Planning · 9 min read
When to go where: an honest month-by-month map of India
Ladakh in January is closed. Goa in June is wet and beautiful. A blunt guide to timing a trip on the subcontinent.
Published 2026-03-04 · Asman Tourism
India does not have a season. It has about six climates running on different calendars, and the single most useful thing you can do for a trip is to go to the right place at the right time rather than the right place at a convenient time.
January and February belong to the south and the desert. Kerala is dry and warm, Rajasthan is cold at night and perfect at noon, and the Andamans are at their calmest. The Himalaya is largely shut, and Ladakh is accessible only by air.
March to May is the hill season and the best window for Kashmir — the tulips are in Srinagar in early April and Gulmarg still has snow. It is also when Rajasthan becomes genuinely unpleasant by the middle of the day.
May and June open the Char Dham and Kedarnath, and close them again briefly when the pre-monsoon storms roll through. Ladakh's road passes clear around the end of May. This is also peak season in Manali and Shimla, which is worth planning around rather than into.
July to September is the monsoon, and most of the Himalaya is a landslide risk. But Ladakh sits in the rain shadow and is at its best, Kerala is green and half price, and Goa in the rain is an entirely different and rather wonderful place if you are not there for a tan.
October and November are, on balance, the best two months in the country. The monsoon has cleared the air, the Himalaya has its clearest views of the year, the Char Dham reopens for a second short season, and the coast is drying out. If you can only travel once, travel then.
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