Padri is the high point — literally — of any visit to Bhadarwah: a 3,050-metre pass on the road to Chamba in Himachal Pradesh, about 40 kilometres and an hour and a half's drive of switchbacks above the town. The forest falls away near the top and the pass opens onto enormous rolling meadows with the peaks of the Pir Panjal and the Doda hills stacked up in every direction. Snow lies here well into June, and for much of the year Padri is where Jammu's plains-dwellers come to see and touch it.
Come on a weekday if you can; summer weekends bring a cheerful crowd of domestic tourists, pony-wallahs, and maggi-and-tea stalls at the roadhead. Walk fifteen minutes away from the road in any direction and you have the meadows to yourself. The pass is also the launch point for paragliding when conditions and operators align, and the drive itself — through deodar forest with the Neeru valley dropping away below — is half the reason to go. Check road conditions in winter and early spring, when snow regularly closes the pass.