Manali in 3 days: what to see, in what order

A wooden temple with a four-tier roof, built in 1553 in a forest of tall deodar trees above Manali. It is for Hidimba, the wife of Bhima in the Mahabharata. Inside, the shrine is built round a rock. A short walk away, a small shrine to her son Ghatotkach sits round an old tree.

A temple to the sage Manu at the top of Old Manali. The town is named after him. Around it are old wooden and stone houses, apple trees and narrow lanes.

A Himachal Tourism leisure club by the Manalsu stream, on the road to Old Manali. It has indoor games, small rides and a few outdoor activities. Families with children like it most.

An old stone temple to the sage Vashisht in a village across the Beas from Manali. Hot sulphur springs feed public baths next to it, with separate baths for men and women. The water is warm all year.

A park of very tall deodar trees right beside the Mall and the Beas. There is a small pond with rowing boats. It is a quiet break from the busy street next door.

Two Tibetan Buddhist monasteries sit a few minutes from the Mall: the Himalayan Nyingmapa Gompa and Gadhan Thekchokling Gompa. Both are bright with painted walls and prayer flags, and have rows of prayer wheels. Small stalls nearby sell Tibetan carpets and crafts.

A 9 km road tunnel under the Rohtang Pass, opened in 2020. It takes you from the Manali side to the Lahaul valley in about 10 minutes, a trip that used to take hours over the pass. At the north end the mountains are snowy for most of the year.

A village in the Lahaul valley, on the Chandra river, about 13 km past the Atal Tunnel. A tall waterfall drops down the mountain across the river. The valley is drier and barer than the Manali side, and white with snow in winter.

A wide valley of open slopes 13 km north of Manali. A ropeway runs up the mountain for the view. In summer there is paragliding, quad bikes and zorbing; in winter the slopes are covered in snow for sledging and skiing.

A cold spring by the road to Solang. It is named after Jawaharlal Nehru, who is said to have drunk from it on his visits to Manali.

Jagatsukh was the old capital of the Kullu kings before Naggar. Its stone Shiva temple and the Sandhya Gayatri temple have carved stone towers, older than most of Manali's wooden temples.

A castle of stone and wood built by the Kullu kings more than 500 years ago, on a hill above the Beas. It is now a Himachal Tourism hotel with a small museum and a tiny temple in the courtyard. The balcony looks far down the Kullu valley.

The house where the Russian painter Nicholas Roerich lived from the late 1920s until he died in 1947. The ground floor shows his bright paintings of the Himalaya, and the garden looks over the valley. A short walk up is the Urusvati museum of folk art.

A wooden temple with a three-tier pagoda roof in Naggar village, below the castle. It is a fine example of the old Kullu way of building in wood.