Delhi was hot, noisy and chaotic. As always. I’ve never liked the place. I pour with sweat, get grumpy and scratchy, and just want to go home.

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What I do like, though, is Delhi’s Imperial Hotel. It’s everything that the surrounding city isn’t, being cool, quiet and calm. I can cope with Delhi if I can stay here, thank you very much, largely because of its wonderful Hardinge Bar, surely the finest in town. I mean, have you ever tried its Imperial Saffron Negroni? It’s an absolute belter. And the eponymous Hardinge, made from whisky and marmalade, is a corker too.

Sadly, I wasn’t in the Imperial long enough to do too much damage to the cocktail list. I was here simply to regroup before heading north. I was off to Ladakh, the so-called crown of India, right at the top of the country in the foothills of the Himalayas, sandwiched between Kashmir and Tibet.

This mountain desert was opened to visitors 50 years ago and became a union territory in 2019. The name (pronounced ‘le-dark’, BTW, and not, as I’d thought, ‘le-dack’) is a combination of la, meaning many, and dakh, meaning high passes. It’s a region of snowcapped mountains,........

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