oxygen sickness in Pangong the day before. This seems like one of the best places to have a traditional Ladakhi meal, though, and when we visited the home they offered us some homemade chaang and showed us how they made it.
Sadly the very nice vegan place Kaya Cafe in Stok has closed. Oh well.
Also in Stok is Neo Ladakh Homestay, aka Nyamshan House, run by a Japanese woman (maybe she knows the mystery composer?) and her Ladakhi husband. Their food is just for guests but it looks really good. The woman also bakes good quality sourdough bread which we ordered to Leh a few times, or you could probably pick it up in Stok. I want to stay there. Their website is funny and worth reading:
"What we serve: Ladakhi traditional dish easy version for beginner,its happens that sometime Ladakhi people in trying to appease their guest,offer pure ladakhi dish which I guess many foreigner had a hard time in digestion and ends up with stomache.
We are hoping to make your stay more safer and enjoyable."
East of Leh - Shey, Thiksey, Hemis, & Chemrey
East of Leh is the typical tourist monastery tour which takes you to Shey, Thiksey, and Hemis. This is another great half day trip. Hemis is about an hour away from Leh, and the rest are on the way.
Hemis is the highlight of them, and I highly recommend it. The drive up to the monastery is spectacular, and there is a great museum inside, it is definitely the best of the Buddhist monastery museums in Ladakh. The temples are quite beautiful as well. Shey is the former capital from before Leh. The old palace is awesome to see from the road, but there's not much to see inside. I love walking around old structures like this, though. Thiksey is also stunning to drive by, and the temples inside are beautiful and worth visiting, though like Hemis it is very crowded.
These tours also take you to the Rancho school, which is a tacky waste of time, even if you’re a 3 Idiots fan.
We asked the driver to go out of the way near Hemis to see the Chemrey monastery, which I recommend. It’s really stunning to see as you approach it, and though the insides aren’t as beautiful as the other monasteries, it hardly gets tourists so you get a different feel from it. When we went it was lunchtime and they invited us to eat with the monks, which was fun.
Though decent food options are limited outside of Leh, I recently heard of the Royal Enfield Camp Kharu which looks like a great place to stop for food and drinks near Hemis. Some info here.
West of Leh
West of Leh offers up other things you can do as a half day trip from Leh with the SECMOL Campus, Alchi, Likir, Basgo, Saspol Caves, and Gurudwara Pathar Sahib, though I’d prioritize Stok and the East of Leh stuff more, and the West of Leh stuff requires more driving. This is all great if time permits, though.
SECMOL Campus is the “real” Rancho school, so if you for some reason feel compelled to go there then choose this instead. I would prioritize the historical stuff over this but it was cool to see. An interesting alternative school that emphasizes hands-on learning and has cool architecture. You should call ahead for tour timings.
Alchi monastery has the best preserved old Buddhist artwork in Ladakh, and it is really striking. However, there’s a tradeoff because the architecture of the monastery, which is on flat land, lacks the grandeur of the hill-set monasteries. Still, definitely worth visiting. The town does have some (abandoned?) mud houses built into a hill, that’s more visually impressive. Alchi is probably the West of Leh highlight. Check out this article by William Dalrymple on Alchi.
Ladakh’s most famous restaurant might be Alchi Kitchen, right outside the Alchi monastery. I would describe the food we got as touristy, and wouldn’t suggest going out of your way for it. However, if you are going to Alchi, then sure, go eat there, why not, just don’t order what we ordered. We got a khambir sandwich (mayonnaise-y, nothing local about the flavors, not nearly as good as De Khambir’s), mokmoks (the stuffing had corn, enough said), and thukpa (I didn’t taste of any the characteristic elements of Ladakhi thukpa, the yak cheese, the local peas, the local greens, etc, it was just a more generic noodle soup). With that said, it was all pretty good, I enjoyed it all, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the other dishes on the menu were more authentic. The menu changes, but when we were there they had chutagi, skyu, o-skyu, and some others. I could see those being more authentic, because chances are people ordering those want something more authentic, while people ordering thukpa and momos are more likely to want something that tastes like what they’ve had at a Tibetan restaurant in Delhi, maybe, and a similar dynamic goes for someone ordering a khambir sandwich. Anyway, the place is nice, I liked the open kitchen and the Ladakhi kitchen design, the homemade apricot juice was excellent, and perhaps it is low-brow and touristy but I loved the chocolate mokmoks. The chef is very nice, which is partly why I feel bad being critical, and I feel like if she were cooking privately she’d make a great, interesting Ladakhi meal. If you go to the restaurant’s Instagram you’ll see all sorts of great looking traditional Ladakhi dishes that aren’t on the menu which I wished I could have, and you’ll also see some daily specials. Anyway I enjoyed the food and the restaurant and would eat there again if I went to Alchi, and I wish more out of the way tourist attractions in India had restaurants this good right outside of them. I just don’t think it’s as good as the best Ladakhi restaurants in Leh.
The Saspol Caves are very cool. Nice, well preserved Buddhist artwork in a cave. Walking up and climbing around is half the fun.
Likir is famous for its pottery, my wife had a great time doing pottery there. I don’t know much about this or why it’s special but if anyone wants more info on this I can ask her, or you can probably google it. Likir also has a nice monastery with a cool museum, I recommend this if you’re nearby. Lots of great old artifacts which are in worse shape than what you’ll find in the Hemis museum but that only adds to their charm.
Basgo is an old capital, very cool ruins, but the main temple was locked when I went. Probably not worth visiting for most people, seeing it from the road is fine. I liked going though.
Gurudwara Pathar Sahib is worth stopping by. The story behind it is cool, with a demon throwing a giant rock at Guru Nanak, the rock turning to puddy, and now there’s a Nanak-shaped indentation in the rock. The live music inside is great, as is the wheat halwa, and there’s decent food at the langar, though I say you save room for more Ladakhi food.
I also recommend stopping at the meeting point of the Indus and Zanskar Rivers. That was really cool to see!
One place we wanted to visit in the West of Leh stretch was Chilling, which is an artisan’s village that makes metal crafts, but we never got around to it because it was a 40 minute detour from the main road and would have cost us 2000 more rupees, which didn’t seem worth it at the time, but in retrospect I kinda wish we went.
Where To Stay
Ladakh has a big homestay scene and I would recommend staying in homestays which are a great way to experience Ladakhi culture and for me were a big part of my experience traveling in Ladakh. In Leh you can get great, clean, modern homestays for 3-4k a night, inclusive of food (prices may have gone up since writing this). In village I went to, the homestays were generally less clean/modern (while also being cheaper), though I still enjoyed the experiences and would recommend it depending on your comfort requirements (and I’m sure there were some nicer ones that I missed). I didn't care as much for the homestays we did in Nubra Valley, though, which catered too much to tourists for my tastes. Every homestay we went to had beautiful gardens where they grew most of their food.
Hotels in Ladakh are more expensive than what you’ll get in much of India, expect the very nice ones to be in the range of 15k, while 7k doesn’t give you the same bang for your buck as many other parts of the country (this was in summer, though, winters may be different, and I think I’d go with a big hotel over a homestay in the winter for the central heating, insulated pipes, etc…).
Ladakh has some pretty spectacular resorts that I’d love to stay in, though I also like the homestay experiences. Depending on your interests and budget levels, I’d go for a homestay in Leh, where the homestays are really nice and also where you won’t spend a ton of time in as there’s a lot to do, and then do the nice resorts in some places like Nubra Valley where there don’t seem to be as many nice homestays and where a nice resort has more value as there’s less to do and you'll just want a beautiful place to relax. But that’s me.
I’ll first list the places I stayed in and around Leh (homestays and a few resorts), then I will list the village homestays I did outside of Leh.
In and Around Leh:
I stayed in three different homestays in Leh and two hotels within 20 minutes of Leh when my in-laws came to town. I didn’t like one of the homestays so I won’t write about it but the two others are great.
We stayed on and off for a number of weeks at Gangjore homestay (listed on Google Maps under the wrong location but with a phone number as “Gangjore Boutique Stay”, and then in the right location but without a phone number as “Gangjore farmhouse stay guest house and rental apartments,” listings are subject to change but you’ll figure it out, they’re also on Airbnb). The rooms are very clean, the garden is very pretty, you get great views of the mountains, the food (mostly North Indian) is very good, there’s good wi-fi for working, and the family is super nice. My wife is still friendly with our host Deskit. I definitely recommend it, and it’s great for working from home. It takes about 20-25 minutes walking to get to the main market (which is only a few minutes driving but even that would probably cost you 500 rupees). It’s less than ten minutes walking to my favorite restaurant Tsas, and there were some other nice things within a short walking distance.
We also stayed on and off I think three times at Eco Homestay, which is also really nice and also recommended. Much of what I said about Gangjore applies, though I found Eco Homestay less comfortable as a work from home place for whatever reason (the rooms at Gangjore are brighter and cheerier and a touch nicer), but on the other hand the location is better for walking, it takes just around 10 minutes to get to the market. The family is very sweet, the auntie cooks some of the best Ladakhi food I’ve had (though most of the food is North Indian, but still very good), and the uncle is Ladakh’s most talkative person and will spend hours talking to you about Ladakhi culture and history, an activity that I recommend! Try to get a room overlooking the garden.
Those are both great options, but if you want a homestay that’s higher end I recommend Jade House, where I went to for a great meal (see Artisanal Alchemy in my food section). If you want a high end hotel, the best place in Leh is definitely Dolkhar (see Tsas in my food section).
I’m not really a good person to talk about hotels/resorts since I rarely stay in them. I want a cultural experience so I usually stay in homestays when they’re available, and otherwise in my travels I typically stay in Airbnbs. Nevertheless, here are the resorts outside of Leh we stayed in when my in-laws came to town.
The Sarai in Saboo village is around 20 minutes from Leh. It’s definitely one of Ladakh’s best hotels. The property is really beautiful and has Ladakhi style architecture, and some of the food is great, Syah is one of Ladakh’s best restaurants (see the food section above for more on Syah, though whether it’s open I don’t know) and the breakfast and dinner buffets were quite good as well. The tea time cookies were excellent. If you want a resort type stay and can afford it (it was around 15k when we went), I definitely recommend it here. They also have fancy tent properties in Nubra and Pangong, they seem like some of the nicest in the area and the prices aren’t horrible (7kish) but I don’t know, staying in a tent at that price point doesn’t excite me much.
We also stayed in Le Mentok, which is around 15 minutes from Leh. It was okay. I suspect most people would be happy with it, and the property is pretty and rooms are nice, clean, and comfortable, but it’s just a generic resort and I don’t get much out of those unless they’re more luxurious and have more character. I would rather have been in a homestay in Leh. I think for a resort style place in this price range (we paid around 7k) you probably can’t do much better in Ladakh, but I think if that’s your budget you should just save your money and splurge somewhere else. I found the service to be lackluster, the food is mediocre (and nothing local, despite the website saying they have local stuff, and the Nepali staff never even heard of the local staples we asked for). The website makes it look nicer than it is. I don’t know, I’m probably being too fussy. If you look at photos and think it looks nice, you’ll probably like it.
Villages Outside of Leh:
We stayed in a few different homestays around an hour from Leh. All had their pros and cons (cons often being that they’re hard and expensive to get to, and have poor network connectivity, and have little to do once you're there) but I enjoyed my stays in all of them. I loved getting to experience village life, even though it is kind of boring. I guess that’s the point. I'm not very talkative with strangers but people who are better than me at making friends will likely get a lot out of these stays.
My favorite village stay we went to was probably Sumdo Saspochey Homestay. It’s in a tiny, very remote village in the mountains. There’s not really anything there, but it’s beautiful and a good place to go to get away from everything. The drive there is an adventure. The accommodation was basic but comfortable. What I most liked about it was the older couple who run it. They don’t speak English, but my wife was able to translate from Hindi and they were very warm and funny and told lots of stories. The auntie’s food was some of my favorite in Ladakh (when it wasn’t oversalted, but she had a heavy hand there and I didn’t have it in me to say anything, just tell her you suffer from hypertension or something and have to watch your sodium and you’ll get delicious Ladakhi food). Amazing vegetable garden. The location is good for visiting places nearby such as Alchi, Saspol, and Likir, though those could easily be a day trip from Leh. Pretty bad network as of 2022, but we managed to get a bit of work done regardless.
The nicest homestay we stayed in in all of Ladakh was Hidden North Homestay in Phyang. It’s the one homestay we had outside of Leh which was very clean and modern (also our most expensive). Nice place to work from home, it’s also the only place outside Leh where we had good wifi, though it was definitely inconsistent. Great North Indian food made by the Italian woman who married a local guy and runs the place. The family is very nice and a good resource of information on Ladakh and Ladakhi culture. Half the reason to stay at homestays is to talk to old people and there were no old people here, so that's a minus point, but also I was able to converse in English here more than I could in most places, and talking to an Italian woman who has lived in Ladakh for many years gave me a good perspective, so it evens out. We had nice views, but I didn’t find the village to be as charming as some of the others we stayed in, though maybe I didn’t explore enough, but there was nothing that nice within walking distance. However the property itself is quite nice. There’s a beautiful monastery in the village but we didn’t visit it.
There was also Hidden Valley Homestay in Stakmo. I liked the village a lot, you can take really nice short walks, and the hosts were very nice though we didn’t talk to them a ton. We got to see how they farm with their yak, that was a highlight. Food was just okay. Good location to visit Thiksey, Shey, and Hemis, though those are also easy day trips from Leh. Bad network as of 2022.
We also stayed at the homestay run by the same people who run the Likir pottery studio so my wife could do pottery for a few days. I don’t really recommend going unless you want to do pottery as the accommodation is very basic and the food isn’t great, but I was still comfortable and happy going for a few days. The family was nice, and there were some people staying there long term. The network was surprisingly decent. The village is attractive to drive through and the monastery was really cool but it’s not a nice village to walk around in.
While I really liked all of these, my favorite village stays were in further away, more remote, greener and thus prettier places such as Turtuk and the Aryan Valley (covered in other posts). But they all have their own appeal.
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