The cham dances are the reason to time a Ladakh trip to a festival. Monks in silk and carved masks, moving to horns you feel in your chest rather than hear.
Hemis in summer is the largest and the most crowded. Spituk and Stok in winter are colder, smaller and, most people who have seen both will tell you, better.
Around the edges of the religious calendar sit the secular festivals: archery contests that go on all afternoon, and polo played the way it was played before anyone wrote the rules down.
