Arunachal, Sikkim or Ladakh: which should you actually pick?
We run trips in Arunachal, so treat this with appropriate suspicion — but there are trips where we tell people to go elsewhere.
These three get compared constantly and they are genuinely different holidays. Here is the honest version.
| Arunachal | Sikkim | Ladakh | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crowds | Very low | Moderate to high | High in season |
| Days needed | 7–10 | 5–7 | 7–9 |
| Max altitude | ~15,200 ft (Bum La) | ~14,100 ft (Gurudongmar) | ~18,000 ft (Khardung La) |
| Road quality | Variable, improving | Good to fair | Good on main routes |
| Permit | ILP for all Indians | Permit for protected areas only | Inner line for some areas |
| Infrastructure | Basic outside towns | Well developed | Very well developed |
| Season | Oct–Apr (west) | Mar–May, Oct–Dec | May–Sep |
Pick Sikkim if
You have five or six days, want mountains without much planning, and are travelling with people who value comfortable hotels and reliable roads. Gangtok and North Sikkim are the easiest Himalayan experience in India to organise.
Pick Ladakh if
You want the big, stark, high-desert landscape and you are travelling between May and September, when Arunachal is in monsoon. Ladakh has the best tourism infrastructure of the three by a distance. It is also the most crowded.
Pick Arunachal if
You want somewhere that has not been optimised for tourists yet, you have a week or more, and you are comfortable with long drives and simple accommodation in exchange for having a valley to yourself.
It is also the obvious choice from October to April, when Ladakh is largely shut.
When we tell people not to come
- You have four days. Go to Sikkim. Arunachal in four days is a driving holiday.
- You want July or August. Go to Ladakh. Our monsoon is genuinely disruptive.
- You want luxury hotels. They mostly do not exist here above Guwahati.
- Someone in the group is anxious about mountain roads. Sikkim's main routes are gentler.
If none of those apply, have a look at what we run.
Further reading
Independent sources, if you want a second opinion before you book:
- Arunachal Pradesh on Wikipedia — history, geography and demographics of the state
- Arunachal Pradesh on Wikivoyage — a community-written travel guide
Tell us what you want to see. We'll build the trip around it.
Send us your dates, the city you're flying from and how many people are travelling. You'll get a day-by-day plan and a firm price, usually within a few hours.