All of Ladakh,
low to high.

The half of Ladakh nobody sells you. Kargil town sits at about 2,700 metres and is largely Muslim — which is the first correction this trip makes to whatever you arrived believing. South of it the Suru valley opens out under the Nun Kun massif, seven thousand metres of it, and the villages are green in a way nothing else here is.

At Mulbekh, on the road east, a Maitreya Buddha some nine metres tall is cut directly into a roadside rock and is generally reckoned to be over a thousand years old — carved when this was a route rather than a border. Drass, just west, is one of the coldest inhabited places anywhere. And the 1999 war happened on the ridges above the road; there is a memorial, and there are people who were here.

The part that was a dead end until now. Over Pensi La, at about 4,400 metres, into a valley that spent most of its history reachable for four months a year and frozen shut for the rest. Padum is the centre of it. Karsha and Stongdey hang off the valley walls.

And then Phuktal, which is the single most extraordinary building in this zone: a monastery built into the mouth of a cliff cave, honeycombed down the rock face at about 3,850 metres, with no road to it. You walk the last stretch in from Purne — two or three hours — and the walk is the reason it still feels like arriving somewhere. Four nights here, and most Ladakh itineraries give it none.

Nine-hundred-year-old paintings, and no photography. Alchi is the reason to slow down on the Indus. Its temples hold the oldest surviving murals in Ladakh — made in the eleventh and twelfth centuries by Kashmiri artists, before the Tibetan style arrived and standardised everything. The faces are not Tibetan faces. You are looking at a lost school.

You cannot photograph inside, which turns out to be a gift: everyone actually looks. It is dim, and it needs someone who can read it, and it is worth a full morning rather than the twenty minutes a Leh day-trip allows. Lamayuru, Basgo, Likir and Hemis are all on this stretch too, and Hemis has a festival in summer worth building the dates around.

A base, and a good one — just not the trip. By the time we reach Leh you'll have been in the mountains a week, which means you get to enjoy it rather than convalesce in it. The old town below the palace, the Friday market, the monasteries within an hour — Thiksey at dawn, Shey, Stakna. Two or three nights, used as a hinge between the low half of the trip and the high half.

Over the pass, and then all the way to the end of the road. Khardung La at about 5,360 metres gets crossed and photographed and left behind; nobody should sleep up there. Below it Nubra is sand dunes at ten thousand feet, with double-humped Bactrian camels still grazing them — actual Silk Road leftovers, not a photo prop. Diskit's monastery looks down the valley from a cliff.

Then Turtuk, which is the best three hours in Nubra. It is a Balti village, and until the war of 1971 it was in Pakistan. The border moved; the village didn't. It only opened to visitors in 2010, families here still have relatives on the other side of a line they cannot cross, and you can be told all of this over tea by someone whose grandparents woke up in a different country. Nothing else in Ladakh puts modern history that close to your face.

The emptiness, which is the actual subject. Pangong at about 4,350 metres is genuinely beautiful and genuinely overrun; we go, early, and don't stay near the crowd. Tso Moriri at about 4,520 metres, with Korzok on its shore, is the better lake and a fraction of the people. In between, a plateau with nothing on it for hours, kiang and occasionally wolves.

And at the far end, Hanle. Nine nights of adaptation earn you this: India's first Dark Sky Reserve, a Bortle 1 sky — the darkest classification there is — the national observatory at about 4,500 metres, and the world's highest imaging Cherenkov telescope sitting on a ridge above the village. It goes last because at 4,250 metres, arriving unacclimatised, you would sleep through the only thing you came for.

Kargil, with someone who lives there. On the first full day, before any Buddhism at all, an afternoon in a Kargili household. It resets the whole trip: you stop travelling through "Buddhist Ladakh" and start travelling through a real place with an argument in it.

Walking in to Phuktal. Two or three hours up the Lungnak from Purne, and then the cave. There is no road and there should never be one. Take the walk slowly — you're at 3,850 metres and this is the first real exertion of the trip, which is exactly why it isn't in week one.

Alchi, in the dark, with a scholar. A full morning in the Sumtsek with someone who can tell you what you're looking at and why the faces aren't Tibetan. Phones away — you can't photograph it anyway. Name the scholar or guide you actually use here.

Turtuk, in a Balti kitchen. The 1971 border, told by the family it happened to. This is the one I'd fight hardest to keep in the itinerary, and it needs an unhurried afternoon rather than a stop on the way somewhere.

An afternoon at four thousand metres doing absolutely nothing. This is a real item, not a gap. It is medically the most valuable hour in the trip and, oddly, the one people remember — a plateau, no phone signal, nowhere to be. Do not let me fill it.

Hanle, in the middle of the night, with an astronomer. Under a Bortle 1 sky — the darkest there is — in a village that has agreed to live in the dark to protect it: lights indoors only, blackout curtains, yellow street lamps, no high beams, vehicles off the road at night. You will see the Milky Way cast a shadow. Standing up at 4,250 metres at one in the morning and enjoying it is what the previous fifteen nights were for. Confirm what access you can actually arrange at the observatory.

Srinagar. A shikara, a good dinner, and an early start — this night exists to put you on a road rather than a runway.

Over Zoji La to Kargil. Three nights at 2,700 metres: the town, an afternoon in a household, the Suru valley under Nun Kun, Mulbekh's rock-cut Maitreya, and the 1999 ridges. Nothing strenuous. You are acclimatising and pretending you're sightseeing.

South over Pensi La into Zanskar. Padum as a base, Karsha and Stongdey, and the walk in to Phuktal with a night at Purne for those who want it. Four nights, and the remotest stretch of the trip.

North on the new road to the Indus. Lamayuru, then a full morning at Alchi, then Basgo and Likir at the right hours. Into Leh for three nights — Thiksey at dawn, the old town, the market, and one entirely free day.

Over Khardung La into Nubra: the dunes, Diskit, and the long afternoon at Turtuk. Then east into the Changthang — Pangong early and away from the crowd, Tso Moriri and Korzok, the empty afternoon, and Hanle for the sky.

Back across the plateau to Leh, slowly, with one stop that isn't in any plan. A last night in town and a morning flight out, from 3,500 metres, feeling entirely normal about it.

Zanskar comes out — reluctantly, because it's the best of it, but it's the part that needs four nights or none. Everything else survives, including the ascent profile, which is the part I won't cut.