Himalayan Ranges & High Altitude
Himalayan travel is a season-by-season craft. We plan around weather windows, monastery festival calendars, and the people who'll host you for tea at 4,200m.
Places we plan
14 places we’ve walked, returned to, and would send a friend.
Uttarakhand
Auli & Garhwal
The Garhwal high country — Auli, Joshimath, the Valley of Flowers — for travellers who want meadows and serious mountains in one trip.
Himachal Pradesh
Dharamshala & McLeodganj
The Dalai Lama's town and the Dhauladhar foothills — for travellers who want a Tibetan Buddhist circuit without the Ladakh winter.
Uttarakhand
Munsiyari & Kumaon
Kumaon's quieter side — Munsiyari, Binsar, the villages where Corbett wrote — for travellers who want forests and the Panchachuli range.
Sikkim
Sikkim
A small Himalayan state with monasteries, rhododendron forests, and a view of Kanchenjunga that earns the trip on its own.
Arunachal Pradesh
Tawang
The far north-east — Tawang monastery, the Sela Pass, Bumla on the China border — for travellers willing to do a hard road for a rare place.
Trans-Himalaya
Ladakh
Monastery valleys, snow leopards in winter, slow tea at altitude.
Trans-Himalaya
Spiti
Cold-desert villages, 1,000-year-old monasteries, no signal.
Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand
High meadows, the Valley of Flowers, char dham in low season.
Jammu & Kashmir
Srinagar
Mughal gardens terraced into the Zabarwan, a lake city worked from shikaras before dawn, and the Sind and Lidder valleys an hour out.
Himachal Pradesh
Shimla
The Raj's summer capital, reached on a UNESCO-listed narrow-gauge line through 102 tunnels, with deodar ridge walks starting behind the Mall.
Himachal Pradesh
Manali
Head of the Kullu valley — cedar temples and hot springs in old Manali, and the road over Rohtang into Lahaul and Spiti.
Uttarakhand
Rishikesh
Where the Ganga leaves the mountains — evening aarti on the ghats, white water above town, and the trailhead for the Char Dham.
Uttarakhand
Nainital
A lake in a crater of oak and rhododendron, Kumaon's colonial hill capital, and Corbett and the Binsar forests within a short drive.
West Bengal
Darjeeling
Kangchenjunga at dawn from Tiger Hill, a steam railway that has run since 1881, and tea estates you can walk into rather than photograph.
Who plans this · Himalayas
Shailesh on Himalayan Ranges.
Every Himalayan valley has a season. We've walked Spiti in October, Ladakh in February, Garhwal in late May. The trip you can take depends entirely on the month you can take it.
We plan around weather windows, monastery festivals, and the families who'll have you for tea at 4,200m.
“Altitude is a teacher. The patient travelers come back changed.”