Ladakh

Ladakh's Hemis and Losar festivals are marked by Cham, masked monastic dances performed to drum and horn in monastery courtyards carved into cliffside rock — Buddhist ritual theatre that predates any tourist calendar.

Pashmina goats are still herded by Changpa nomads across some of the highest inhabited terrain on earth, and the wool they produce starts a supply chain that ends, months later, in Kashmir's finished shawls.