India - Spiti Valley & Manali

Manali is a popular tourist destination for both Indians & foreigners. The bustling modern section of Manali, or ‘New Manali’ is where all the Indian tourists head & the laid back traditionally styled ‘Old Manali’ a little higher up the valley is where the majority of the foreigners head. Both are in a beautiful setting in a Himalayan valley with the Beas River running through the valley floor.

Apart from being very popular in its own right due to its more agreeable climate and stunning mountain scenery, it is also the gateway town for the mountain road access north up to the Ladakh region and east to the Spiti Valley. Leanne & Sonia had spent a couple of weeks already in Manali waiting for the road up to Ladakh to open but it was still showing no signs of opening, so after a night or two in Manali we all decided to take a trip out to Spiti Valley instead which is similar Ladakh in that it is a high altitude Himalayan area with dramatic scenery and a large Tibetan influence.

We booked a private jeep taxi out to the Spiti Valley for the following day. Our driver was local to the Spiti area & had assured us that he was confident in the condition of the road (it also involving a couple of high mountain passes that only open at certain stages of the year) & reassured us about his slow & steady, calm and confident driving style, so early the following morning we started on our way for the 12 hour journey across the mountains to the main town of the Spiti Valley, Kaza.

The first high pass on the journey is about 3 hours out of Manali, snow covered & heaving with Indian tourists. This is the main reason many Indians come to Manali, as for many it is the first chance they have to see snow. On the road all the way up to the top of the pass there are hundreds of road side stalls offering a particularly dodgy selection of ‘70s & ‘80s ski suits for hire, alongside full length fur coats and little ankle high wellington boots, all for the princely sum of just under £1 for the day. At the top of the pass it makes for a pretty comical sight, there are hundreds of Indians walking around in this ridiculous looking ski wear or fur coats & ankle boots or paying people to drag them around on a little sledge – all making for a pretty amusing sight.

Once over this pass, we start down the other side of this mountain soon peeling off the main road onto yet another rough and not so ready track which would pretty much be the style of road for the remainder of the 12 hours. We had a perfect day for the journey, bright blue skies and sunshine meaning that the views throughout were stunning. Much of the way we were driving through areas that were so remote that the actual track we were following was so indecipherable amidst the surrounding rocks & ice that it seemed like the driver had taken a wrong turn & was now just blazing his own trail across these mountains. This feeling was reinforced when we came across a road block of snow that had not yet been cleared. Thankfully a bulldozer was already on the job, but it still meant a delay for about 1.5 hours while they cleared the 3m high wall of snow that was in the way.

A few more bumpy hours later & our driver was true to his word and safely delivered us in Kaza after a slow & steady drive through breathtaking scenery. With good sensible drivers being something of a rarity around these parts we decided to take his mobile number & use him as our driver for anything else we decided to do while here – including taking us back to Manali again in a week or so.

Kaza is a small town on the banks of a river at an altitude of around 3600m above sea level. Provisions are scarce due to limited access during winter months and the town suffers from power cuts for indefinite periods of time each day. At night it gets seriously cold here as well and so it was necessary to sleep in all our clothes.... so to recap, its below freezing, there are no heaters and when there is no electricity there is no hot water or lights. Thankfully, restaurants use small gas stoves to cook on (using candle light to see with) so we actually had hot food!

The plan was we would spent a night or two acclimatising to the altitude then head out on a trek for 3 or 4 days through the valley, stopping off at remote mountain villages each night & staying in one of the home-stay’s that were available (thinking that we could actually get some trekking done after failing to do any while we were in Ladakh). We had mapped out a bit of plan for visiting a few local monasteries the first couple of days, before heading out on the trek. However, on the first afternoon the glorious weather we had experienced the previous day took a serious turn for the worse, thick black clouds engulfing the valley & proceeded to dump a few feet of snow on the ground...

Undeterred we figured it would pass and called up our driver Sonam and arranged the weeks itinerary with him; first on the agenda a trip out to Kee Monastery & then up the mountain to the 4200m village of Kibber. Arriving punctually the following morning, Sonam assured us that the road was fine, there was only a bit of sleet in the air now & most of the snow had been cleared off the roads that we needed to use. Having hooked up with another couple also wanting to take the trip, the 6 of us headed up to Kee. Our new friends had spent the last 4 or 5 weeks in a Monastery further up the valley, taking part in a Buddhist training camp. The guy was Tibetan but born in India and the girl was an Italian/American. This basically meant was we had a knowledgeable guide with us who could ask our questions to the monks & translate back to us, without actually having to pay for the service.

Kee Monastery is the most populated in the area, with about 300 monks living there. Parts of the monastery date back 800 years and they even put on display the quarters the Dalai Lama slept in during his visit to Kee in 1960. During our visit there were a group of young kids from the local school tucking into lunch - all of them eager to pose for photos for us all in the Monastery kitchen while the monks prepared the food. After sharing a cup of tea with the monks, we moved on up the mountain to the town of Kibber, once laying claim to the title of the world’s highest village accessible via a motor-able road, now being displaced by a village in Tibet somewhere that holds the title.

Up at Kibber, set in another dramatic location it was a real shame that the cloud was still hanging in the valley & obscured most of the views that should’ve been spectacular. On our way back down the mountain this time with an additional 4 or 5 locals in the jeep who were looking for a ride down to Kaza, we wound our way back down the precarious mountain track. The snow had started again & the cloud really rolled in, Sonam was still taking the driving nice & steady, but as we rounded a blind corner we met another jeep that was coming up the mountain, and with the road only being wide enough for one we had a head on collision. Thankfully no one was hurt & we were only going at slow speed, it was also good that neither driver attempted to swerve out of the others way, otherwise one of the vehicles would’ve been off the side of the cliff. As it was all we had were two smashed up front ends & busted radiators.

Everyone jumped out of the vehicles, no one raising their voices or getting stressed about it in any way, that good old Buddhist fatalist mentality of ‘if something’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen, so there’s no point worrying about it’, actually seeming to make more sense in this situation than it had when we were in Ladakh hurtling around the mountains. Anyway, after mucking in with some running repairs, introducing India to the cracked egg in the radiator technique of blocking the leaks (albeit the damage was a little too great to really do the trick) we set off down the mountain again.

Not 2 minutes later we were pulling over with another problem, the throttle cable had coincidentally snapped as well! The running repair this time involved Sonam tearing a strip off a rag and tying it to the throttle lever in the engine bay so the throttle was permanently on...not really what you want on these roads but tentatively we set off down the mountain, willing Kaza to be closer than it actually was so we could get out of the jeep as soon as possible. On the outskirts of Kaza we pulled over at a tiny roadside tin shack completely on its own with an ‘Auto Repairs’ sign outside it... this was the ‘garage’ that would fix the jeep for our onward trip the following day. We left Sonam there and willingly walked the rest of the way back into town.

With the snow still falling the advice we were getting from the locals was that the trek would not be possible, so we decided to have a bit of change of plan and head back to Manali earlier, making a couple of detours to some more Monasteries en-route. The only problem this time was the road we had come in on was now completely closed again due to the bad weather on the high passes and the only alternative was to take the long way round which involved 2 full 12 hour days of driving and required us getting a permit to travel this way as the route goes very close to the Tibetan border. This meant a day of dealing with hopeless bureaucracy in Kaza to get the permits arranged.

Thankfully the weather had cleared the day we set off, which not only meant the driving conditions were much safer, but also that we could take full advantage of the views from the 1200 year old Dhankar Monastery, perched high up on a rocky outcrop overlooking the valley below. Tabo on the other hand is set in a valley floor, a less dramatic setting than Dhankar, though dates back to 996AD and has some of the finest preserved examples of ancient Indo-Tibetan art in the world.

Continuing on through more rugged remote & stunning scenery for several hours, along what the Lonely Planet describes as ‘India’s most sublime & scary mountain road’ (and it was in places), we reached our half way point & stop off for the night, the town of Rekong Peo. After another early start the following day though thankfully the weather was glorious again (typical), and we descended into lush green pine forests, a significant change from the from the dry desert like terrain of the previous day.


Safely back in Manali we enjoyed a very chilled out few days, which mainly revolved around just taking it easy and watching quite a few of the World Cup games. After a couple of days Sonia moved on towards Nepal where she was meeting up with Charlotte again, we stayed in Manali for another couple of days before we made our way south to Chandigarh where Leanne would start her journey home to the UK and where we would start or journey east to Varanasi.