Himalaya and mountain experiences in India

Ladakh is a Union Territory in its own right, a high-altitude Buddhist desert on the far side of the Himalaya where Leh, the base for every trip, sits at about 3,500m and the famous sights — Khardung La, Pangong Tso, the passes — are higher still. Kashmir, by contrast, is a lower, greener Himalayan valley: Srinagar's Dal Lake sits at a gentle altitude, and the region has genuine year-round appeal, from spring tulips to winter skiing at Gulmarg. Further east, Uttarakhand's Valley of Flowers and West Bengal's Darjeeling hills are lower-altitude, shorter-season-in-a-different-way trips built around a monsoon trekking window and a hill-station railway respectively, rather than the acclimatisation demands of Ladakh or the seasonal road-opening calendar of the high passes.

Because the demands are so different, the right first question is not 'which is the most beautiful' — most of them are — but 'what can this trip ask of me, and when can it actually run'.

If you want the classic high-altitude Ladakh experience with the fewest moving parts, the Ladakh road trip out of Leh is the place to start. If dunes, Bactrian camels and the iconic blue of Pangong Tso matter more than efficiency, build in the extra days for the Leh-Nubra-Pangong circuit. Travellers who want the drive itself as the destination should look at the Manali-Leh highway, one of the great high-altitude road journeys, or Spiti Valley's cold-desert monasteries reached via Shimla-Kinnaur or the Manali-Kunzum La route depending on season.

For a gentler, non-technical trip, Kashmir's Gulmarg gondola and skiing, or a shikara and houseboat stay on Dal Lake, need no acclimatisation and run across most of the year. Keen walkers with a window in the monsoon-to-early-autumn months should look at Uttarakhand's Valley of Flowers trek, and anyone building a wider East India or hill-station trip can add the Darjeeling toy train for the Himalayan views without any of the altitude planning the western trips need.

Ladakh's travel season is genuinely short: the high passes and overland routes open from around May and start closing again from October, with November to March bitterly cold and largely cut off, the preserve of hardy travellers and the frozen-river Chadar trek. Kashmir, by contrast, works across most of the year — a green season from April to October (tulips in early April, meadows in June and July, autumn colour by mid-October) and a snow season from December to February when Gulmarg becomes one of India's few ski destinations. Kashmir is also a sensitive region and government travel advice varies and changes, so check your own government's current guidance and your travel insurance policy before booking.

Further east, Uttarakhand's Valley of Flowers opens only in a monsoon-to-early-autumn window each year (the exact opening and closing dates are set by the forest department annually), and Darjeeling's toy train railway runs across most of the year but is subject to monsoon disruption on the hill roads and tracks. Neither carries Ladakh's altitude risk or its permit requirements.