My first Pangong morning, I woke up at four in the morning, walked out of the tent in two pairs of socks, and slipped on the gravel. I caught myself on the rope between the tent posts. I felt very smug for about three seconds, until I realised the only person who would have witnessed the fall was a yak, and the yak was already looking at me the way yaks look at humans who have decided to wake up at four in the morning in October at fourteen thousand feet.
I got back up. I walked the hundred metres to the edge of the lake. The wind was doing something to the surface, but the lake was mostly still. The sky behind the mountains on the far side was starting to change colour. There was nobody else there. The eight other tents at the camp were dark and silent.
I had been to Pangong the previous afternoon. Most people see it like that. You arrive after a six-hour drive from Leh, the light is flat, the colour of the water is one shade of blue (the famous one, the postcard one), you take your photos, you eat dinner, you sleep. You leave the next morning. You go home and say you have been to Pangong.
You have not been to Pangong, really. You have been to a place that has the same name.
The lake at 4 am in October is a different lake. The light moves across the water for about forty-five minutes and the colour is not one shade of anything. It does six or seven things, including a yellow-grey that looks impossible, and then it settles into a blue that is darker and more serious than the noon postcard one. There is no sound at all. The yaks, by 5 am, are starting to grunt at each other in the distance. That is the entire soundtrack.
I tell you all this because the single most important thing about Ladakh is that you stay one extra night at the places that deserve it. Most agencies sell "Nubra one night, Pangong one night" because it ticks both boxes. The right way is two nights at Pangong, and skip a Nubra night if you have to.
This is also the thing I got wrong on my first Ladakh trip, in 2022. I did the standard rush. I came back with a chest infection from a combination of altitude, dust, and trying to be a person who does not need rest days. I have been back twice since. The trip is now what it should have been the first time.
Things I changed.
I fly in now. Always. The Manali-Leh road is iconic and I will not pretend otherwise, but for a first Ladakh trip, the altitude gain is too fast and you spend Day 1 in Leh with a headache instead of acclimatising. Fly in. If you must do the road, do Srinagar-Leh-Manali as a separate trip the second time, going east to west, gentler altitude gain.
I take Day 1 in Leh seriously now. I do not do a market walk. I do not visit a monastery. I lie in bed in my homestay, drink three litres of water, sleep early. Most travellers ignore this advice and try to "fit something in." Most travellers also have headaches on Day 2.
I start Diamox the day before I leave Bangalore. I asked a GP about it after my first trip's chest infection. He prescribed the standard prophylactic dose. The side effects (tingling fingers, slightly more frequent bathroom visits) are nothing compared to the trip not going sideways. I am not a doctor and you should ask yours.
I carry twenty thousand rupees in cash. The Leh ATMs work most of the time. The ones in Nubra, Pangong, and Tso Moriri do not. Most homestays prefer cash, the petrol pumps will only sell to cash sometimes, and the small dhabas on the routes do not have UPI signals.
I do not photograph the Khardung La signboard anymore. The "world's highest motorable pass" claim is technically disputed and the sign is at 5,359 metres, which is high enough that you should not spend more than fifteen minutes up there. The light is poor for photos. The view is okay, not better than several other passes. Skip it.
I do, however, do the small monasteries that nobody mentions. Lamayuru, Likir, Alchi. Alchi specifically has thousand-year-old murals on the walls that are some of the oldest in the Tibetan Buddhist world. I sat in the small dark room with the original paintings for thirty minutes and a monk came in and lit a single butter lamp. The light reflected off the gold paint on the murals. I did not take a photograph. There are some things you do not want to flatten into a phone screen.
The bike rental in Leh runs around twelve to eighteen hundred rupees a day for a Royal Enfield. Inspect the bike before you pay, especially the brake lines and the spare tube. The insurance is basic. I have done it both ways (bike one trip, hired Innova with driver another) and for a first Ladakh trip I now suggest the Innova. You spend more time looking out the window, less time worried about the road surface.
The food worth caring about: the Tibetan breakfast at Bon Appetit in Leh (the German bakery has been there for thirty years), the thukpa at any small place near the main bazaar, and the Israeli food at Lala's if you have been bike-touring for four days and want something carb-heavy. Carry chocolate and dry fruit on long drive days. Maggi tastes great at 4,500 metres, which is mostly altitude doing things to your tongue.
The total cost for a seven-night Ladakh trip, with private vehicle, two-night Pangong, Nubra, and monasteries on the Leh side, comes in around sixty to eighty thousand rupees per person from Bangalore. We arrange these at the office regularly. The bike trip can be done for forty thousand if you are comfortable on a Royal Enfield and willing to share a homestay room with another rider. The luxury version, with the Chamba Camp at Thiksey or the Stok Palace heritage stay, runs upward of two lakhs.
The season is May to September. June through August is the peak, September is the underrated month (cold at night, empty by day, the light is sharper). October is closing-down month, some homestays start shutting. Winter Ladakh is a different trip, the Chadar Trek and the frozen Pangong require proper preparation and are not a casual first-visit option.
The thing I will say about Ladakh is that it is one of the very few trips in India where the landscape is the entire point. There are no markets, no shopping, no big cities, very limited restaurants. You go for the road, the monasteries, and the lakes. If you understand that and pace yourself, the trip will pay you back many times over.
If you don't, you'll come home with a chest infection like I did, and write a blog post about it three years later.
The yak, by the way, walked away while I was watching the lake. I think it had seen enough humans for one morning.