Srinagar to Leh: The Himalayan Crossing

Fly into Srinagar and go straight onto a cedar houseboat on Dal or Nigeen, most of them built between the 1900s and the 1930s when the maharaja would not sell land to the British and the British built on the water instead. A shikara out through the floating gardens in the last hour of light, and an evening of Kashmiri wazwan on board.

Out at first light for the floating vegetable market, which trades from boat to boat and is finished by seven. Then the Mughal gardens on the eastern shore, Nishat of 1633 and Shalimar of 1619, terraced up the hillside with the chinars that Jahangir planted. Afternoon in the old city: the deodar pillars of Jamia Masjid, the papier-mache and sozni workshops of the Zaina Kadal lanes, and Pari Mahal above the lake at sunset.

Only eighty kilometres today, about two and a half hours up the Sindh valley through Ganderbal and Kangan, and the point of the short day is the altitude: Sonamarg sits at 2,730 metres and you sleep there before the pass. Afternoon walk or pony ride up to the snout of the Thajiwas glacier, and an early night, because tomorrow starts before dawn.

The crux of the journey and the reason for the early start: Zoji La at 3,528 metres, a single-lane shelf blasted into the cliff above the Sindh gorge, with the convoys timed and the drop unfenced. Over the top the green stops at once. Down through Drass, the second-coldest inhabited place on earth, with a halt at the war memorial below Tiger Hill, then along the Suru to Kargil, 130 kilometres in all.

East from Kargil to Mulbekh, where a nine-metre Maitreya Buddha stands carved into a roadside rock face and has done since perhaps the eighth century, and where Islam gives way to Tibetan Buddhism inside a few kilometres. Over Namika La at 3,700 metres and Fotu La at 4,108 metres, the highest point on the Srinagar road, and down into Lamayuru's eroded lake-bed badlands. Afternoon at the Yungdrung monastery above them.

One hundred and twenty-five kilometres down the Indus, and the best hour of it is the first: Alchi Choskor, founded in the eleventh century and decorated by Kashmiri painters whose work survives nowhere else, because Alchi sits on flat ground and was never rebuilt. Then Likir's standing Maitreya, the Zanskar and Indus confluence at Nimmu where two different colours of water run side by side, Magnetic Hill and Gurudwara Pathar Sahib. Into Leh by mid-afternoon.

A deliberately gentle day at 3,500 metres before the high passes, and it is not a wasted one. Dawn prayers in the assembly hall at Thiksey, whose twelve whitewashed storeys climb a hill like a small Potala, and the fifteen-metre Maitreya inside it. Afternoon at Hemis, the largest and richest monastery in Ladakh, then the nine-storey Leh Palace and Shanti Stupa for sunset over the Stok range. Litres of water, no exertion.

North over Khardung La at 5,359 metres, the highest ground of the journey, with the stop at the top kept short because nobody thinks clearly up there. Down the far side into Nubra, where the Shyok and the Nubra rivers meet and there is desert at 3,000 metres: the thirty-two-metre Maitreya above Diskit facing the Pakistan border, the monastery below it, and the white dunes at Hunder with their double-humped Bactrian camels, left over from the Silk Road caravans.

The direct route east, about 160 kilometres and five to six hours, following the Shyok through Agham and Durbuk on a road that is a riverbed in places and needs a driver who knows which line to take. Pangong Tso appears all at once at 4,350 metres: 134 kilometres long, two thirds of it in Tibet, and a blue that shifts through the afternoon. Camp at Spangmik, and stay outside after dark for the sky.

Up for first light on the lake, when the water goes from black to turquoise in about twenty minutes and the Changthang wind has not started yet. Then the 220-kilometre return over Chang La, whose signboard claims 5,360 metres and whose survey says a little less, past Tangtse and the marmots of the high plain, down to Leh for the afternoon flight out over the whole range you have just driven.