India3 seats left
Ladakh
Leh, Ladakh
High-altitude desert, monasteries and the last clear road season
6–8 daysLate June to mid-September
16 – 22 Aug 2026
from ₹44,500 per person
IndiaHimachal PradeshMid-June to early October
Spiti Valley
The only weeks both roads into Spiti are open at once
Open departure windows
4
days
7–9 days
from · per person
₹32,000
Best window
Mid-June to early October
Why go now
Most of the year you can enter Spiti from Shimla or from Manali, but not both. Kunzum Pass on the Manali side only clears in summer, and the Shimla side becomes unreliable once heavy snow starts. Right now both are open, which is the only way to do the valley as a loop instead of a there-and-back. Kunzum typically closes to civilian traffic between mid-October and early November.
Quick facts
- Currency
- Indian Rupee (INR)
- Language spoken
- Hindi, Bhoti
- Time difference
- No difference — IST
- Flight time
- Road only — 2 days from Delhi
- Typical temperature
- 15–22 °C day, 2–7 °C night
Trip highlights
- Key Monastery above the Spiti river at sunrise
- Chandratal — the crescent lake below Kunzum Pass
- Hikkim, the world's highest post office, and a postcard home
- Fossil hunting at Langza under the Chau Chau Kang Nilda peak
- Tabo Monastery, over a thousand years of continuous mural painting
Departures
Open departure windows
Every dated window we can currently service, newest first. Seat counts update as they fill.
5 – 12 Sep 2026
7 nights / 8 days
Full Shimla-in, Manali-out loop
from
₹33,000
per person
3 – 10 Oct 2026
7 nights / 8 days
Last Kunzum crossing of the season
from
₹32,000
per person
What a typical package covers
- Return flights or train from your departure city
- Hotels or homestays on twin sharing, hand-picked rather than allocated
- Daily breakfast, and dinner where the location has no reasonable alternative
- A dedicated vehicle with driver for the whole itinerary
- All permits, entry formalities and inter-city transfers
- A named coordinator on WhatsApp for the length of the trip
Not included
- Lunches, and any meal not named in the itinerary
- Monument and activity tickets unless stated on your quote
- Anything personal — laundry, tips, phone, medical
Know before you go
- 1Spiti is a cold desert at 3,800 m. Nights drop close to freezing even in August, and most homestays have no central heating.
- 2The Shimla side gains altitude gradually and is the safer entry. We route almost every group in that way and out via Kunzum.
- 3Cash matters. ATMs exist at Kaza and nowhere reliable in between — carry enough for the whole loop.
Visa for Indian passports
No visa. Domestic travel.
Guides
7 min
Altitude sickness in Ladakh and Spiti: what actually prevents it
More Ladakh trips are cut short by acute mountain sickness than by weather or roads. Almost all of them are preventable, and the prevention is boring: go slower.
6 min
Shoulder season in India: where the monsoon helps and where it ruins the trip
Shoulder season pricing is 30–40% below peak, and for about a third of Indian destinations the experience is actually better. For another third it is unvisitable.
Questions
Spiti Valley — Frequently asked
If yours is not here, call or WhatsApp us — the desk answers, not a bot.
Yes. Our departures run on a shared tempo traveller or a private SUV depending on group size, with a driver who has done the Kunzum crossing before. Public HRTC buses do exist and are extraordinarily cheap, but they run once a day and a single landslide costs you two days of a seven-day trip.
Spiti is rawer, cheaper and much less built up — homestays instead of hotels, and villages instead of a town like Leh. Ladakh has better infrastructure, an airport, and bigger landscapes. If it is your first Himalayan cold desert, Ladakh is gentler. If you have done Ladakh and want fewer people, Spiti is the answer.
The itinerary reverses out via Shimla, which stays open far longer. That adds a day and we absorb the vehicle cost, not you. This is precisely why we stop selling Spiti loops well before the pass statistically closes rather than gambling on late-October departures.
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