Spiti Valley Road Trip: Driving on the Moon at 13,000 Feet

At 4,587 metres above the sea, the Kunzum Pass has a small whitewashed shrine to the goddess Kunzum Mata. Every vehicle crossing must circle it three times, clockwise. There is no signage, no ticket, no priest. Just a 30-second ritual that every Spitian truck driver, bus conductor and Enfield rider has performed since the road was cut in 1976. Miss it, the locals say, and the goddess will decide what happens in the valley below.

This is how Spiti Valley announces itself. Not with grandeur — the mountains are too big for grandeur, and too bare. It announces itself with the quiet insistence that you are now somewhere other. Somewhere thinner in the air, stranger in the light, older in the prayer-flag-frayed monasteries, and so visually Martian that ISRO once used the Lingti Plain to test rovers destined for the moon.

The circuit: Shimla in, Manali out (or the other way)

Spiti is a ten-day loop for most travellers: Shimla → Kalpa → Nako → Tabo → Dhankar → Kaza (the valley's only 'town') → Ki → Kibber → Langza-Komic-Hikkim → Chandratal → Kunzum Pass → Manali. You can also reverse it, entering via Manali over the Rohtang Pass and exiting through Kinnaur to Shimla. I strongly recommend the Shimla-in, Manali-out direction. Why? Because the Kinnaur approach gains altitude gradually — Shimla sits at 2,200 m, Kalpa at 2,700, Nako at 3,600, Kaza at 3,800. Your body has four days to adjust. The Manali approach dumps you from 2,000 m to 4,551 m (Rohtang) in a single morning, a textbook recipe for acute mountain sickness. Ask anyone who has thrown up at Chandratal.

Tabo: the 1,000-year-old monastery still holding class

Of the hundred reasons to come to Spiti, Tabo Monastery is the first. Founded in 996 CE by the great Tibetan translator Rinchen Zangpo — one of only eleven monasteries he established across the western Himalayas — it is the oldest continuously operating Buddhist monastery in India. The main assembly hall is unremarkable from outside: mud walls, whitewashed, no gold. Inside, every surface is painted with 10th-century frescoes that the UNESCO committee called 'the Ajanta of the Himalayas'. The 14th Dalai Lama has performed the Kalachakra initiation here twice and has said that if he must retire anywhere, it will be Tabo.

The frescoes have survived because Tabo sits at 3,280 metres in a bone-dry cold desert. No humidity, no fungal growth, no temperature swings. Wet Himalayan monasteries like those of Tawang have repainted their art dozens of times. Tabo's 1,000-year-old Vairochana in the central hall is the same paint that was laid in 996. You are allowed in — barefoot, no cameras — and you are allowed to sit for as long as you want in silence. This is unusual. Most UNESCO Buddhist sites have velvet ropes and audio guides. Tabo has a young monk who smiles and gestures at the cushions.

Ki Monastery: 4,166 metres of defiance

A forty-minute drive north of Kaza, Ki Monastery is the photograph that sells every Spiti tour. It sits on a pinnacle visible for thirty kilometres, piled like a honeycomb over the valley, each terrace a smaller cube stacked on the one below. The oldest parts date to the 11th century; the youngest were built in the 1840s after the Dogra armies looted the monastery — the seventh time the monks had been forced to rebuild. Mongol raids, Ladakhi incursions, the Dogras, Sikh skirmishes, a major fire in 1975 — Ki has been looted, burned, buried and rebuilt more than any functioning monastery in India.

Walk uphill from the road (slowly — you are now at 4,000+ m) and enter through the old north gate. The main assembly hall still has the 14-foot Chakrasamvara thangka used in the Chaam dance performed every July. Behind the hall, the hostel for 300 monks spills down the hillside in linked rooms so small you crouch to enter them. Breakfast is served to visitors at 7 a.m. — tsampa (roasted barley), butter tea, and whatever bread was baked the night before. ₹100 donation per head. Don't skip it.

The villages at the end of the earth

Above Kaza, the road forks to three villages that form the 'high village triangle' — Langza (4,400 m), Komic (4,587 m — highest motorable village in the world, officially), and Hikkim (4,440 m — highest post office on earth). The entire loop takes ninety minutes by taxi and is the single most-worthwhile half-day in Spiti. At Langza, 70 million years ago, this was the bed of the Tethys Sea; ammonite fossils are still embedded in the gravel, and children will sell you genuine specimens for ₹200 — please buy ethically, or don't buy at all. At Komic, the Tangyud Monastery serves Buddhist noodle soup. At Hikkim, you can write a postcard and watch Yogendra Thakur — the postmaster since 1983 — hand-stamp it with the altitude seal. It will arrive in Delhi in nine days. It will arrive in London in three weeks. It will arrive with bragging rights forever.

Chandratal: the moon lake at 4,300 metres

If you make it out of Spiti via the Kunzum Pass, you will descend to Chandratal — 'the Lake of the Moon'. It is a crescent-shaped glacial lake at 4,300 metres, named for the way it catches moonlight during July and August nights. The lake is ringed by snow-capped peaks and two small nomadic camps where you can stay overnight (May-September only; the lake freezes over entirely the rest of the year). The night sky is Bortle Class 1 — the darkest possible. You will see the Milky Way arcing from horizon to horizon in a way that is genuinely religious. Bring every warm piece of clothing you own; the lakeside hits -5°C even in July.

From Chandratal, the Manali road descends through Lahaul Valley — a very different, greener Himalaya — and dumps you into the tourist crush of Manali after a 10-hour drive. Spend one night there to decompress. Most people who've done Spiti say the experience takes a week to absorb after they leave.

Acute Mountain Sickness: the one thing nobody posts about

Roughly one in three first-time visitors to Kaza develop some symptoms of AMS — headache, nausea, insomnia, loss of appetite. One in fifty develop severe AMS and must descend immediately. It is not a weakness; it is biology. The only defences are slow acclimatisation (the Kinnaur route helps enormously), staying hydrated (drink 4 litres of water a day), avoiding alcohol completely until you're back below 3,000 m, and carrying Diamox 125mg twice daily starting 24 hours before the ascent (consult your doctor). Kaza has a basic district hospital with oxygen and a GP; anything more serious requires an evacuation down to Manali or Shimla that can take 10 hours. This is not a road trip for 'let's see what happens'. Plan the acclimatisation days, book the Diamox, and don't push through a headache.

When to go, how to get there, what to drive

The Kinnaur road is open year-round (the gateway to the Indian side of Mt Kailash); the Manali-Kunzum road is open only May-October. June-September is the golden window — high passes are clear, the wildflowers bloom at Komic, and Chandratal is liquid rather than ice. Avoid August peak monsoon when landslides close the Kinnaur road for days. Winter (November-April) is for adventure-specialists only — Kaza stays open via Kinnaur but drops to -30°C; some roads are bull-dozed daily and others not at all.

You can rent a 4WD in Shimla or Manali (roughly ₹4,500/day), or use the Himachal Tourism HPDC tourist bus that runs Manali-Kaza twice weekly. A Mahindra Bolero or Thar is ideal — anything lower-clearance will scrape. Motorcyclists should be experienced with high-altitude riding; a 350cc Enfield is the minimum. Fuel stations exist at Reckong Peo, Kaza and Losar. Carry one full jerrycan always — the pumps run dry without warning, and the next one may be 150 km away. Buy Indian-issue Inner Line Permits at Reckong Peo (Indians need these if entering via Kinnaur; not required via Manali). Foreign nationals must apply in Shimla or Manali for their own ILP.

Pair it with the Himalayan circuit

Spiti is one chapter of a much larger book. If you want the full Indian Himalayan story, combine it with Manali (the tourist gateway, 200 km north-east), Auli in Uttarakhand (the central Himalayas' highest ski resort), or Pangong Lake in Ladakh (the other great cold-desert road trip). The Buddhist monastery trail connects Tabo, Ki, Tawang and the monasteries of Ladakh into a single thread of 1,300 years of Tibetan Vajrayana practice across India. See all Himachal Pradesh destinations or browse Hill Stations.