Two days is enough for Kangra if you stop trying to also do Dharamshala. Most itineraries for this valley are really Dharamshala itineraries with a fort bolted on, and they have you in the car for most of the daylight.
Here is a real two days, from a base down in the valley: a fort, a temple carved out of one rock, and a morning in the tea gardens.
Day one — Kangra Fort in the morning
Go early. It is one of the oldest forts in the country, it is built along a spur above the meeting of two rivers, and the walk up through the gates takes longer than you expect because you keep stopping.
The view from the top is the whole Kangra valley in one turn of the head — which is the thing photographs of it never manage. Give it two hours, more if you take the audio guide, and go before the middle of the day because there is very little shade up there.
Brajeshwari Devi is in the town below, a short run from the fort, and worth folding into the same morning. It is one of the four temples on the Devi darshan circuit if that turns out to be the trip you actually want.
Day one — Masrur in the afternoon
The Masrur rock temples are the single most underrated thing in this valley and the reason to keep the afternoon free.
Fifteen shrines cut downwards out of a single sandstone ridge in the eighth century — not built, carved, the way Ellora was. There is a tank in front that reflects the whole thing when it has water in it. An earthquake took the tops off most of them a century ago and somehow that made it better.
You will likely share it with almost nobody, which is the strangest part. Go in the late afternoon when the sandstone goes orange.
Back here for dinner. That is day one and it is not a hard day.
Day two — Baijnath and the tea gardens
East, down the valley, and this is the drive people remember.
Baijnath is a Shiva temple built in 1204 and still in worship, sitting with the Dhauladhar directly behind it. It is small and it takes half an hour. It is also, on a clear morning, one of the great views in Himachal, and you get it from the courtyard for free.
Palampur is further east and the tea gardens start before the town does. The road runs between them. Stop, walk into one, buy tea at a garden shop rather than in a market, and have lunch somewhere with a view — this is the part of the day to be unhurried about.
If there is time and appetite on the way back, Andretta is a potters' and painters' village just off this road, and Bir is a little further on if you want to watch the paragliders come down.
What to skip, honestly
Dharamshala and McLeod Ganj, on a two-day trip. They are up the hill and they are a day each, properly. Trying to add them turns both of your days into driving. They deserve their own day, done from down here.
Anything advertised as a "Kangra darshan package" covering six temples in a day. It can be done. You will not remember any of them.
Where to base yourself
Down in the valley rather than up in Dharamshala, for this itinerary specifically. Everything above — the fort, Masrur, Baijnath, Palampur — is below Dharamshala, so staying up there means starting each day by driving back down and ending it by climbing back up.
From here the fort is the shortest run of the two days, and Masrur, Baijnath and Palampur are all straightforward drives out and back.
Rooms are ₹999 a night to start, ₹1,699 with air conditioning, and there is one room type so there is nothing to choose between. Two nights is exactly the stay this itinerary wants. See the room.
The evening you have not planned
Both these days end in the middle of the afternoon if you want them to, and what people actually do then is get in the pool.
That is not a sales line, it is just what happens — a fort in the morning and a carved ridge in the afternoon is a lot of standing in the sun, and the water is open until six. Then the roof, and the valley going dark underneath it.
Come for two days and you will get the valley. Message us your dates — the best month to do all of this is worth reading first if the trip is not already booked.