Indian Himalaya

The Indian Himalaya is not one destination. Ladakh is high desert, brown and ochre, where Thiksey’s monks begin at dawn and the road to Hanle carries almost no traffic. Spiti is harder and colder, its mud-brick monastery at Tabo more than a thousand years old. Sikkim and the Bengal hills are wet and green by comparison, with Kangchenjunga showing for perhaps twenty minutes after sunrise before the cloud closes. Uttarakhand suits walkers who want oak forest and a view of Nanda Devi rather than altitude records. We work in village-to-village days of three to six hours, homestays where the kitchen is the warm room, and a margin for weather. Passes open late after a heavy winter.