ठहरावTHEHRAV

We collect you in Chandigarh in the morning and drive up through Solan and past Shimla into cedar forest. Narkanda by late afternoon. Before dinner there is a short walk in the deodar above the town — twenty minutes, no climbing — and then the first Marking: your host writes tomorrow’s sleeping height on the slate, takes everybody’s first oximeter reading, and explains what the next eleven nights are going to ask of you. Then an early dinner. Nothing else is planned. Arriving is enough for one day.

The longest drive on the climb in, treated honestly — one road, one proper sit-down lunch, no detours dressed up as sightseeing. We drop to the Sutlej at Karcham and turn up the Baspa, one of the valley’s prettiest turns, climbing through pine and apple orchard to Sangla by evening. Wooden houses, a river you can hear from the room, and Kinner Kailash — the sacred peak — from an angle Kalpa never shows you. The Marking, then dinner.

Sangla — a full day in the Baspa Valley. We leave early for Chitkul — the last village of the Baspa Valley, close to the Indo-Tibetan border — reached via Rakcham, wooden houses along the river, the Kinner Kailash range from the other side. Back to Rakcham for the Loom afternoon at the master weaver’s household. Late afternoon at Kamru, where the man who keeps the keys walks you through the five-storey wood-and-stone fort that once served as the seat of Kinnaur’s rulers. Rest, dinner, sleep.

A short drive of about two hours, arriving Kalpa by lunch. The afternoon is at Kalpa: if the apple harvest is running we walk to the orchard we have picked with for years — four generations on the same terraces — in the golden light for the grading table, an hour or two at the crates. Otherwise the afternoon is genuinely free — a shawl weaver’s loom, the walk to Roghi, or sleeping. At last light a neighbour who is argumentative about geology walks you to the edge of the village and tells you what Kinnauris see in the rock face of Kinner Kailash. The Marking, then dinner.

We take this day slowly, because it carries the biggest single step up in sleeping height on the whole journey. Somewhere on the climb to Nako the green gives out, and does not come back. Nako is a village of mud-brick houses, willows and a small lake, and we arrive while there is still plenty of light. A slow circuit of the lake if you feel well, the old wooden temple if it is open, and an early dinner. The rooms here are the simplest of the eleven nights — we say so plainly, and our care rises to meet them.

A short drive, and we leave the rest of the day for one place. We reach Tabo before lunch, and the afternoon belongs to two things. First, the mural hour: the conservator at Tabo takes the group inside and spends the better part of an hour on a single painting. You leave knowing one thing properly rather than having photographed forty things badly. Then, before dinner, we walk up to the caves in the cliff behind the monastery — meditation cells cut into the rock a thousand years ago by the monks who built Tabo, some still used for winter retreats. A short climb, a quiet hour, an entirely different way of understanding what a monastery is. Tonight you sleep 383 metres lower than last night — that is not an accident, and it is how your body grows stronger for Kaza.

Dhankar on the way: a monastery on a cliff above the meeting of the Spiti and the Pin, and once the seat of this valley’s rulers. One story, told properly, rather than a march through every room. Kaza by mid-afternoon, and then you unpack once. There is no repacking for three days. The daily bag-in, bag-out that quietly exhausts people on faster journeys simply does not happen here.

Key first, and early — before the day’s vehicles reach the hill. A thousand years old and home to a few hundred monks, Key is a working monastery, not a monument, and we come to it that way. When the monastery invites us we sit quietly at the dawn prayer, in the place they choose, and afterwards are usually offered butter tea in the kitchen that has fed this community through a thousand winters. If the monk who receives us has time, we sit with him a while — not a teaching, a conversation about winter, silence, and what the monastery needs. We are there as guests of the monastery, at their invitation. Then Kibber, where a household’s field needs whatever it needs that week and you lend a hand, before a meal on the kitchen floor — eight people is already a lot for that room.

Langza first, under its great seated Buddha, where a local from Langza who reads the Tethys seabed takes the group onto the slope and teaches you to find and read the fossils — ammonites from the Tethys, an ocean that closed when India met Asia. Every one of them stays exactly where it lies. Then Komic at 4,587 metres, the highest point of the journey, and Hikkim, where you can post a card if you feel like it. When your departure falls near a new moon, we come back up to Langza after dinner with a telescope, and you go home with a long-exposure portrait taken beneath it.

The last climb, and the first night above 4,000 metres. In the morning we check on everybody, and on the road, and we cross only when both are ready. Kunzum La is wrapped in prayer flags and wind, and from the top you get a long look back down the whole valley you have spent a week inside. Then we drop to the camps near Chandratal. The lake shore is protected, so the camps sit back from the water; we drive most of the way in and you walk the final stretch to the lake if you wish — a gentle half hour or so over stony ground, and easy to sit out. Tents with proper beds, thick bedding, a hot dinner. The coldest night of the journey, and by now a manageable one, after nine days of preparation.

The wildest road of the journey, and we give it the entire day. Stream crossings, bare valleys, the long descent past Batal and Gramphu — and then the Atal Tunnel, which you enter surrounded by brown desert and leave in pine forest. Ten minutes, two different worlds. Manali by evening: a hot shower, a proper bed and a long dinner that nobody has to leave early.

A slow breakfast, and then the drive home — Manali to Chandigarh by road, one long day with proper stops, arriving Chandigarh by early evening. We never put a flight at the end of a mountain road — which is exactly why last night was spent in Manali, and not somewhere higher.