The ultimate guide to a road trip through Ladakh

The single greatest thing on our trip was how Ladakh's roads ran the full spectrum in a single day: smooth BRO-maintained tarmac, unpaved gravel, then a river crossing, sometimes within the same hour. The road from Leh to Nubra changed from snow-clad mountains to a barren desert in no time. If you're coming via Srinagar, the road stays in great shape right up to Amarnath. Past that stretch, you're largely on your own on rough roads to Dras.

Contrary to social media's exaggeration, we found most of the roads in Ladakh to be well maintained, smooth and wide. The only two rough stretches we got were from Diskit to Turtuk (on a day trip through unpaved rocky roads), and on the river-stoned trail from Nubra to Pangong. The latter fills up with rivermelt by afternoon May onwards. 

But some of the highest motorable passes in the world sit on this route and the altitude affects both your car and your body. Sections like the Manali-Leh highway exiting Ladakh are completely uninhabited for hours — no fuel, no food, no phone signal, and often a single-lane road where there's nowhere to go if you're hungry, tired, stuck or suffering from AMS. 

Time Out tip: Google Maps is not reliable out here and doesn't account for real-time closures, river levels, or BRO's one-way traffic control windows. The better sources are BRO's social media updates before you travel, checkpoints and army personnel along the way, and simply asking other drivers, homestay owners, or your driver (if you have one) how the road ahead is doing that day. 

Pack for temperature swings that happen within the same day, not just the season. You'll want proper thermal layers even in July, alongside strong sunscreen and lip balm (the UV from Jammu onwards is brutal even when it's cold), sunglasses, cap, and a basic medical kit. Carry oxygen canisters too — an easy, inexpensive backup to have in the car if AMS symptoms flare up somewhere remote. 

Your car needs its own checklist: plan fuel stops beforehand and top up at every opportunity rather than waiting until you're low, since stations are sparse beyond Leh, Karu, Diskit, and a handful of other towns. We carried a jerry can for the stretch between Tso Moriri and Manali, but having planned our fuel stops right the day before, we never ended up using our reserve. Carry a spare tyre, a basic toolkit, and get a full mechanical check before you leave. A tow rope is worth the boot space. Zip locks, wet towels and garbage bags came constantly handy on our trip. Pack liquids separately, as altitude and pressure changes make them prone to leaking.

One tip that's saved us more than a minute: Diamox, the altitude-sickness medication almost everyone recommends, has a very inconvenient side effect – it makes you pee constantly, which is a real problem on stretches with no facilities for hours. Carrying a portable pee tent or a similar privacy solution sounds excessive until you're standing cold and exposed on a windy ridge at 5,000 metres.

Time Out tip: Cash matters more than usual, for ATMs thin out once you leave Leh, and several homestays and eateries en route don't take cards.

Get a postpaid connection to stay connected from Jammu onwards. Switch by going to a store before the trip, though several shops appear upon crossing the border too.

Cell coverage in Ladakh is patchy at best once you're past Leh, and disappears entirely on long stretches threading through the mountains. Do your real preparation before you lose signal: download offline maps. Download lots of music lest you get tired of the same three songs on loop. It's also worth keeping a physical printed copy of your route and permits as backup. Phones die faster in the cold, and a dead battery with no signal is not the moment to discover you only had a digital copy.

Time Out tip: Google Maps’ offline mode plus a backup app like Maps.me) works well for the full region. 

Leh has enough hotels, guesthouses, and homestays that booking on the fly is usually fine, even in peak season. That changes further out. A month in advance, we had to drop Hanle from the itinerary since all homestays were sold out and we weren’t keen on sleeping in the car. Hospitality thins the higher you go as well, and while locations like Tso Moriri are romanticised for their remoteness, they come with inconsistent facilities, untrained staff and a lack of popular activities that can bog you down after a long drive if your expectations haven’t been tempered. 

In Nubra, many travellers simply reach and choose a stay in person, unless you're going for the higher-end luxury camps like Stone Hedge, The Kyagar or Lchang Nang, which are worth booking ahead regardless of season.

In places like Leh where you’re still acclimatising, look out for hotels close to the main market or a hospital, with elevator facility and sans steep driveways (especially if you’re booking a homestay, where you may have to carry your luggage to your room). Parking lots are a must. Heating, water heaters and constant electricity are not a given, so are worth asking about.

Homestays generally mean warmer hospitality and home-cooked local food; hotels offer consistent amenities and staff support. Decide what you're optimising for on each leg, rather than defaulting to the same choice throughout. The Haven in Kargil sits by the river, and some boutique options in Leh are Dolkhar and Chospa. We loved Rangjon Resorts, Pangong, for its close access to the waters and wholesome food.

A roadtrip is not a free pass to skip acclimatisation. Driving to Ladakh does not check altitude sickness. The Manali-Leh highway actually catapults you into the 5,000m Baralacha La suddenly, and hours of driving with on-road dehydration can add to your susceptibility. The Jammu route is far more gradual, but I still got altitude sickness upon reaching Leh despite a healthy day in Kargil.

Plan for at least a day or two of resting in Leh before you go anywhere else. AMS shows up on drives too, particularly if you climb too fast, which is exactly what a day trip to Khardung La without prior acclimatisation risks. You'll want to get down every fifteen minutes for the views on the way — don't. Even a minute of walking can add up to quick exertion at this altitude (something I learnt the hard way on my favourite stretch from Kargil to Leh). 

If AMS symptoms appear, the right response is to rest, hydrate, and if things don't improve, head back down to a lower altitude rather than continuing to the next stop. It's a trip-altering decision to build in flexibility for, and one more reason not to over-schedule your days here.

After music and mountain views, snacks were the single most important factor in making our journey better than our destinations! We stocked up on some interesting cup noodles, munchies and drinks at the supermarkets in Kargil and Leh. But food thins out fast once you leave Leh, and it's worth planning for that scarcity.

‘Pahadi maggie’ is not the same as Himachal or Uttarakhand’s, butter tea can be an acquired taste and not all local food joints give ‘an authentic taste of Ladakh’. The road from Nubra to Pangong had very limited eateries, while the Kargil-Leh highway had a surprisingly good South Indian cafe called The Grinning Yak operated by the Indian Army. 

Carry snacks and start with at least five litres of water per person in your car. This matters even more given how common landslide-triggered roadblocks are on some sections. We carried a camping set: burner, gas and portable utensils for soup and ramen during hour-long delays. On the more remote stretches, army canteens along the route have been known to feed stranded travellers in a pinch, but that's a fallback, not a plan.