Cups of tea, pashmina and momos: Here's how to go touring India on a budget

In the Ladakh region of northern India, the town of Leh is known for its beauty and culture, and for the experience of buying a cashmere scarf.

I told the owner, George Sher Ali, that I’d been in his shop before, several years before, and his ears perked up. “Tell me what you bought,” he said, and reached for a tall stack of old assignment notebooks. “I will tell you exactly when you came in.”

I said I’d been into his art and print shop, L’Araba Fenice, roughly eight years ago on a trip to Leh, a town in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir, in the far north of India. I bought two or three postcards, as had a friend who had come with me. He flipped through the pages of a few dog-eared notebooks for several minutes before announcing decisively, “This is you. Five postcards.” And he pointed at a hand-scrawled entry in a ledger dated Sept. 19, 2010. It was eight years ago to the day that I’d visited his store.

Leh (pronounced LAY), once the royal seat of a former Buddhist kingdom, is a place with a seemingly undying memory, ageless and eternal as the mountains that surround it. The Ladakh region, dotted with poplars and dominated by the Himalayas, has changed noticeably over the last decade, welcoming more tourists, restaurants and guesthouses. But it remains a wondrous destination for the adventurous traveler, full of captivating scenery, generous and friendly people, and accessible monasteries and holy places nearby. And it doesn’t hurt that it can all be done fairly inexpensively.

A couple of planning tips: You’ll probably want to arrive by plane. The flight to Leh’s Kushok Bakula Rimpochee Airport from New Delhi is about an hour, compared to a 25-hour drive. Flights, fortunately, can be cheap. I bought a one-way ticket directly through Air India for about 2,800 Indian rupees, or less than $40. Because of the unpredictable mountain climate at such high altitude (Leh is at around 11,500 feet), flights arrive and depart in the morning. Don’t plan to hop an evening flight.

After arriving in Delhi, I spent a couple of days sightseeing and getting used to the time change before heading up to Leh early one morning. My trip was part of a longer journey to India, to places that will be featured in future columns. You can expect a good deal of bureaucracy when it comes to travel in this country. Have copies of your itinerary printed out, and a copy of the credit card with which you made a given ticket purchase, or the card itself.

Despite the territorial jockeying between China, Pakistan and India over the disputed Kashmir region, you won’t need any kind of special visa or permit to visit Leh, or sites on the Srinagar-Leh Highway that runs west from town — your Indian visa will do. But if you want to go to certain areas like the Nubra Valley, north of Leh, you’ll need a special Inner Line Permit. The price depends on the length of the permit, but will run in the neighborhood of 400 to 500 rupees.

Friends I’d met during my previous trip to Leh — Tundup, a native of the area, and Sina, a Swiss national who visits frequently — picked me up at the airport and dropped me at my lodgings, the Hotel Spic-n-Span on Old Leh Road (double rooms cost around $45 to $60 per night online). There are hundreds of hotels and guesthouses in Leh, at every price point, but I’d recommend staying within walking distance of the Main Bazaar, the hub of shopping and dining activity in town.... Read More

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