India
Hanle
India's darkest night skies, where a hilltop observatory and a Buddhist monastery both point upward.
The sky here has no competition. At 4,500 metres on a cold desert plateau, the nearest serious artificial light is hundreds of kilometres away. The observatory's dome crowns one hill and the Hanle Monastery holds another, both pointed at the same thing — upward.
Hanle, in Ladakh's Changthang, hosts the Indian Astronomical Observatory — established in 2001 by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, among the highest optical and gamma-ray sites in the world. India's first designated Dark Sky Reserve now surrounds it. The 17th-century Hanle Monastery watches from its own hilltop across the valley. Two dozen trained village 'astro ambassadors' run telescopes at homestays across the reserve's five villages.
Solo
Book an astro-ambassador homestay, sleep by day if you must, and give the night sky the hours it deserves.
Friends
Drive the Changthang in company, split a homestay, and point one telescope at everything.
- One of the world's highest observatories works the thin air at 4,500 metres.
- The 17th-century monastery has watched this valley for four hundred years; the telescopes joined in 2001.
- Village astro ambassadors run homestay telescopes — the Dark Sky Reserve trains its own guides.
- Kiang — Tibetan wild ass — gallop the steppe around the village.
Homestays feed you from the barley economy — tsampa, kholak and butter tea.
Vegetable thukpa or skyu is dinner; meat is scarce in the cold desert, and the stars are the main course.
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