Ladakh Expedition via Srinagar (Fixed Departure)

Fourteen nights to Ladakh and back by way of Srinagar, self-driven in convoy with crew support, 2,384 kilometres across six kinds of terrain.

The operator counts them: mountains, high passes, highway, cold desert, rivers and glaciers, which is a fair description of what lies between Kashmir and the Tibetan plateau.

Zoji La opens the route out of the Kashmir valley, a pass that climbs out of green country into bare rock and is cut into the mountainside in places. Khardung La follows beyond Leh, one of the highest motorable roads in the world at over five thousand metres, dropping into the Nubra Valley, where sand dunes and double-humped camels sit between snow peaks. Pangong Lake comes next on the Changthang plateau, a long turquoise lake at four and a half thousand metres with almost nothing around it. The full day-by-day itinerary was not available on the operator’s page, so the running order and the acclimatisation schedule are both worth asking for.

The format is a self-drive convoy with crew support around the clock; the detailed inclusions were not itemised on the page and are worth confirming at booking, and 5 per cent GST is added to the trip cost. The price shown is per person. June to September is the season, since the passes are shut the rest of the year. Altitude is the serious matter here: much of the route sits above four thousand metres and anyone with a heart or lung condition should take medical advice first. Fifteen days is the longest trip the operator runs in India and the most varied, and the Srinagar approach is the better of the two ways in.