The Spiti loop, the long way round
Nine days, 2,340 km, three punctures and one hailstorm above Baralacha La. The cold desert does not care how prepared you think you are.
- Distance
- 2,340km
- Duration
- 9days
- Region
- Spiti & Lahaul
- Terrain
- High altitude
- Difficulty
- Expedition
- Max altitude
- 4,551m
I have wanted to ride Spiti clockwise — up through Shimla and Kinnaur, out over Kunzum, down the Manali side — for three years. The reason it took three years is that the road only agrees with you for about six weeks a year, and I kept picking the wrong six.
The climb in
Kinnaur eases you in with a lie. The Sutlej gorge is green and dramatic and the tar is mostly there, and you start to think the stories were exaggerated. Then somewhere past Nako the trees give up, the colour drains out of the landscape, and you are in the cold desert proper: brown, grey, enormous, and completely indifferent to you.
Nako to Tabo I rode into a headwind that dropped Basanti's real-world cruising speed to about 45. I stopped counting the switchbacks. I did not stop counting the chai stops — nine that day, each one a small negotiation with the altitude.
Kaza, and the punctures
Three punctures in one week, all on the Losar side, all from the same sharp shale. The mechanic in Kaza knew Basanti by her second visit. On the third he refused to take money and told me to bring biscuits instead. I brought biscuits.
The hailstorm
The only genuinely bad decision of the trip was pushing over Baralacha La in the afternoon instead of waiting out the weather. The hail started at 4,800 m and did not stop until I was below the pass on the other side, hands past feeling, visor useless. I have never been so glad to see the ugly tin roofs of a dhaba.
Nine days. It did not care how prepared I thought I was, and that is exactly why I keep going back.