Srinagar-Leh Highway

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Srinagar

   This is the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, a city of canals, wooden houseboats and old mosques, where the Mughal emperors laid out gardens such as Shalimar and Nishat to take advantage of the cool air and the view across the lake. Willow, chinar and poplar trees line the roads, and in autumn the chinar leaves turn a deep orange.

   Read the complete Srinagar write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Srinagar-Leh Highway point 1 sits at 0 km, early in the day. Next is Srinagar-Leh Highway point 2.

2. 2. Srinagar-Leh Highway point 2

   Sonamarg means the meadow of gold, and in early summer the grass here is a bright, flower-flecked green with the glaciers of the main Himalaya shining behind it. The Sindh river runs milky and fast through the middle of the valley, and fir and birch forests climb the slopes to the snowline. At about 2,700 metres, it is cool and clear, and this is where most travellers feel the road to Ladakh has really begun. Pahalgam is the nearest sizeable town, but that is in another valley, so for services you rely on what you find in the small bazaar here and on the road out of Srinagar.

   Read the complete Srinagar-Leh Highway point 2 write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Srinagar-Leh Highway point 2 comes up 41 km in. Next is Srinagar-Leh Highway point 3.

3. 3. Srinagar-Leh Highway point 3

   Zoji La is the gateway between Kashmir and Ladakh, a pass at about 3,500 metres where the green, wet world of the valley gives way abruptly to the dry, brown, empty land beyond. The climb from Sonamarg is steep and exposed, the road cut into the mountainside above the Sindh river gorge, with huge drops and narrow lanes. In many places the road is barely wide enough for two vehicles, and the surface can be rough, wet and muddy. This is regularly cited as one of the most dangerous roads in India, and the reputation is earned.

   Read the complete Srinagar-Leh Highway point 3 write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   83 km in you reach Srinagar-Leh Highway point 3. Next is Srinagar-Leh Highway point 4.

4. 4. Srinagar-Leh Highway point 4

   Drass is known as one of the coldest inhabited places in the world, and the winter temperatures here, which have fallen close to minus forty-five Celsius, justify the reputation. The small town lies at roughly 3,300 metres in a wide, treeless valley beyond the Zoji La, with snow-covered peaks all around. In summer the climate is cool and dry, with strong sun and a hard blue sky, and the barley fields turn gold in late summer. The villages are built of stone and mud brick, with flat roofs where hay is stacked for winter.

   Read the complete Srinagar-Leh Highway point 4 write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Srinagar-Leh Highway point 4, about halfway. Next is Srinagar-Leh Highway point 5.

5. 5. Kargil

   Kargil sits at about 2,700 metres in the Suru valley in Ladakh, a town of tin roofs, apricot trees and mountains the colour of ash. Most travellers know it as a night stop on the road between Srinagar and Leh, which is about right, but it has a character of its own. Most of its people are Shia Muslims of Balti descent, and the call to prayer carries across the river valley beneath peaks that stay snowy for much of the year.

   Read the complete Kargil write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Srinagar-Leh Highway point 5 sits at 166 km, about halfway. Next is Srinagar-Leh Highway point 6.

6. 6. Srinagar-Leh Highway point 6

   Few stretches of road in Ladakh change as sharply as the descent from the Fotu La to the Indus. This is the highest point on the Srinagar-Leh highway, at around 4,100 metres, marked by prayer flags and a cairn, and from there the road drops in broad bends into the valley of the great river near the village of Khalsi. Below the pass, the first apricot trees and the fields of barley appear, and suddenly there is water, green and loud, running down from the snows. After the dry heights, the contrast is a pleasure.

   Read the complete Srinagar-Leh Highway point 6 write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Srinagar-Leh Highway point 6 comes up 207 km in. Next is Srinagar-Leh Highway point 7.

7. 7. Srinagar-Leh Highway point 7

   Lamayuru looks like the Moon with a monastery stuck on top, and that is not much of an exaggeration. The gompa perches on a ridge of eroded, pale clay and sandstone above a cluster of whitewashed houses, with a landscape of ridges, gullies and crumbling pinnacles falling away on either side. Local legend says the valley was once a lake, drained by a saint who opened a gap in the mountains so that people could settle, and geologists confirm that it really was a lake bed, now carved into the strange formations known as Moonland.

   Read the complete Srinagar-Leh Highway point 7 write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   249 km in you reach Srinagar-Leh Highway point 7. Next is Srinagar-Leh Highway point 8.

8. 8. Leh

   Leh sits in the high desert of Ladakh at about 3,500 metres, in the broad valley of the Indus, with the Karakoram on one side and the Zanskar range on the other, and it is the end of the Manali-Leh highway, one of the great road journeys in the world. The last stage of that road is the best: you cross the Tanglang La, among the highest passes in the world, then drop to the Indus plain, through villages with whitewashed chortens and prayer flags, and the town appears below a hill crowned by the old Leh Palace, a nine-storey building of mud and wood modelled on the Potala in Lhasa. Behind it, the Namgyal Tsemo monastery and a ruined fort hang on the ridge.

   Read the complete Leh write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Srinagar-Leh Highway point 8, late in the day.